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joshe

Another fun thing you can do is return all prepaid response envelopes empty, to increase the cost of the advertising.

Marketing mail for the USPS is $13.9 billion of their total revenue of $73.1 billion. (19% of total revenue).

The USPS could easily provide a form that let you opt out of all bulk marketing mail.

https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/junk-mail/

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I worked for a company that sent a lot of junk mail. They had stories of people putting the "prepaid response" on a brick or old shoes.

Let's get creative, folks.

won't that also waste energy shipping a brick? I'd say don't do that, just return an empty envelope which is light and won't increase fuel/energy consumption.

Unfortunately, the USPS now no longer is required to deliver that stuff. It's in their postal codes now.

https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/505.htm

> 1.3.8 Improper Use of Labels and Misuse of BRM Cards and Envelopes

> Improper use of BRM labels or misuse of BRM cards or envelopes should be handled as follows:

> When a BRM label is improperly used or a BRM card or envelope is misused as a label to return an unsealed item such as a brick, two-by-four, or similar item, the Postal Service may treat the item as waste to be disposed of at the discretion of the Post Office.

> When a BRM card or envelope is misused and affixed to a sealed item, the permit holder will be responsible for payment of the applicable Retail postage and per piece fee.

I think this is saying, "Attach it to a box with a brick in it." But neither do I think your local postal worker would be terribly amused.

Just send them their crap back with a "Please remove me from your list!" scrawled across the response. It does actually work, eventually...

I fold up the outer envelope and mail and stuff it into the inner one and send that. They can dispose of their own junk for me.

I don't understand why they allow affixing an envelope to another item, as that's clearly abuse... but since they spell it out so explicitly, I have a hard time reading it as anything else than "attach it to a box with a brick in it".

> Just send them their crap back

After my mom passed I had all her mail forwarded to my house. She donated to a couple of charities, but they all sell their mailing lists to each other so there was so.much.charity.beg.crap with the little trinkets. And a lot of political donation stuff. The charities were pretty all right, honestly. I told them she was deceased and some even offered condolences and took her off. The political stuff, if there was a prepaid envelope inside I would return it with "deceased, pls remove" written on whatever silly survey they enclosed. So they would have to pay a small amount each time I had to tell them to remove her. That took about 2.5 years, but I no longer get anything.

I used to be all about this, but now its just a waste of gas for the USPS.

At least in my area, I have noticed that my carrier has a stack of bulk mail that she grabs and sticks with each person's mail as she puts it in the mailbox. I imagine it would make her job significantly harder if she had to consult a list for each address. Most likely, it would require additional steps at the mail office.

This is called EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) and it's impossible to opt out of it. It's super annoying.

You used to be able to opt-out, but not anymore:

1) opt out with the DMA (note: there used to be an opt-out form at http://www.dmachoice.org/eddm but it no longer exists)

2) each local advertiser has to download the list for your area of opted-out addresses and print them on a facing slip before handing their bulk flyers over to the USPS

3) the USPS has to pass that on to the mail carrier

4) mail carrier has to check the list before putting the (unaddressed) flyers in each mailbox

So many points of failure that you just know it was designed so that the opt-out would not be honored. Then they stopped pretending entirely by removing the form to opt-out a few years ago.

I read a story about Brave's (the browser company) use of EDDM here on HN today:

https://brave.com/usps-mailers/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31622128

The way this is handled elsewhere is putting a "no ads" sticker on your mailbox. The mailman then skips those mailboxes when delivering unaddressed spam.

Wow that's... a really simple solution. Never thought to just drop the empty envelopes in the mail. Definitely going to start doing that.

Better yet, fill with glitter first.

I don't think encouraging people to engage in domestic terrorism is a good approach, although as a response to bulk spammers... maybe?

You have a very different definition of “terrorism” than the rest of us.

It was a joke, old sport

The delivery needs work, friend ;)

On HN, we generally prefer comments that aren't just jokes. I certainly like that about HN, I don't want HN to turn into Slashdot or into a typical subreddit. Because of HN's culture, sometimes a joke can be mistaken for a serious comment since we aren't expecting jokes.

HN is just as snarky and closed minded as a heavily modded subreddit, jokes or not.

I am part of "we" and I disagree. Clearly someone was confused at the post but given the upvotes, it was understood. The response, clarifying that it was a joke on my part, was poorly received. Perhaps the correct characterization is that the realization by some users that they didn't get the joke were subsequently more inclined to downvote due to not getting it, or that the meta post acknowledging it was a joke was off comment (but still relevant in the context of the aforementioned subthread) than those that got it, upvoted it and moved on.

If you haven't seen other jokes on HN then consider the possibility that maybe you are overly aggressive in filtering out the human element from this collections of comments, posts & links and are markedly worse off for doing so.

To be fair, enough glitter could definitely trigger a litigious person in the US.

Other than making a bit of a mess, glitter is harmless. I really don’t think that qualifies as terrorism. Though some days, the sheer volume of junk Mail makes me think a hive of rabid bees would be a better response.

> The USPS could easily provide a form that let you opt out of all bulk marketing mail.

They could charge more for it, and let it sort itself.

Here all we have to do is write "no junk mail please" on our mailbox, and the carrier simply doesn't deliver any.

For a while I would return the whole mailing in the prepaid envelope. I think it eventually worked.

If the post office is a necessary and important service, how does one propose the post office replace the shortfall from halting all this "junk" mail?

Adjust the nature of the service to balance costs and revenue.

https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/usps

Why empty?

Because the company has to pay for the return postage but they get no benefit from it. It wastes their time. Kinda like putting the phone down when a telemarketer calls, rather than hanging up.

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