Getting Rid of Snail Mail

Step 1: Getting rid of credit card offers- for at least 5 years that is.  

If you go to this site: www.optoutprescreen.com you can opt out of getting pre-screened credit card offers.  Since there are plenty of sites online to check out if and when you want a credit card or new credit card this seems like a no brainer.  There was an option to opt out of life but it required printing things out and mailing them in and frankly, maybe in 5 years I will want the offers again!  I'll let you know in a month or so how this worked out for me. Oh, and make sure you read the fine print- it did not require me to put in my SSN or my phone number despite the misleading red text next to the fill in fields. 

Step 2: Getting rid of pretty much everything else:
Start at this website: www.dmachoice.org.  This site provides you the tools needed to rid yourself of unwanted snail mail.  While they have a section for getting rid of credit card offers it just directs you to the site mentioned above.   Here is an excerpt from the site describing what they do.

DMAchoice™ is an online tool developed by the Direct Marketing Association to help you manage your mail. This site is part of a larger program designed to respond to consumers' concerns over the amount of mail they receive, and it is the evolution of the DMA's Mail Preference Service created in 1971.For the purposes of this site, direct mail is divided into four categories: Credit Offers, Catalogs, Magazine Offers and Other Mail Offers. You can request to start or stop receiving mail from individual companies within each category—or from an entire category at once.

If you go to the catalog page or magazine page you can go to the bottom and click a button to remove you from all lists.  There is a disclaimer about whether you've bought from these places before- but I'm not going to worry about that till I see if this changes my mail intake at all.  It may be helpful to have a list of the catalogs/magazine offers that you receive that you don't want any longer, because you can look them up individually to find out what you have to do to be removed permanently.


The same option listed above is available for "other mail offers" which includes things like charities and more companies.  If you've donated to a charity and receive mailings from them it says you will have to contact them directly to be removed. 


Step 3.  Getting rid of RedPlum coupon mailers

The amount of these that I get is ridiculous, and most of the products that they have coupons for I do not use.  Also you can go to www.redplum.com to get the coupons and that way you can just print what you need.  Here's a direct link to the form you need to fill out to be rid of these unwanted mailers: http://www.valassis.com/1024/Contact/consumersupport.aspx.



Almost all of these solutions say they will take at least a month to take effect.  So I'll collect the rest of my mail for January and then compare it to what I collect in February to see what if any change I see.  I will also continue to look for other places to unsubscribe from!

How do you cope with junk mail?