Cranky Customer

If I get catalogues in the mail, I send them back "not known at this address" and back they go to the mailer. Why should I fill my garbage bin with their trash?

There's only one problem with refusing junk mail: it doesn't go back to the sender, which means the post office has to deal with its disposal. A far better thing to do is to fax the page of the catalog that shows your address -- using their toll-free number, with your fax set on "fine" -- asking them to remove you from their mailing list. Yeah, that saves them money (if they stop mailing you their catalogs), but more importantly it saves you aggravation and saves a tree!

I take the unsolicited credit card applications I receive, tear out any barcodes or identifying information, then send it all back to them in their own business reply envelope. BRM is pretty expensive, so they pay for sending me an application.

Sometimes I can't tell the difference between their marketing materials and other household waste, so it's possible some other... stuff gets put in those envelopes also. ;-)

Another trick for catalogs and mailers... if they have a prepaid return envelope send them your address block with "remove me from your mailing list and place me on your do-not-contact list" written on it. Since they pay for the return postage they get the idea quickly.

"Irene" was dead wrong. The National Do Not Call Registry defines a prior business relationship as within the last 18 months, not 10 years. Not only that but even with a prior business relationship, once you requested removal from their calling lists and they called you again, they violated the law.

I used to supervise the Telemarketing department for my company and these bad ones really tick me off!

I don't know off hand if there's a time limit on when you can file a complaint but I'd look into it if I were you. You can check on it at www.donotcall.gov.

I have a Vonage line as a second phone line. It costs me about $15 a month. That is the number I always give whenever I buy anything online or from a catalog. It doesn't ring in my house, and any messages left are automatically sent to me via email. If a company needs to get in touch with me for a legitimate reason, they can. If they want to abuse their "prior business relationship" and call around the clock with telemarketing pitches, whatever - I usually don't even know they called. It's the perfect way to keep these companies from using this loophole in the law.

The four Yahoo ads were all for Hello Direct. I thought that was funny. I always read the ads in your postings, they're often ALMOST as funny as what you're saying, or quoting.

The Telemarketing lobby and others forced Congress to put two major loopholes in the act which created the national "do not call list". For example, I do my banking at a small regional bank, which was recently acquired by Chase Manhattan. Now, thanks to the "prior relationship" loophole, the entire "Chase family of banking & financial-services" feels free to call me at will.

About "send it all back to them in their own business reply envelope" -- that doesn't work.

First, it doesn't go to the people who produce the junk mail. It goes to some poor underpaid serf at a mailing fulfillment center, probably several states away. (We have a huge one just west in Young America, MN -- has a couple of dozen zip codes all to itself.) Those workers have nothing to do with maintaining the address lists, and generally are instructed to just discard such envelopes. (They couldn't take you off the list anyway, since you tore off all the identifying parts.)

Second, they don't even have to pay for that mail. They only have to pay for BRM envelopes that contain 'mailable material' (which is why the old 'paste the BRM envelope to a brick' doesn't work). Contains "other household waste & some other... stuff"? -- obviously nonmailable material. They just take such BRM envelopes back to the Post Office and request their money back.

But the Post Office has already spent money delivering those envelopes, which it then has to eat. Or rather, charge it off to all the other Postal customers by occasionally raising the cost of a postage stamp.

So you're just hurting the rest of us Postal customers, and the executives who send the junk mail will never know you did this.

"It takes months to find a customer, seconds to lose one." When will these folks catch on to the fact that when they P.O. a "prior business relationship" they've lost that customer's good will -- and may have lost their business forever?

Of course, all my numbers are on the do-not-call list, but occasionally I have to take the "Ann Landers" approach: I politely tell the caller (OK, I interrupt them in mid-sentence if necessary) that "This number does not accept this type of call; please take us off your call list." And then I hang up, even if they start to talk again. In about five years, only one has ever called back, but not again after I threatened a harrassment lawsuit.