Do you still remember me? Would you pick up if I called? Am I even in your new phone? Are you still subscribed? Does this thing even work? Do you still check? Do you still care? Do I still have things to say? Am I still living by the code? Is there a reason for my absence? Is there a reason for my return? If I came back just for a day, would you resent me when I left again? How can I remember? How could I forget? Can I ever make it up to you? Would I even dare to? Should I even want that? Where have I been? Where haven’t I been? What haven’t I been up to? Would you understand? Do I expect you to? Will you try? Has trying ever been enough?

I don’t get a lot of junk mail anymore.  I have several magazine subscriptions (those bastards sell your name and address faster then investors were selling stocks this week), and as a result I used to get a lot of junk mail.  At one point in time my address was the forwarding address for my parents mail, and with all the shit they used to buy out of catalogs I was getting the same amount as your average 80 year old. But not anymore.

Did I install a spam filter at the United States Postal Service? No, they don’t make such a thing.  But I did declare a War on Junk Mail. I didn’t start this war under false pretenses, and I also didn’t expect my bigger guns and bigger budget to expedite my victory. Oh no.  I used cunning and wit the likes of which you have never seen.  I did research.  I read the books.  I studied my enemy.  I learned their methods, and then I improved upon them to retaliate.  Then, I won. So today, I begin to share with you the stories of my steady success, in hopes that you can one day free your mailbox from the tyranny of shit.

Enemy #1 - Credit Card Applications

That’s right, Enemy #1 are those god forsaken credit card offers (CCO’s).  The photograph above is the before shot, this is what they look like hot of the press as they are left in your mailbox.  They have all different types of fancy writing on them, to make you feel special, and hand-picked, but they are all a crock of shit. As you have already experienced from the first four credit cards you signed up for, they are designed to suck the ever-living lifeblood out of your bank accounts.

‘But, 0.0% APR financing, and no payments until my second child is born, and I don’t plan on having a second child!’ you say?  Well condoms aren’t 100% effective, and if the financial institutions of the country have anything to say about it, you’ll be having that unplanned second child (they have their ways).  So how do you resist such great deals on giving away your money, and more importantly, reduce the flow of CCO’s showing up in your mailbox?  Send them back.

There are two methods to combating the influx of CCO’s into your home.  The first is the lazy method, and I can’t speak to it’s efficacy because I don’t like half-assing my wars.  Simply take a pen, cross-out your address and write “Return To Sender” and drop it back in your mailbox or at your nearest post office. The second is the motivated method, and brings me unrivaled satisfaction.

1. Carefully open the CCO, and remove the contents of the envelope.
2. Included in the contents will be an envelope (NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES).
3. Open this envelope, and place the CC application and any other flyers that were included into it.
4. Now, here’s the kicker, take the original envelope (that you opened carefully), and fold in such a way that it fits INTO the included envelope.
5. What you should have when you are done, is a tight little package ready to mail back that will look like this:

Credit Card Retaliation

This is a little nugget I picked up from the Taliban I like to call ‘using the same weapons that America sold them a few years ago, on America’.  I really recommend this second method, it’s a zero-tolerance solution since everything that they sent to you (including the envelope it came in) is returned to them, it prevents junk mail from filling up your garbage (which you then have to take out less often, or if you live in a place where you have to pay per bag, you save money in the long run), it helps support the USPS by giving them more business, and it also, after a while, cuts down on the amount of junk mail you get.

Why does this work?  Well, I can’t say for sure.  My sources on the inside tell me it costs them $0.42 to mail the CCO to you, and then it costs them another $0.42 to get it back.  They then have to pay for the machines (used to be people) that open them, only to find out that the applications are blank, that the flyers were returned, and that the original envelope is also included (probably jams their machines, so they have to pay the maintenance people to fix the jammed machines).  They then see your name and address on that envelope (or sometimes pre-printed on the application) and they remove your name from their mailing lists!  It may take a few tries, and it takes a while (8-12 weeks) for your name to be fully removed from the system, but after doing this for two years, I now only receive 1-3 CCO’s a year.  That’s right, 1-3 CCO’s a year. Read it and weep bitches.

Feel free to spice it up a little as well.  I like to save the magnets that they sometimes include (in the shape of a cute little money-vampire credit card), and then send magnets from competing financial institutions back.  Like a credit card magnet trading game, where I’m the only one that is having fun, and always the one that gets the better deal.  If you really wanna put your lead foot down, you can go and purchase thin strips of lead at the hardware store, which weigh a lot, and include them in the mail.  As long as the envelope that is marked “NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES” is not modified/manipulated/altered in any way, you are good to go.  The lead costs money though, my methods are free (although admittedly, probably less effective).

Stay tuned for Part 2, and feel free to share your junk mail combating methods.