February 26, 2009 • 19 mins
Almost no one likes junk mail. It's seen as wasteful, unproductive and -- potentially -- harmful. Listen in as Josh and Chuck take a closer look at the nature and effects of junk mail in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and I'm sorry I was
going to do the thing. And I'm Chuff Bryant and
this is stuff you should know that was totally off
(00:23):
the cup that I think we should say. I think
it's been chuck. You ever been to Austin, Texas? Yeah?
I love Austin. I've heard nothing but good things. Keep
Austin weird and all. I've never been very but I
do know that if you go to Austin, Texas right now,
and you go to MLK Boulevard near the corner of
Alexander Avenue, you're gonna find a little gallery and it
(00:45):
is called the Flatbed Press Art Gallery. Interesting. And if
you go into there, like I said, right now, you're
going to find a piece of art in art installation.
It's called free paper. Have you heard of this? Yes?
Because you told me, Well, I'll tell everybody else. The
uh There's a woman named a Net Lawrence and she's
(01:05):
a Texas artist, right and basically what she did was.
She saved UM a year's worth of junk mail and
it came to total two sixty five pounds by the way,
just junk mail. And she tore it into two inch
strips and then basically installed it. UM put it together
in stacks by month, and then UM put it on shelves.
(01:26):
So there's twelve little separate it's almost like a cross
section of junk mail. And the way she did it,
I wouldn't have thought to do it this way, but
it really gets the point across with minimal space. It's
quite beautiful until you think about you know, it's junk mail.
So I and as I understand, she's not the only
junk male artist that's going on right now, surprising, there's
(01:47):
a bunch. And I have another one here and her
name is Barbara Hashimoto, an American artist and she works
with junk male. She does provocative like art installations, interactive
type of thing. She's a provocateur. And what she's done
and this is generally like most junk male artists are
probably making a political statement and an environmental statement, and
(02:10):
that's what she's doing. And she is in Chicago and
she set aside the junk mail from her business for
a year, so it was quite a bit more, obviously
than a person would get, and she ended up with
three thousand cubic feet of Then she shredded it, actually
with a paper shredder. She had one called junk mail
with grand piano. And what she would do is she
(02:32):
got this piano player with a grand piano and put
him in a in a in a room facing a
street with you know, glass that people could see and obviously,
and he would start playing this symphony some you know,
not symphony, but some you know, nice piano music. Sound
like it's such a lunkhead there. I'm a musician too.
And so he's playing the piano and she starts dumping this, uh,
the shredded junk mail on him and on the piano
(02:53):
as he's doing it. And basically it's a process. And
at the end of it, this guy can't even be
heard anymore. He's completely cut or the pianos completely covered,
and you hear just these little muffled, hammered sounds of
the piano string and it's the point across that, Yeah,
that's pretty cool. Okay, So for the rest of us
who have neither the time nor the inclination to play
with junk mail, right and make statements with junk mail.
(03:16):
I should say, um, you know, obviously it's it's annoying.
I shouldn't even say that, it's just so blatantly obvious.
But it's also kind of harmful. Junk male is harmful
extremely Um. Number One, you can very easily become the
victim of identity fraud just from preapproved credit card applications. UM.
I think there's uh something like four hundred thousand cases
(03:41):
of identity theft every year, um that are attributed just
to pre approved credit cards. Interesting, that's as sig Kirshner's
by the way, that's his figure. He's a CONSUMERU. That's good. Yeah,
So um, that's that's a problem right there. And well,
you know, people, my wife is a master shredder. She
(04:01):
is on top of our household as far as the
mail and the bills, and she shreds everything like that.
She shreds things that I mean like stupid, you don't
need to shred my sports illustrated re up thing, and
she will. And coincidentally, we've never had our identity soul.
And so people that just toss that, people that just
toss that into the trash. It's ruthly not very smart.
