Junk mail junkies, get over it
I thought, erroneously, that when I changed my mailing address, I would get a brief respite from junk mail and catalogs. No such luck. Within a week or so, they were back.
Next to the bank of mailboxes is a cardboard box sporting a sign: Please recycle magazines here.
Trouble is, the box is always full. And before I can deposit my unwanteds, I feel compelled to take just a peek at the discards. What a waste of time. I’m buying almost nothing, anyway. Then I hear about a service called 41 Pounds that will stop from 80 to 95 percent of unwanted junk mail and catalogs for a single fee of $41.
Before I have a chance to try it, I go to my weekly volunteer shift at the Museum of the Rockies, where I find two boxes of their unwanted mail on my desk. And would I mind calling the publishers of same to stop the flow to the desks of people no longer working there, or those, like paleontologist Jack Horner, who are too busy to deal with such nonsense.
The task seems simple enough. I begin with my friendliest voice, the one I use when trying to reach some elusive interviewee. Four hours later, my tone has gone peevish, my temper short: And why exactly would it take six months to have a name removed from your mailing list? To which the answer often is: We buy mailing lists from other organizations and have no way of verifying the addresses or names. So sorry.
The boxes contain everything from catalogs for office supplies, display hardware for stores and trade shows, kitschy trinkets not even remotely suitable for the museum gift shop to bids for season subscriptions to the local symphony and solicitations for assorted fundraisers. Strangely, the latter were the hardest to stop.
Four hours of talking to machines later, trapped in an endless loop of voicemail hell, my patience is gone. These robotic voices seem designed less to facilitate than to discourage, but I persist. Well, I’m talking on their nickel, as we used to say when phone calls cost a mere five cents, and I’m resigned to sitting there until five, so what the heck.
What I learn is that the farther from the source-that is, from manufacturer to mailer-the more difficult it is to opt out. And the more obnoxious the voice mail process. Catalogs mailed directly from companies that produce and publish, such as catalogs for PC and Mac peripherals, are the easiest. Also, if there is no customer number stamped on the back page of the catalog, it means your address was sold on a mailing list and your chances of stopping it are slim.
I also notice how few of the unwanted missives are printed on recycled paper; though several are stamped recyclable. Well, duh. That’s not the same as being printed on post-consumer recycled paper.
At a time when First Class postal rates are set to go up by another penny, bulk rates remain so low that catalog publishers say a 2 percent return-that is inquiries-on any mailing is considered profitable. Yes, but those of us who are getting blitzed by these mailings are subsidizing this waste every time we buy a stamp. Where’s the justice in that? We pay for the aggravation, sorting and hauling to the recycle bins, and indirectly for the clear-cutting of forests, manufacture of paper, shipping to printers, etc. Something else, magazines printed on slick paper get a lower postal rate than newsletters printed on recycled paper, some with soy-based ink. Go figure. Does waste rule? Is conservation futile?
I refuse to be a party to this. When I get home, I Google 41 Pounds. For a $41 fee, more than one third of which is donated to your favorite charity, the nonprofit covers an entire household for five years. In addition to stopping junk mail and catalogs, it also shreds credit card offers. In the process, it claims to keep 100 million trees in forests cooling the planet and to protect 28 billion gallons of clean water. Junk mail, it says, produces more CO2 than 2.8 million cars. Wow!
Obviously, it can’t accomplish this in one fell swoop. The company first sends a packet of pre-addressed, pre-stamped postcards that you sign and mail. It also contacts catalog companies selected during the sign-up process. Well, it will take some of my time, but probably not as much as the four hours I spent doing the same thing for the museum.
Since I don’t shop the Internet, I call 866.417.4141 and am connected immediately to a live body. Tim Pfannes said people who don’t use credit cards online can sign up over the phone and send a check for the fee. The company, started in 2006, has 10,000 subscribers and has received fewer than 10 complaints, mostly about some bulk mailers they can’t reach. “There’s some on the list that we just can’t figure out,” Pfannes said. “Mostly companies that prey on the elderly and have already been reported to the Better Business Bureau.”
Okay, I’m sold. I’m sending my own unwanted missive to the Direct Marketing Association. The $41 fee will come from ads I’ll never see, hence products I’ll never buy.