Day Four - The Scourge

I recieved four catalogs in the mail today, three yesterday. They are the bane of my existence. A scourge. A pox.

My mother-in-law, who lived in a nursing facility for quite a while, wasn't able to get out to shop, so she bought a lot of things through catalogs. She had no idea that ONE purchase would cause her pile of catalogs to multiply like rabbits. When you take the bait from one mail-order company, suddenly all the fishing lines go into the water.

Many mail-order companies make extra money by selling their customers’ names to other mail-order companies. Before you know it, you’re overrun.

At one point, my M-I-L was receiving almost 100 catalogs a week! I kid you not. She was absolutely overwhelmed. I found her crying in her room, surrounded by piles of junk mail. So we spent weeks calling every single company who sent her a catalog to have her name taken off the list. We urged her not to buy anything by mail anymore, but of course, she had no other choice. So a year later, she was overwhelmed again.

There are now clearinghouses for canceling catalogs.
http://www.catalogchoice.org/ is “a free service that lets you decline paper catalogs you no longer wish to receive.” A message on the site says:

“The Catalog Choice community is presently 899,632 persons strong, having already opted out of 11,693,682 catalogs.”

Wonderful!

A friend gave me this web address:

www.dmachoice.org
You can remove your name from promotional lists, including direct mail, catalogs, telemarketers and email lists through links on this one site, all for the bargain price of a buck.

Another great site is:
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm

They tell you how to get off a bunch of unwanted lists, as well.

So…

Tip for Day Four: Save a forest. Put a stop to all unwanted junk mail.