March 23, 2009

Hate Junk Mail? So Do I!

I found this article, Turning The Tables On Junk Mailers. It is really quite great, so I am sharing it with all of you. Enjoy!


If you have one credit card, you probably get tons of offers for more in the mail. I sure do. Who needs all that junk? It's a waste of paper and time sorting through it all.

Green living guru Danny Seo has a wicked little idea for disposing of those unwanted missives.

Open up the offer and take out the postage-paid envelope. Take all the junk the credit card company sent you, and stuff it into that return-to-sender envelope. Pop it back into the mail. The company paid that postage, so it's paying to receive its own garbage back!

Maybe if enough people did this, credit card companies would think twice about spamming us with endless offers for cards we don't need.

Of course, you can also try to get off the lists in the first place.
Four of the major consumer credit reporting companies who are part of the offer-generating process have a free opt-out service. Register with that site, and in a few months, you'll see a decrease in your credit-card junk mail.

I signed up early this year, and I do receive fewer offers. But they're not completely eliminated by any means. So I'll be returning some letters to sender from now on.

9 comments:

Jillene said...

I LOVE this idea and matter of fact I have actually done it!!

Andhari said...

Nice idea, give me a step by step on how to do that. I'll love it!

Lee said...

I just told all of my friends about that. That's just genius.

Jenny Melzer said...

I think I might actually try that. I hate all that clutter!

Anonymous said...

That is a cool idea!

Paula said...

Here's a free service I've signed up for that has gotten rid of quite a bit of the catalogs I used to receive:
http://www.catalogchoice.org/

Great tip Sheri!

Nickie. said...

Like that idea alot!

Anonymous said...

That's a hilarious idea - I'm gonna try it with the very next junk mail offer I receive :)

Memphis said...

I did something similiar to a certain political party that wouldn't stop bombing me with requests for money during last year's election, except that instead of giving them back their own crap I wrote them a nice long letter explaining exactly why, in my opinion, they could go to hell. I sent a copy to them every single time I receive a postage-paid envelope from them. I'm not sure if they got the message or not, but it sure felt good.