(04:23):
No it's not. I usually burn mine. That's good, just
had a spite. Well, I don't have a shredder. I
don't want to just toss it in the trance either,
so you heat your home with it, or sometimes this
is kind of weird, but sometimes I will um take
the most sensitive parts of it and tear it off
and then eat it. Really yeah, yeah, no going through
(04:45):
that trash pal Well, that actually what she said before
about burning it leads me to an interesting stat that
I've just flown in from the home office. Two hundred
and fifty thousand homes can actually be heated from a
single day's worth of junk male in the United States
by burning it. That would be awful. Not a single household, obviously,
it's all the junk mail in the country, right So
(05:05):
but I'm saying I don't think we should be setting
this on fire right well now, it's just to kind
of drive the point on the four million tons a
year in the United States alone. And a final stat, Josh,
if you're interested, forty four and this is a really
sad one of all junk mail goes unopened and is
put into a landfill eventually. Yes, and Chuck, I have
another stat for you. This is our stat Heavy Junk
(05:28):
Mail Podcast special. Um, did you know that with the
amount of paper that's thrown out by Americans every year? Um,
you're junk mail and just paper. Well, junk mail is
part of it. That's include junk mail. This is just paper.
But it's gonna leave me back around at a second,
so so bear with me. Um, you could build a
twelve ft tall wall from New York to Los Angeles. Really,
(05:50):
that's annually. They should build that wall. Think about how
how incredibly thin paper is. You can make it twelve
feet tall and all the way from New York to
l A How thick? Yeah, okay, it would be much
of a wall. No, no, no, I mean like you're
laying a piece of paper flat on the ground and
stacking them up until so it would be what eight
(06:11):
and a half inches? Why, I thought you were taping
it all together so it would be would be stupid. Well,
this is the Clean Air Counsel. I would like to
think that they wouldn't toy with me like that. But
you know, as always, as Mark Twain said, there are
three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. You
should always take statistics with a grain of salt. But
how about this. Clearly there's a ton of junk mail
(06:32):
that's wasted every year. Can we bring on that or
a million tons? Yes, that is a statistic. Two Okay, So, um,
you've got credit card fraud, you've got waste. But not
just um waste. It's also input. You have to consider
the input. It takes a tremendous amount of water actually
to make paper, um, which is kind of odd because
(06:54):
papers dry, But to separate the fibers and make this
in a pulp, they add tons of water. There's actually
a process where they first they washed wood off right
at all any impurities. They send it into a steamer
for four hours. Then they chop it up and turns
(07:15):
into a pulp, and then they add water to the
aratio of about two hundred to one two hundred parts
water to one part pulp. Yeah, and then they dry
it out. Right. Were you laughing in my amazement? No,
it's like I was laughing at the this this astronomical
use of water to make paper, right, so um, and
then they dry it out. Um. And when they're drying
(07:38):
it out, they're actually using um steam heated rollers. So
there's more water right there. And then there's another part
to the the end before they do the final dry
where they add more water and then dry it out
to make it slick and glossy. Yes, so that's a
lot of water. Of course, a lot of trees are
are are used specifically for paper about a hundred million
(08:00):
a year, is that right, that's what the University of
Oregon says. If I'm not mistaken, that's a lot of trees.
It is a lot of trees, and it's kind of
sad to think about it, but there's many are grown
specifically to become paper. Right. Yes, I must say that
paper mills do reuse water just for cost effectiveness. Um,
(08:22):
so they are reusing water. But still there's twenty eight
billion gallons of water used annually to produce paper. Okay,
that's input, So you know that's if they're reusing it,
they're still using a lot of water. And I hate
to use the I don't mean to be inclusive and
exclusive and in group and out group like the paper
industry is just the evil you know, tobacco industries, which
(08:45):
God knows they're evil, but um, you're holding paper right now,
I am holy paper. I use paper, but I recycle
all paper like you. You know, we have that single
stream recycling thing where all the waste baskets at the
desks are basically recycling. I never throw anything away in there,
the only paper. Yeah, I practice what I preach. Friend,
I'm not calling you to death. But all right, that's fine.
(09:06):
I can settle down because my fight or flight response
is just pumping. Okay, so chuck. It's a waste, right,
It's annoying, it's potentially threatening as far as finances go.
With identity threat, what can an individual do to fight
the good fight against direct mail? Well, which, by the way,
(09:27):
I can give you one more figure. This is a figure,
not a status, so it's much more reliable. First of all,
did you even know that there's such a thing as
um direct mail pharmaceuticals? No, get pills through the mail.
Now you can get pills through the mail, yes, but
this is like advertising direct mail advertising for pharmaceuticals. I
(09:48):
have never gotten one. I don't know. It's probably because
I don't have a primary physician. But the direct male
pharmaceutical market alone in two thousand and eight racked up
ten points x billion in sales based specifically on direct mail.
