Stopping Junk Postal Mail

You can cut junk mail to a trickle if you're willing to take the time. First, start by telling the Direct Marketing Association to put you on the remove list. You can do it online at this URL: http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist . This will take care of about half of your junk mail, especially the stuff you seem to get completely at random. Unfortunately, it takes several months to kick in, and you have to re-list yourself every 5 years. (The DMA are a sneaky bunch that way.) This first step is only effective against companies who filter their own mailing lists against the DMA's removal list. However, a surprising number do, because it saves them money in printing and postage when they omit people who aren't interested.Next, write a letter to each of the following (assuming they apply to you), asking them to remove you from their mailing list, and instructing them not to share, sell, rent, or otherwise lend your name or address to any other company. The letters can be a single paragraph; include your account number, and make sure to sign at the bottom. You have to mail these, email or phone calls won't work:- Credit Card issuers- Your banks- Phone companies (landline and wireless)- Utility companies- Cable/satellite TV provider- Internet provider- Pretty much any recurring serviceMost of your credit card related junk mail is likely sent by credit card companies with whom you do not have a line of credit. When you write to them, simply tell them to stop sending credit offers; your letter to them can literally be as curt as the sentence "I am instructing you to stop sending credit card offers to my address." Credit card issuers are required by law to comply with these requests.If your ISP is a sister company of your phone or cable service, write to both of them. For example, Time Warner Cable and RoadRunner are separate entities as far as marketing preferences are concerned. The same is true if you have Verizon phone service and also Verizon DSL, and a Verizon Wireless phone - you're going to need to write to all three "branches.""Recurring service" covers all sorts of things. Car note, car insurance company, online games that charge a fee, services like Netflix or Blockbuster Online, magazine subscriptions, etc. Try to think of anyone you pay on a monthly or repeat basis; chances are, if they aren't sending their own stuff to you, they're selling your address to someone else who is. How extensive you are about this is entirely up to you; for example, is it really worth writing to the Lawn Care company, or to the guy who comes out and services your HVAC twice a year?After this process, wait a few months. The credit offers should stop first, and other junk mail will gradually slow down. You'll notice a much more defined pattern to your junk mail, it's primarily going to be the same marketers sending the same catalogs and the same ads over and over again. You'll also find that a lot of this junk is coming from companies you've done business with in the past, who are trying to get repeat sales.Write a letter to each of these companies requesting that they remove you from their mailing list and not to share, sell, rent, or otherwise lend your name and address. Again, you're probably going to be surprised how many companies will comply right away and never send another mailing (unless you do business with them again). Your request tells them flat out that sending you an ad is a total waste of their money.Now it's time to go after the persistent mailers who either ignored your requests altogether or don't use the DMA's remove list.Go to the Post Office and ask for several copies of Form 1500. Ignore the fact that the form itself mentions sexually explicit advertising; the Supreme Court ruled that it can be used for any type of unwanted advertising. Now, for your top junk mail offenders, open the junk mail and staple it to a completed Form 1500. Take the whole thing back to the Post Office and hand it in, they do the rest.Form 1500 should only be used as your last resort, for companies who won't quit mailing you otherwise. A completed Form 1500, attached to a sample of the unwanted mail, makes it a crime for that company to continue sending you advertisements. It's also a pain, and a bit of a burden on the USPS, so don't start your war on junk mail by filing a bunch of these forms.Six months or so from when you start, you should be seeing a significant reduction in the amount of junk postal mail you're getting. No method will eliminate all of it; in particular, locally-mailed bulk advertisements and political mailings have a tendency to keep coming. However, with any luck, you can cut out a good part of the hassle that comes with checking your mail.

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