Junk Mail

[Beloit Fencer of Old]

While I certainly don't belong in the "Inq Class" of curmudgeons, I do have my "grumpy old man" side. Right now, it is junk mail which is drawing my ire.

Yes, I have been known to take unsolicited credit card mailers which include business reply mail envelopes, tear up everything, including the original envelope it came in, but excluding the business reply envelope, stuff the shreddings INTO the reply envelope, then drop it in a mailbox for the retards at the credit card company. My goodness! I didn't apply for your credit card LAST WEEK or the WEEK BEFORE, or the WEEK BEFORE THAT when you sent the junk mail to me, so what makes you think I'm going to apply THIS WEEK????!!!!!!

I have also been known to let the idiot who throws the "free newspaper," in its blue plastic bag, onto my lawn (which is littering!), that they are NEVER to litter on my property again. Then, when they threw one onto my lawn the next week, I have been known to pick it up, and throw it at their Ford Escort station wagon as they slowed down to litter on my neighbor's lawn.

As of January 1, 2009, however, my town will be requiring us to purchase special bags to dispose of waste in our town's dump. The bags will be $1.50 per 13 gallon bag, or $3.00 per 33 gallon bag, I believe. And yes, we recycle! We don't currently do paper, however, due to lack of dry space...we are currently limited to aluminum, tin, plastic and glass.

So, what I am wondering, is whether we can put a notice on our mailbox that we are not currently accepting junk mail, "free newspapers," marketing postcards, and other non-desireable mail due to the town's recent changes in waste disposal requirements. Does anyone here know whether the lettercarrier would comply? Thoughts?

[KidLazy]

Check this place out. Maybe they have something you can use.

Do Not Mail

[magic_moose]

The letter carrier won't comply. He is obligated by law and economic interest to deliver all your mail.

My wife is an obsessive shredder of anything with our address on it. In winter, I give her a break by feeding all the junk into the wood stove. So the best I can offer you is to heat your house with junk mail.

Perhaps a bigger question here is why is your government forcing you to fund something by purchasing overpriced bags? And will they find that dumping on vacant lots increases substantially as a result of this?

[Philistine]

Most likely, no.

The carrier/post office is not going to take the responsibility to screen your mail to determine what is and is not acceptable.

Here's a couple of links to sites describing steps you can take that should tangibly reduce the amount of junk mail you get.

http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm

http://www.smartmoney.com/deal-of-th...story=20070206

Good luck!

--Philistine

[Neinteen]

Perhaps a bigger question here is why is your government forcing you to fund something by purchasing overpriced bags? And will they find that dumping on vacant lots increases substantially as a result of this?

yeah wtf. Buying garbage bags from the town at 100x their cost? That blows.

[Inquartata]

Yes, I have been known to take unsolicited credit card mailers which include business reply mail envelopes, tear up everything, including the original envelope it came in, but excluding the business reply envelope, stuff the shreddings INTO the reply envelope, then drop it in a mailbox for the retards at the credit card company.

I just mail them, empty. A business sends me a postage-paid envelope at its peril.

I will also take all the unaddressed "marriage mail" I get and drop it back into the nearest mailbox, rather than in my waste basket. If the Post Office insists on inconveniencing me by giving me trash, I can but return the favor.

Now if only I could figure out a way to punish the local politicians for the plagues of cardboard campaign circulars which infest my mailbox daily...

[Neinteen]

I'm going to spam you to hell.

[ThatReallyHurt]

You should take a look at this:

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/cred...lication.shtml

This guy did an experiment - he ripped up a credit card application, taped it back together, and gave a different address (his Dad's) as his address, just to see if the credit card company would accept it.

[Pescados666]

I only keep the junk mail that's addressed to Hugh G. Rection.

[Beloit Fencer of Old]

I just mail them, empty. A business sends me a postage-paid envelope at its peril.

I will also take all the unaddressed "marriage mail" I get and drop it back into the nearest mailbox, rather than in my waste basket. If the Post Office insists on inconveniencing me by giving me trash, I can but return the favor.

Now if only I could figure out a way to punish the local politicians for the plagues of cardboard campaign circulars which infest my mailbox daily...

