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How do I stop receiving garbage bags of coupons and advertisements that I did not request, in my mailbox every single day?
by alexbanks 7y ago
How do I stop receiving garbage bags of coupons and advertisements that I did not request, in my mailbox every single day?
- codegeek 7y agoYou mean Physical mailbox at your house/apartment ? Good luck with that. I am willing to pay $5/Month to USPS if they stop sending paper spam to my mailbox but that's how they supposedly stay afloat today since they don't have enough funding.
- colejohnson66 7y agoGet your Congress critters to support funding the USPS. They get a lot of money from those ads.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoOr better, get them to abolish USPS. 99% of the things you get in the mail should be handled by email. The other 1% of critical things are frankly handled better, faster and more reliably by private carriers.. For better or worse it's almost 2020, not 1820. Let's start acting like it.
- void445be54d48a 7y agoUPS and FedEx charge too much, and I do regular media shipping, so No, do not abolish them. If I could direct all of my tax money that goes to the US military into the USPS I would do that. Give them more money.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoThe fact that you personally use a heavily subsidized, underpriced service is not really an argument for keeping it on a national scale. "I personally use and like a service" is a different statement than "it's in our national interest to continue gifting that service $10b per year in subsidies and benefits".
- Gracana 7y agoIs the difference that one is your opinion, and the other isn't?
- bobbydroptables 7y agoOne is a useless anecdote that doesn't really tell us anything about anything except one random person's mailing proclivities. The other is a policy position that apparently a lot of people want to discuss.
- Loughla 7y agoSo yes, the difference is that one is a thing you agree with, and one is a thing you do not agree with.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoNope. I agree that he uses a heavily subsidized service and wants to keep it.
- void445be54d48a 7y ago#1 assuming I am a he, you're already off to a terrible start. #2 seemingly believing that I am the only person who uses this service #3 the point is that it's not a useless service, and real people use and need it. turn on your brain.
- colejohnson66 7y agoSo because email is better, we should abandon the USPS? That's a ridiculous argument. Email accounts practically at the whim of big corporations. You know, the ones who ban people from their entire Google account because they posted emojis in a chat?[0] Yeah, that'll be good. The private sector may be more efficient than the government, but that's because of bureaucracy imposed by the politicians themselves. Tell me, how long does it take UPS or FedEx to ship a package across the US? At least 5 business days for the cheapest. USPS gets it there in 3. Here's some more facts you may not know (that show why the USPS is good): * The USPS, unlike UPS and FedEx, have a legal mandate to attempt to deliver every letter and parcel if it's in the US. * Your mail sent through USPS is protected from searches without a warrant by law. You can't say the same about UPS and FedEx. * I can send a small letter through USPS for $.55. How much does a private courier charge? [0]: https://twitter.com/markiplier/status/1193015864364126208 https://twitter.com/markiplier/status/1193015864364126208
- tdhoot 7y ago> * The USPS, unlike UPS and FedEx, have a legal mandate to attempt to deliver every letter and parcel if it's in the US. Fedex and UPS are common carriers and also cannot refuse a package without good grounds. USPS can also refuse a package on good grounds, for example if you try to mail prohibited substances.
- colejohnson66 7y agoI meant, attempt as in finding the address. UPS and FedEx can just return a parcel because it’s too hard to reach.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoUSPS regularly fails to deliver important mail to me. Like it straight up doesn't show up. Never accounted for or mentioned. Almost all of these important mailings would be handled faster, safer, more reliably and more eco friendly online.
- bdamm 7y agoMy physical mailbox is the only *mail I have that isn't overrun. I ignore spims, spams, scams 50% based on just the fact that if the Social Security Administration, IRS, or Sheriff wanted to contact me, I know they would send a letter.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoMy mailbox is 95% spam. If you really need to get in touch with me, you need to use email.
- Loughla 7y agoMy e-mail inbox is 95% spam. If it's really important, it's a text message or phone call. This is the problem with using personal anecdotes. They're not applicable to the wider world.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoExactly. All of the people using bad anecdotes to "prove" their points. Lets talk about actual facts.
- perl4ever 7y agoA physical mailbox is a valuable alternative to email because of higher friction, even though that also has drawbacks.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoExactly. Let's make the mailbox actually useful again by removing the monopoly on it. Then banning the USPS from delivering spam would be a good next step.
- colejohnson66 7y agoWhy do you keep pointing out the “monopoly” on mailboxes? Yes, only the USPS can legally put your mail in it, but you’re missing the point: a private corporation should not run something as important as mail. Yes, private couriers are a thing, but the USPS is essential. Even today, not everyone has an email address. And those that do, they’re at the whims of the corporation. In my original comment, I mentioned google banning people’s entire accounts because they did what the streamer wanted. Would you like your email account to be inaccessible when you decide to protest that corporation?
- blackearl 7y agoFedEx and UPS are complete shit, at least in my 10+ years of ordering packages. Email isn't formal and too easy to fake.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoWhat do you mean formal. It's exceedingly easy to fake snail mail. What can you fake in email that you can't fake in snail mail?
