Image: courtesy of shutterstock
I always hate junk mail. Not only it waste my precious time sort my mails through, it also increse the landfill or resource to recycle it.
I have always thinking about getting rid of it for good. Now staying at home becuse of covid-19 I have more time to tackle this headache. Right now every day I receive on average more than 10 junk mails.
There are tons of articles talking about how to do it, to my surprise. I will start with opting out via a few online services and see how that goes.
Here is what I did:
Opt out from the Credit Card Offers
I went to www.optoutprescreen.com , and did it online. This will opt me out for 5 years. To opt out for good, you have to print and mail the form, another hoop to jump.
After I opted out online, I received the following confirmation:
5 years Opt-Out Confirmation
Thank you!
The following is a confirmation of your 5 year Opt-Out request. Please
to print this confirmation for your records. Your request will be completed within 5 business days. Although your request becomes effective with Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion within five business days of your request, you may not see an immediate reduction in the amount of offers you receive. This is because your name may have already been provided to some companies that have not yet mailed their offers to you. You may continue to receive certain firm offers for several months.
While your name will be removed from the lists that Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion provide to businesses for the purpose of making you a firm offer of credit or insurance, you may continue to receive offers from sources that do not use Consumer Credit Reporting Companies to compile their lists.
Hopefully I should not receive all those credit card offers anymore after 5 business days. This will also reduce my chance of identity theft!
Opt out from national mailing lists
1. Register online with the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mail Preference Service to opt out from national mailing lists. However, there is no free service any more:
The cost for this service is $2. Please enter your credit card information below.
I did not do it for now, unless I still get a lot of junk mails.
2. catalogchoice.org
I registered an account but the confirmation email did not come even after 15 minutes (Come on, catalogchoice.org you need to hire better IT folks!)
I could not login either as it requires confirmation from my email:
You have to confirm your email address before continuing.
Not a professional response I am expecting from a web site.
I may try at a later time.
So I expect after today, I expect fewer or no credit card offers, but I may still have junk mails from other mailers.
Resource:
https://green.harvard.edu/tools-resources/how/4-tips-reducing-your-junk-mail