Long Burn

Junk Mail

I just read an article in the New York Times about different methods people have for dealing with life's annoyances.

First there is a guy who saves the subscription cards that fall out of magazines and sends them back blank so the company has to pay the postage.

Next there is a guy who signed up on a no-junk-mail list, but still kept getting junk mail. He would write "Not at this address. Return to sender" on the letters, but the mail kept coming because the envelopes had "or current resident" on them, so the postman had to deliver it. So, he started stuffing the mail back into the business reply envelope and sending it back to the company, again so they would be forced to pay the postage. But he thought that this was not inflicting enough cost on the company, so he started cutting up magazines, heavy paper and small strips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply envelopes to increase the weight.

From the article, "You wouldn't believe how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh," said Mr. Williams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of arriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service, Gerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams's actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.

posted by Matt_J @ 12:00 PM