I just moved to the US a few months ago and I have already received more letters here than in my whole life back home. Every other day I get a letter from some company I have never had anything to do with offering me some conditional approval for a product I don’t want. How do you bear it? It is making me so furious!

48 comments

  2. I throw it out and carry on with my day. Why is such a trivial thing bothering you so much?

  3. Your address is tagged and then as you go on your name will be associated with that address based on subscriptions and products you purchase. There are still a lot of shitty business models centered around sending you spam mail, but they’re largely dying out. I don’t think about it much. Just slide it in the bin.

  4. It’s the Welcome Wagon. Actually you should request to have your name removed so all that paper is not wasted

  5. Do you live in a community with shared mailboxes or an apartment complex by chance?

  7. I bear it by putting it in the recycling bin. It’s honestly never occurred to me to get angry over it, and it’s not like it’s all that much mail. You should’ve seen how much mail and how many multi page catalogues you’d get in the pre-internet days.

    A 5 second Google search got me https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail#:~:text=To%20opt%20out%20permanently%3A%20Go,you've%20started%20the%20process. This sounds like a more productive use of your time than being upset.

    If mail is sent to you by name, you can go ahead and request to be removed from a company’s mailing lists. Results may vary.

  8. I don’t really care about junk mail. What really grinds my gears is previous residents not updating their address when they move.

  9. I’m the 5th owner of my house so I get all sorts of junk mail. It’s easy to just throw it out.

    If you’re feeling extra spiteful you should use the prepaid envelopes to send the different companies’ special offers to each other.

  12. Honestly most of the mail I recieve gets put in the trash unless it’s something I was expecting. Very rarely will there be anything note worthy in the mail.

  14. Actually talked the son of a person that is in this business.

    They were obviously doing well but I asked him how that’s possible in this day and age but he said the numbers still work.

    There is more business being generated from the junk mail than the cost to send it even though it seems like no one reads it.

    I guess they’re out there. Or it’s a money laundering scheme.

  15. I’ve never gotten junk mail outside of political campaigns. how tf do y’all get so much trash in your mailbox?

  17. It makes me so mad! You can put in all the complaints you want and it will not stop! The worst are the newspapers like good luck tracking down who has subscribed your address to those

  19. I always get a bunch of mail after moving, so I think there are companies that go through public records to find people who might be new to an area.

  20. I have no idea. I get tons of mail for the dead former owners of my house. It’s incredibly wasteful to produce and ship all this trash to my house, just for me to throw it away. It makes me crazy, and I think it should be illegal or at least very very easy to cancel.

  21. Direct mail is actually a cheap and effective marketing tactic for older people. Unfortunately.

  23. Because Tyler Durden said it best, “We work jobs we hate so we can buy shitnwe don’t need.”

    So they advertise that stupid shit in every possible way. Your mailbox is just another hole to fill.

  24. Just sort it straight into the trash. Don’t even open the obvious ads, just throw it away.

  25. Same reason no one did fuckall of shit about robo calls. American corporations ~~bribe~~ lobby congress to the point that they actually start believing people want to be solicited that way.

  26. At various times the Mail was privately transported by Rail and Air, and they were subsidized by number of items sent through mail, so the rail and Airlines were giving a perverse incentive to create junk mail to boost the amount of money they are subsidized by.

  27. Ahh, the joys of junk mail. It all goes into my circular file. Must work, though. Relatively cheap way to advertise. Even if you only get 2% of people to respond, that’s more customers than you’ve had before. Before email, it was the easiest way to solicit business.

  28. how else do post office workers get paid if not for advertisements from corporations

  30. Information selling is very prevalent here in the States.

    It’s often said that if a service is free, you are the product.

  32. It’s a minor annoyance, sure, but how hard is it to drop it in the recycle bin?

  33. Omg I hate mail! Once a week I Open my mailbox and take 2 pounds of junk mail out and throw it in the trash.

  34. I still occasionally get mail for the owner who lived in my place over 30 years ago. He’s dead and his son is in a home. Just stop it!

  35. My mother in law died six years ago. We’ve moved three times since then, one of those moves was across the country.

    My MIL is still getting offers from TruGreen and Geico. I have to intercept the damn mail every time so my wife doesn’t get sad.

  38. My parents have been divorced 15 years, I haven’t seen my mom since 2012. I moved to a new state a year ago, since then I have received dozens of solicitations directed for her. I have a sister with a different last name that I haven’t lived with in years, I get stuff for her as well. Not only that, but sometimes I receive solicitations with my first name correct, but the last name is that of my sister. I never had this issue until I moved to a state none of them have ever been in.

  40. Just stuff the return envelopes with all the junk mail. They have to pay to take it back.

  43. The postal system is a cheap advertising system, and they have no desire to change that.

    The spam on phones is more annoying, really. Phone call spam outnumbers real calls 4 to 1 or so for me.

  44. It’s the bane of my existence. I always have a stack of mail waiting to be looked through that I eventually just throw away.

  45. Your name and address is registered into a marketing list. And there’s a way to get off it. What you do is call 866-5-OPTOUT, tell them your address and while you won’t be 100% free of junk mail, it’ll be significantly reduced for 5 years. Some offers have their own numbers to call, so you have to find it in the fine print inside the letter they send you.

    Here’s more info on that, plus a few other ways to help keep your life (reasonably) free of unsolicited marketing. [https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/prescreened-credit-and-insurance-offers](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/prescreened-credit-and-insurance-offers)

  46. The fact that’s it’s perfectly legal to sell peoples information and/or super easy to get. The positive is I get coupons for restaurants around me that are actually good. Plus they’re mostly credit card offers. There’s a number you can actually call to get your name off those shitty lists. Last time I saw it it was in tiny print on the very last page of a credit offer

  48. The answer is because people make money that way, so they keep doing it despite how wasteful it is.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like