| JUNK SNAIL MAIL ON THE INCREASE- WHY AND WHAT TO DO |
Topic Summary:  The Post office is changing the rules for direct marketers, making it cheaper and easier for them to fill up your mail box with offers you may want or simply do not want. It's called "saturation mail" for a reason, everyone on your street and town gets it. But, there are some simple steps you can take to stop the increase hitting your mailbox. With deficits in the $ billions (latest news) and the threat of canceling Saturday delivery, the USPS has relaxed rules on direct mailers in hopes MORE direct mail will get sent, making the USPS more revenue. Traditionally, a piece of mail or parcel had to have your address on the mailing label. It could be addressed to "Resident" or "Current Occupant". This meant mailers had to buy and manage expensive mailing lists, putting up the total cost of the mailing. New rules allow the mailers to saturate a city or town without having to deal with lists. If there are 50,000 houses in your town, and a credit card company wants everyone to have an offer, they simply send 50,000 pieces to the post office without addresses and marked "Carrier Route". Every mailbox gets one! Obviously increased junk mail has an environmental impact but there are steps you can take to minimize the impact. Also you can limit the amount of junk Emails. The Direct Marketing Association has a great site at http://www.dmachoice.org Once you register here you can then choose what catalogs you want to receive or those you want to block. If you dig deeper you can get your name of lists for charities and product offers. This action will not stop Credit Card and financial offers. To stop the flow of these offers you have to visit http://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi . The site is managed by the big credit bureaus that credit cards companies and banks work with in making offers to consumers. Another highly recommended site is http://www.catalogchoice.org/ This non-profit group got its start in the ecology/green movement and over 1.3 million households now manage what comes into their mailboxes. You can even cancel your phonebook! (but save one to show your grandchildren because they will probably never see one) |
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