I knew I love you for a reason. Now...why empty? Why not include something? Obviously, white powder is out!

Also, I LOVE the idea of dropping unaddressed mail in the mailbox! Brilliant! I'm going to start doing that! Why do you call it "marriage mail," by the way?

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


Maybe 20 years ago, the Swedish state sent out a form that it was mandatory to fill out. The stated reason was that they wanted to have a lot of base-line stats for all sorts of public planning. The questions were quite nosey, and the whole thing took a long time (several hours) to fill out. It had generated a fair amount of bad publicity, but the state people told us in newspaper articles that it was for the best of everyone, and that the state expected everyone to fill out the whole form. Those who did not were almost traitors, if one was to believe them.

Well, the form came to me. I disliked the whole thing, but did not feel like going to court for not filling it in. Also, I knew that they already knew a lot of the answers, so if I would have responded by simply answering incorrectly, they would have had a good chance of catching me.

What to do? Well, I did fill out the form truthfully and completely, in order to have my *ss covered. Then I went to a newspaper shop, looked though the stuff hidden in the back room, and bought the most tasteless stuff I could find. I took it home, and cut out a page from it. It was a picture page depicting a Bukakke scene. If you do not know what that means, do not do a search unless you are alone - it is a type of p*rn. I put a sticker on the cut-out page, with my comment that "This is what I think of you that work for this nosy project" I put that page, with its sticker, into the return envelope together with the form, and sent it off.

A few weeks later, I was awakened one Saturday morning. It was a bitter-sounding woman. She presented herself as a person employed by the state, in the project doing the survey. She asked if I knew that someone had tampered with my form and put in objectionable material into the envelope. I told her that I had did so myself, and that I stood by my statements on the sticker.

Then her gasket blew.
She started screaming at me over the phone, and told me that I was just as bad as a rapist while she was a feminist. After some more incoherent blathering, she slammed the phone on me. Never heard from her, or that survey, again.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[magic_moose]

Now...why empty?

Actually, a few years ago, I stuffed several annoying pieces of junk mail back into their Postpaid donation envelopes along with a as much other other junk mail as I could and sent them back. It must have worked.

I haven't heard from either of them since.

[magic_moose]

Now if only I could figure out a way to punish the local politicians for the plagues of cardboard campaign circulars which infest my mailbox daily...

I would say you could "just show them" by not voting for them, but somehow that never seems to work

[Inquartata]

I knew I love you for a reason.

"Awww...Mongo straight.

Now...why empty? Why not include something?

Just to point out the utter inutility of the money they spent. And also, I'm too lazy to do much more than that...

Why do you call it "marriage mail," by the way?

Tradition...my mother always called it that. Her reason was that you are "married" to it, "til death do you part".

[occasionalfencer]

Tradition...my mother always called it that. Her reason was that you are "married" to it, "til death do you part".

Perhaps death will separate you from the junk mailers, but it doesn't stop them from mailing. We still get mail for my parents in law, who died 6 years ago, and never lived at our address. When we get junk phone calls for them I tell them in a tremulous voice how much it hurts to be asked for the dear departed. Usually they leave me alone after that, but the mail keeps coming. I hate it even more than our own junk mail.

[magic_moose]

Really creative responses to junk mail

http://proquo.com/resources/top_10_c..._to_junk_mail/

[TwoPassions]

Heh, I understand completely. In college, my housemates and I used to gather around the table every Wednesday when the Capital One credit card applications came. We stuffed the prepaid envelopes with anything and everything we could find. We shredded the application, ads, newspapers, etc. and crammed it in and taped it closed. And we sent them. While it did nothing to stop them from coming, it did give us a little satisfaction...

[D'Art]

What I really want to know is - who and where are the ones who actually reply to them??? I mean, there must be loads of the idiots out there, otherwise it wouldn't make economic sense for the companies to send them

[Inquartata]

Perhaps death will separate you from the junk mailers, but it doesn't stop them from mailing. We still get mail for my parents in law, who died 6 years ago, and never lived at our address.

I'm talking about the unaddressed mail---advertising circulars for pizza places and carpet cleaning services, grocery ads, things made out to "resident" or "our neighbor" and so on---that get stuffed into everyone's mailbox.