- blackearl 7y agoYou can't serve someone via email.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoExactly the kind of thing I'm complaining about. We need to update laws for the fact that we now live in 2020 and not 1820. I understand that for most healthy, housed, able-bodied, privileged people, mail is a decent way to get in touch with people. For the rest of us email/web is safer, faster, more secure, less burdensome, easier to verify, better for the environment, easier to store, etc.
- colejohnson66 7y agoThat’s not what you sounded like in your original post. In that, you say to abolish the USPS, not that we should update our laws because email is a thing now.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoI'm not sure what your point is here. As I said in my first post, it's 2020 almost. Let's start acting like it. It has been a long long time since snail mail was the most reliable form of communication.
- nwallin 7y agoPrivatizing or abolishing the USPS would be almost impossible. It's a constitutional requirement that the federal government runs the USPS.
- smt88 7y agoThere are many, many things that law requires be delivered by mail. You'd have to change hundreds (thousands?) of state and federal laws before you could get rid of a semi-public mailing service.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jacobkg 7y agoYou can try opting out using the DMA (Direct Mail Association) website https://dmachoice.thedma.org/ https://dmachoice.thedma.org/
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoIt works surprisingly well. A few companies like Micro Center still sends out advertisements but the vast majority of my junk mail stopped after joining the do not mail list. Works much better than the do not call list.
- 300bps 7y agoCosts $2 to sign up to that site. At first I balked but then I realized somebody would probably enter every single person’s name and address in the country if they didn’t have some kind of cost associated with it. Still stinks to pay someone not to harass you. But I guess that’s been common throughout history.
- perl4ever 7y agoIt used to be free, so your logical justification for the charge is obviously spurious.
- acomjean 7y agoI did this years ago and it helped a lot. Most direct mailers respect the list with the exception of a few credit card companies, and insurance associated with band accounts. Some Charities do not respect the list and send me all manner of things. (Gloves was the most egregious from a charity I haven't given too.)
- jacobkg 7y agoYou can opt out of credit card offers here: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t
- vorpalhex 7y agoI did this and it was worth it. I still get a few pieces of mail spam (AT&T is literally the worst, and I have called them repeatedly) but it's dramatically better. Entirely nonsense that there's costs and whatnot associated with it. I am sure it's a PII goldmine for some script kiddie who gets lucky.
- naravara 7y agoMost of them should have a phone number somewhere on there that you have to call and ask to be taken off their list. There are also DMAchoice and CatalogChoice to take you off, but I'm never quite sure if it's working because I still get plenty. There is also the fun prank one guy did where he would mail back a bunch of pennies to anyone who send him an unsolicited pre-paid envelope. The postage is calculated by weight, so it's just a nice little middle finger.
- mrtweetyhack 7y agoIt's costlier for them if you just throw it in the trash
- noxToken 7y agoAbout 8 years ago, I wondered the same thing. I looked at the footer of the first or last page of those to find a company name or website. Opting out was very simple for all of them. Most websites asked for an address only. Some asked for a little more information, but to my surprise, it worked. I haven't received that ream of coupons in years, and in the off-chance that something new appears (usually something credit related), I've been able to opt-out just fine.
- saagarjha 7y agoHow many places did you have to contact?
- noxToken 7y agoI've done it twice (since moving residences). I received paper spam almost daily at the first place. I contacted around 15 different companies to get it all sorted. The second place was only 5 or so.
- Nextgrid 7y agoWouldn't that be counter-productive, by showing them "yes this address is active and someone's reading your spam" as well as potentially allowing them to correlate your mailing address with online identifiers like IP address, browser fingerprint or advertising cookies?
- kndjckt 7y agoOur household has been trailing PaperKarma https://www.paperkarma.com/ https://www.paperkarma.com/ for a month. It thinks we have unsubscribed from a substantial percentage of mailers. The volume of mail we get next month will be a good indicator of whether it actually works..
- paperkarma 7y agoHi, JT from PaperKarma here. It takes about 6-12 weeks (1.5-3 months) for mail to stop once you submit an opt-out request. This is due to in progress campaigns and the fact mailers print several waves of a campaign upfront. Rest assured you are no longer on the lists the next time they go to print!
- sebasmurphy 7y agoThe real question you should ask is, how did all of the spam mail companies know my name and address in the first place.
- bdamm 7y agoThat's not hard, there are many ways to get your name and address ranging from data breaches to public tax records. So what do you want to do about it? Make reselling an address illegal? Half the economy would collapse out of inability to function; your doctor couldn't pay a service to send out their bill, for example. That's a US example but there are equivalents in other countries.
- 0x00000000 7y agoHow about make it so voter registration, vehicle registration, and property purchases are not public records? There is no legitimate reason why everyone on the planet needs to have open access to all of that information AND be free to use it for commercial purposes
- alexbanks 7y agoNot really. Most of it is "Our Neighbor" followed by my address.
- nikanj 7y agoAt least that never wakes me at 6am