And do you happen to know that address you can write to if you want to get yourself off commercial mailing lists? I'm not sure it works for the charitable organizations, but if you have the address, please post it!

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

Answers

Mail Preference Service Direct Marketing Association P. O. Box 9008 Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008

And for those annoying dinnertime phone calls with offers to roof, side, remortgage, etc. your home...

You may register with this do-not-call file by sending your name(s), home address, and home telephone number (including area code) and signature in a letter or on a postcard to: Telephone Preference Service Direct Marketing Association P. O. Box 9014 Farmingdale, NY 11735-9014

Frankly, the phone calls bother me more than the mail. I just toss the mail, but it bothers me a little more to have to disengage from an earnest telemarketer who is, after all, only doing their job.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

Oh, we never get phone calls. We have a solution for that: for all of our credit cards, we use the phone number for our second phone line -- which is only connected to our computers, not to an actual phone. The credit card companies don't need to contact us that badly (and if they do, they have our work numbers). This really has worked like a charm. We only get phone solications from political organizations now, and only during election time.

I was pretty grumpy when I realized that it was my bank and my credit card companies who were responsible for putting my phone number on all those lists, because we really don't get any phone calls since we started doing this. On the rare occasions when the other line is connected to a phone, we get calls all day long, mostly from Discover Card. Bastards.

Thanks for the address. I'm going to deal with that today.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

the credit card people - even though they're not supposed to call my college campus - called me ALL THE TIME last year. never my roommate, only me. and i got masses of "pre approved high credit limit" credit card offers in the mail. since i actually got a credit card - and not one of the ones through the phone, either - they leave me alone.

but i always, always have huge piles of "campus mail" - all sort of useless fliers about things i'm not remotely interested in and reminders or things i hadn't forgotten in the first place. there's the deal with it now pile (which, invariably, doesn't get dealt with for two weeks), the deal with it later pile (which invariably gets left until the end of the term and then i just through it all out) and the trash pile (which, appropriately enough, gets trashed and is the only pile that gets dealt with in an appropriate time frame). i hate campus mail.

and why do they send ME the tuition bill? i don't pay it.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

I know what you mean about the homeowner mail... Do you know how tempting it is to cash those checks? I suppose that would be a terrible thing to do to my parents and brother, though. Heheh.

I love mail. In fact, it's a little ritual for me. Every day when I come home, the first thing I do is sit down for a minute and fan through the mail. I take out the things that I KNOW are important...those get put into a pile in the spare bedroom (which is soon going to be a nursery, so I suppose I'll have to come up with a new mail room...hmmm!) Then the things that look like they might be junk mail, I look through those immediately.

However, there is one kind of junk mail that I immediately toss. Somehow, some time ago, I requested life insurance info for my child that I miscarried in 1996 from Globe Life Insurance.

I *still* get crap from them. It used to be easy to toss, because their envelopes always looked the same. They've gotten smarter recently, though, and are doing things like, "The stickers you ordered are enclosed" (gets me every time, as I'm a sticker freak.) Oh yeah, I ordered those "yes, sign me and my dead child up for Globe Life insurance" stickers, I remember now! :P

Maybe I should be a professional Junk-Mail reader. I bet I could garner a lot of clients. Hey Beth, you're hiring help for everything else, why not pay me to read your mail every day? heheheh

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

I have a confession to make.

I am a junk mail fiend. I love it. I read all of it. I don't care what it's for, who it's from...Hell, if the other people in the house get junk mail, I'll read theirs, too.

I don't know why. I just love getting mail and I don't care what it is. Don't get me wrong. I love trees as much as the next person. But I want more mail!

Recently I've been trying to combat my mail obsession by joining lots of e-mail mailing lists, but so far, all that's happened is that I now have lots of junk e-mail to read, too. It's not cutting back on the need for paper mail.

Oh well.

Let the junk mail flow!

-Meghan of http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/confused

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

I tend to get lots of junk mail. I go through the pile every day (or two) and toss all the junk. Usually that is at least 2/3 of my mail.

Somehow, the credit card companies all think I need more credit cards. Yes, I am unemployed, I have no money, and I already have far too much credit card debt. Why do they want to give me more?

