Online Petition Battles Junk Mail

The U.S. Post Office, suffering from reduced mail volume, has started a new program aimed at encouraging businesses to send junk mail, or “direct mail.” The program is called “Every Door Direct Mail,” and for a greatly reduced price it lets businesses blast out mailings like coupons, fliers and menus to every single household within a specific Zip code or mailing route. Business owners don’t even have to address their ads. The program is the source of fliers packing mail boxes that are addressed to “Our Neighbor,” “Postal Customer” or Current Resident.” Your name gets added to junk mail lists whenever you unwittingly turn over your name and address to a merchant, for example when you buy a big-ticket item like a car or a house, order something from a catalog, donate to a charity, fill out a product registration form or sign up for a grocery store surveillance card (euphemistically called “loyalty cards.”). Any time you hand your name and address over to a merchant, you can expect to start getting more junk mail, and mailing lists are valuable. Companies that sell or rent mailing lists make a lot of money off them. But a nonprofit consumer advocacy group called Catalog Choice, that helps people stop getting junk mail, has started on online petition asking the U.S. Postmaster General to let people opt out of getting unaddressed advertising mail.  Catalog Choice doesn’t fault the USPS for its junk mail program, but says it should give people a choice to opt out of such mass-mailing programs.  Right now, under USPS’s new program consumers must contact each individual business if they would rather not receive their mail ads — a cumbersome burden to place on people. The USPS defends their new junk mailing program by saying it lets people “know what’s going on in their own neighborhood.”

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