Americans - getting rid of your junk mail

Mayabird

It is quite likely that you get lots of junk mail, either addressed to you or some former occupant of your residence. Most likely, your response is to shrug, maybe roll your eyes, and toss it into the recycling bin, trash can, or burn pile. If you would like to remove one small source of trash from your life for a few years, this may be for you.

It is also disturbingly all too likely that you have an elderly relative who gets FROTHING SCREAMING MAD that SOMEONE sent them ADVERTISEMENTS in their MAIL and then they call up all those places they got mail from to TAKE THEIR [redacted] NAMES off their [redacted][redacted][that's not even a word, lady] MAILING LIST but are fuming so hard that they forget to actually give their name and address and after ranting hang up violently, leading to this happening again a week or month later. This is definitely for them whether they like it or not. As part of Operation Keep Me from Punching Old People Through the Phone, please have the latter mail a letter or postcard to:

Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 643
Carmel, NY 15012-0643

List the name (including variations, which may be incorrect) and complete address of the person to be removed, and tell them to register/activate the preference service. After about six months or so this should cut down on the national direct mailings by about 75% for another four and a half years.

No, you can't call or email. It has to be by mail because they want it to be as inconvenient as possible. The post office does have pre-stamped postcards for sale if you have to do this in bulk for an entire nursing home of your relatives or something. There is an online method to remove deceased people permanently which costs a dollar per name. Up to you if it's worth it or not.

This does not cover credit cards. They have their own separate thing and inside all the envelopes with their terrible offers is an option to have your name removed from offers by credit companies for five years. That can be phoned in but will require your Social Security number.

I don't know if this will be useful or helpful to anyone, but I thought I'd throw it out anyway because I'm really tired of getting yelled at. Thanks.

Brolo

Americans mail me your social security and credit card numbers and I promise that you will never get mail ever again.

Brolo

also you work for direct mail YOU HAVE BROUGHT THIS UPON YOURSELF

MrMonroe

your job is to get yelled at by old people?

Aphostile

We will dilute the regular junk mail with MORE junk mail until only a minuscule fraction of the original junk mail exists.

This will help us somehow.

Maileopathy.

BahamutZERO

I guess working for direct mail is better than being unemployed... but you aren't allowed to complain about people complaining to you.

Hunter

You should be taken out into the street and set on fire for what you do.

Brolo

Antimatter

Occupy Mayabird

Darmak

I played Minecraft with Mayabird and even though her job is terrible, she's alright in my book. :bz

Delzhand

Here you go, folks: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t

Worked like a charm for me, ymmv

Skylark

Canadian Opt-Out for addressed mail.

For unaddressed mail, instructions on Canada Post website.

I've found that simply putting a round, red sticker about the size of a quarter inside the mailbox where it's visible to carriers is an effective alternative to a note. Last two places I've lived in had the sticker already in the mailbox; I haven't had to put up with junk mail, addressed or unaddressed in almost a decade now.

Skull Man

sometimes people gotta do awful jobs just to live

neville

I printed a letter out to do just this!

Blake T

A no junk mail sign used to work in Australia for unaddressedail, now the companies have told the people who deliver it to specifically ignore it.

Do you know what I didn't get though? The IKEA catalogue. Like the only one I actually wanted!

stimtokolos

We have a little bronze plate that says "No Junk Mail", still get addressed stuff sometimes but it is pretty infrequent.

Magus`

I may have accidentally jumped the gun and marked this as a spam thread.

I feel bad now.

stimtokolos

Blake T wrote:

A no junk mail sign used to work in Australia for unaddressedail, now the companies have told the people who deliver it to specifically ignore it.

Do you know what I didn't get though? The IKEA catalogue. Like the only one I actually wanted!

Stills works here sucker!
Although I do sit in my front yard angrily watching the mailbox most of the day so that could be part of it.

-smash

stimtokolos wrote:

Blake T wrote:

A no junk mail sign used to work in Australia for unaddressedail, now the companies have told the people who deliver it to specifically ignore it.

Do you know what I didn't get though? The IKEA catalogue. Like the only one I actually wanted!

Stills works here sucker!
Although I do sit in my front yard angrily watching the mailbox most of the day so that could be part of it.

Yeah, that's probably less the sticker and more the corpses of your enemies, displayed on pikes

Mayabird

Oh no, actually I work at a hearing aid place, though we do (hire some other company) to send out direct mailings junk mail. Why? Because it works for some reason. Unlike, say, anyone under the age of 60, many elderly people apparently feel strangely compelled to read through every piece of crap that shows up in their mailbox and are unable to distinguish between obvious advertising and, well, anything else.

I'm not going to feel entirely bad about this because HOLY CRAP some of these people really needed hearing aids. When nothing under 80 decibels even registers to them it's bordering on a public hazard. Of course, you may wonder how a piece of junk mail finally compels them to do it when years of people yelling at them and them going "Huh? What? Say again? Speak up?" didn't. I don't know. I wish I did. There's probably something important about human psychology to be found in the discovery.

Mostly my job is mailing out hearing aid batteries to our patients and updating files but I also got dumped with getting yelled at for name list removals because it's tangentially related to updating files. Also I was the new kid and nobody else wants to do it.

Also, @Darmak thanks!

neville

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer tries to stop his mail.
That was amusing back then, but honestly there really ISN'T a reason to have most of it these days.
And those junk mail things are just physical spam. The fact that our postal service delivers that shit is obnoxious.
I don't want some random person sending me shit.
99.999% of the time, I DON'T WANT IT.

Then they bitch and want a bail out.
Yeah, fuck that