And I made the mistake of giving something to the Humane Society last year, so I'm getting the avalanche of begging letters. Tell you what, stop sending me photos of tortured and dead animals, and maybe we can talk.

The worst, to me, are the magazine renewals. Mostly the Ziff-Davis ones, but some of the others have started using envelopes that don't identify the company, marked "important- statement enclosed" or "FINAL NOTICE". I refuse to renew as soon as they send me one of those. I don't owe them anything.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

A magic incantation that hits +3 against phone solititations is "please put me on your 'do not call' list." No more Discover, MCI, AT&T, and a host of others. I'm not sure if it gets you off their lists _before_ they sell the list to others, but since we started using that phrase, our phone rings half as often.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

I hate those damned telemarketers and I don't feel a bit guilty about saying "I'm not interested!" and hanging up immediately.

My husband and I saw a documenary show recently about a woman who made $5000 off these people. Seems that if they call you a second time after you have requested that they don't, that they're subject to a $500 fine. Now I ask to be taken off their list.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

1) I had the same problem with the BofA statement looking like junk mail. Hard to say why, but it didn't look "real" at all.

2) I had an experience in 1996 similar to your ACLU problem. I gave $50 to the Dole campaign, and $50 to the Republican National Committee. For my $100 I got buried alive in junk mail!! I got dozens and dozens of pictures of Bob, Libby, and Newt. Some came priority mail. They easily burned up my $100 trying to get more from me, instead of spending it to send the Arkansas-AntiChrist back to her home, whereever that may be. Now I just give my political money to my Congressman, in return for which I get to see him once a year and he doesn't flood me with his picture.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1999

I hate politics and I surely would never donate any money to any politician, ever. But that's not why I wrote.

You see, the Dutch government is a bureaucratic mess most of the time, but a few years ago they introduced this really great concept: a small sticker which you can put on your mailbox, telling your mailman that you do not wish to receive any junk mail. It doesn't work when you're on some mailing list, of course, but since I got the sticker, I hardly ever receive any junk mail anymore. A blessing. As for the phonecalls - I've got a secret number. Which just leaves my ICQ address - someone has gotten hold of it, and ever since I've been receiving these phone sex mailings. Now I don't know about any of you other guys out there, but personally I'm not too thrilled about getting messages every single morning from non-existent floozies telling me how horny they are, and how desperately they want me to call them - intercontinental, mind you. Any suggestions, besides getting a new ICQ address?

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1999

We generally handle the junk mail as it comes in. I was, once, before the recycling got better out here and glossy paper could go in, just stacking it up. I'd read someone saying he had about 100 pounds of the stuff in a year, or was it a 10 foot cube, anyways, a lot. I never got that far, though, but got sick of it and pitched it.

It's catalogs I get. Occasionally, however, I like the stuff and order, so I'm stuck.

As for telemarketers, it's wonderful what the answering machine does. They generally hang up, knowing full well we won't call them back.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1999

....yes, but certainly not in the vast amounts that you do...on another note, since you brought up the necessity of getting a shredder, i thought i'd mention that i'm going through some of the hell of having someone falsely use your credit card information -- for the second time this year...

...oh it sucks....

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1999

The ACLU broke open the dam of junk mail coming to me. I was disappointed by the mail the ACLU did send me which was all "Your rights are being violated but we don't have time to explain. Please send more money!" with zero information. The ACLU sold my address to at least seven other organizations (I change my middle initial to keep track of them) so they seem to be doing good business with my address already. Just imagine if I gave the ACLU even MORE money. That would put my name on the Gold List and I would probably get twice as much junk mail as before.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1999

You're sure right about all the homeowner mail. Sheesh.

I handle the mail and just toss all of the junk into the recycling. It doesn't bother me as much as the phone calls. Pat used to answer the phone and tell them I wasn't home. They'd just call back the next day. Finally I trained him to do what I do: immediately tell them I'm not interested and to put us on the "do not call" list. That worked, and we get almost no phone calls any more, after a period last year when we'd get three or four in an evening.

I have no sympathy for the people working at such jobs.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1999

It is amazing how quickly pushy telemarketers change their attitude when you say "I'm not interested and do not call me again". I've had quite a few go from being almost belligerent to meak and helpful immediately.

And AT&T finally stopped waking me up 3 times a week.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1999