Part of this blog is about how to live and survive here, and hopefully I can even provide the “born and raised” U.S. reader the occasional nugget that might enhance their living experience. One of the annoyances when you live here is that you realize the level of junk mail is tremendously higher than what I experienced in Europe before. About a year ago, there wasn’t a day when we did not get about 10 pieces of mail from unwanted senders. Once my wife was in the database, Victoria’s Secret sent us a catalog almost every day. According to some sources on the web, they mail out over a million catalogs per day.
While we shredded (to prevent identity theft) and recycled all this junk, there had to be a better way. Thankfully, soon afterwards a friend send us a link to greendimes.org. We immediately signed up for the premium package ($20 and they plant some trees as well) to reduce the junk. Now, I want to stress that they do have a basic package for free. There are also other options, such as catalogchoice.org. You could simply do most of these items yourself, such us getting your name on the “Do not mail list” of the direct marketing association (DMA).
In any case, ease of use for us was compelling with greendimes, and after a year, I can only state that we are really happy with the results. Their premium offering includes the following:
- You enter all the catalogs you don’t want anymore and they contact the sender directly and have your name taken off the list
- They send you ready to send postcard to be send to the database mailers that you simply sign and put into the mail to stop the “John Doe or current resident at … mailings”
- They put you on the Do Not Mail list of the DMA
4 Comments
I’m Dan, Editor of the GreenDimes (and Tonic) blogs – thanks for the shoutout on GreenDimes and I am delighted that you have had such good results! If you or any of your readers has questions about junk mail reduction and greening up the mailbox, please let me know!
Dan, no worries, we are happy that the junk mail has stopped. As I said, we were also very diligent in calling mailers and demanding to be taken of the list for those that were not in the GreenDimes list yet.
I happen to be one of the owners of MyJunkTree and as a new company I search the web to see if we are getting any visibility out there and I post n relevant Blogs.
We launched the company because we were tired of all the junk mail we were receiving and we personally did not want to bounce all over the web to contact all the different companies to stop it all. First and foremost we wanted to let people choose what they wanted to let come to their home knowing that some people really do like some of the coupons and catalogs. So our clients choose what they want stopped.
We also had to provide a service that is different than the other services out there, so here is what we offer:
1. We have a database of over 1300 catalogs that you can choose to stop.
2. We have over a 4000 charities/Non-Profits that you can stop solicitations from.
3. Stop the delivery of the national phone directories.
4. Stop the delivery of the weekly coupons.
5. Stop the general credit card offers as well as the ones from your own major bank.
6. Stop the miscellaneous junk mail from the data brokers.
7. You can register on the National Do Not Call Registry from the website.
8. You can order your no strings attached free annual credit report right from the website.
9. We plant trees with every new membership.
And, yes we are a paid service and yes you can do everything that we do for free, if you want to do all the research and spend the time contacting the companies yourself it can easily be done. We have just done all of the legwork for our clients and feel there is value in the service we provide. So check out MyJunkTree and make difference in your mailbox.
Glad the junk mail reduction buisiness is picking up steam. There is still enough junk mail to be reduced.