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Comment by slang800 | Hacker News Reader

As a matter of principle, I am not paying a $2 "processing fee" to stop people from sending garbage to my mailbox.

Also, the permanent credit card offer opt-out requires me to print and send a letter from each address I live at. This is clearly designed to be as annoying as possible so nobody does it.

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1.6 cents per month seems pretty reasonable to solve what would otherwise just consume some of your time. An ideal world, there wouldn't be a processing fee but we don't live in that world.

Aa far as the credit card opt out, you can also freeze your credit and I believe that has a similar impact since no one can make unauthorized inquiries.

You can mail the junk back to the sender at their own cost.

If you make it cost too much to send to you, they stop on their own.

It takes about 5-7 months

How do you mail it back to sender at their cost?

Do not open it, and write "return to sender".

This is untrue. For the cheapest classes of mail, (e.g., "bulk rate") it is not returned, it is discarded.

It is true.

I shred those bulk mailings, but I was referencing the many Junk but non-bulk class letters I receive. It makes no sense to write return to sender on a bulk-mailer.

While much Junk mail is sent via bulk rate, Junk in this context refers to the content not to the mailing class of bulk.

Some have a prepaid envelop for your response.

> As a matter of principle, I am not paying a $2 "processing fee" to stop people from sending garbage to my mailbox.

I feel like that must be relatively new. I swear I used that site and I'm pretty sure I didn't have to pay a fee.

I bet they added it to discourage people from going through with the process.

A $1 authorized charge would work for a little bit of "real person here" verification, but I'd imagine the $2 is to discourage auto-filling an entire town's worth of people via a script; all you'd need is, say, a voter registration list to get the necessary info of name and address.

They could confirm the address you are requesting with the billing address on the card.

This is what the '$1 authorized charge' is for when you submit the address change/mail forwarding request.

I get shit loads of junk mail at my second address, which is not the billing address for my credit cards. They have to have a way to deal with that too.

AVS chokes on apartment numbers pretty regularly.

I’ve done both and it was worth it. Highly recommended.

One can also consider a mail processor if you’re nomadic or on the road often; you give out that address, pay $10-$20/month for the service, and they dispose of the junk mail and scan in only paper mail of importance for review.

Edit: will return with mail processor recommendations when not mobile.

Any recommended country or US state specifically?

Have a couple remote operations this would be useful for

Not the OP, but I've been using St. Brendan's Isle[1] for about a year and it's been great. I've also heard good things about My RV Mail[2]. Both are in Florida, I think mostly because it's a popular state for full-time RVers to establish as their domicile -- no income tax, low vehicle licensing fees, etc. I looked at bigger name services like Anytime Mailbox and Earthclass Mail, but found a lot of complaints about reliability, hidden fees, etc. in the reviews. Many of these services contract with local businesses (like convenience stores and independent shipping shops) to actually receive your mail, so your experience could be great or terrible depending on the address you choose. St. Brendan's Isle and My RV Mail both handle all mail in-house.

[1] https://www.sbimailservice.com/ [2] https://myrvmail.com/

That is the one I recommend for personal mail and use, as you can establish domicile with them as you mention. Also, their address doesn’t throw any flags with brokerages and other financial services providers as a commercial mail processor.

Any that you recommend or know of?

I kinda love that they're offering PayPal Credit as a payment option. A six month loan for a $2 purchase?

How much of a credit boost does $0.33/month give you?

Under the hood, it's a credit card; you'll get a credit line much larger than the $2. How it impacts your credit depends quite a bit on how many other accounts you have, and for how long; a thin, short credit file will be more heavily impacted by a new account.

I paid my $2 processing fee two years ago, and I now seldom get any junk mail period.

Best $2 I have spent in my life.

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