Their return on investment for one dollar was ten dollars
twenty seven cents. Every dollar they spent on direct mail
(10:10):
advertising rate them in ten dollars and twenty seven cents
in two eight. That's just one sector. Well, we're in
the wrong business totally. I've always said we need to
start making our own pharmaceutics. Never looking is just not paying.
We're not making ten billion, I'll tell you that. And no,
we're not or anything actually, So what can be done.
I'm gonna leave the second part to you about the
(10:31):
official websites and things. I thought you left the first
part to me. I'm gonna go with the first part.
One thing you can do is you can actually send
it back. Uh. This is not about stopping it from
coming to your home, but instead of being angry and
just burning it or whatever you do, shooting it with
your eating it with your gun, eating it and processing
it through your own miserable body, some ink is better
(10:52):
than others. I can tell you. I bet you can
actually send it back. Um. Junk mail is usually first
class or third class, which is called bulk rate. And uh,
if you if your envelope is stamped, address correction requested
or return postage guaranteed. You can return it unopened to
the sender by writing refused return to center on the envelope.
(11:14):
Stick it back in your mailbox, and flip up your
little flag. Oh flag, I didn't think you're just a flag. Yes,
flip up your flag. But you can only do this
on bulk mail with that special notification on it. Um.
If you have a solicitation solicitation sorry that has postage
paid reply envelope, then just put a note saying that
(11:34):
you want to be removed from the mailing list and
include that mailing label and or write refused on it
and you might actually get taken off that list. So
that's one way to do it. Well, thanks to our
friend the Internet, it's gotten a lot easier to stop
getting junk mail ryes um. There are actual sites that
are dedicated to you not getting junk mail. And remember
(11:56):
they do not call registry right. Well, there's been several
attempts to create a you know, do not mail registry
basically UM, and it hasn't taken off. It may in
the future, who knows, but as it as it stands
for now, it's up to the individual to take care
of their own junk mail stream right um, And like
(12:16):
I said, the Internet is a great tool for that.
They're like, uh, opt out prescreen dot com is one
place you can go. And basically the reason we have
junk males because your name and address in personal information
is actually valuable. It's valuable on its own in a
very small amount fractions and fractions of assent as a
(12:36):
single individual. Well when you put it together with thousands
and tens and thousands and hundreds of thousands of other
people millions, millions, I'll go with millions, um, then all
of a sudden that list as a whole becomes valuable.
So people who have your information or millions of people's
information can put these things together and make some extra
scratch on the side by selling it to direct marketers.
(12:59):
And one group that aggregates these this information are credit
reporting bureaus. They are allowed by law to give out
certain personal information about you, like name, address, preferences to
some stuff that you've provided, to sell it for their
own behalf. You get absolutely nothing for it and they
make money off of it. Yeah, and what you get
in the end, it's junk mail. So the opt out
prescreen dot com website basically UH makes it so the
(13:23):
the four major credit reporting bureaus can't sell your stuff
any longer. Um. And it'll take a little wild to
get off the lists, but you will eventually hopefully be purged.
Um and that last for five years or I think
you can also do a lifetime block right on selling.
Why wouldn't you just do that would be great? I
don't know, it doesn't make any sense. In five years,
(13:45):
I might want to get this junk mail, so I'll
just go with the five. Well, you know, actually there
are there's this this group called the Direct Market Association
UH and they may be um, the bane of most
people's existence because they're actually a trade association of direct
marketers right and UM. Luckily, they have a nice little
(14:07):
website that you can access to get out, to opt out.
It's called d m A consumers dot org and they
have basically the same thing that you'll find an opt
out pre screen. They have fifty member companies and it's
not just for profit business. Nonprofits, political action groups are
members of of the d m A. And when you
(14:29):
get taken off the d m AS list, you get
taken off of all these people's mailing lists. So that's
another thing you can do. Um, there's steps you can take,
or actually there's steps that you cannot take that can
keep you off warranty cards. Warranty cards, Like think about this.
When I researched this article, I hadn't thought about it
at the time, and I thought back to, you know,
(14:51):
when I filled out in a warranty card, because I
must admit I am one of the suckers who actually
has filled out a warranty card and melded in. Um,
why the Queens and Art company who's blender I just purchased,
would care whether my UM household would be most interested
in hunting and fishing magazines or skydiving magazines, Like it
(15:13):
didn't dawn any at the time, Like that's a little odd.
And I think I even remember checking a box like, well,
you know, we're not really into hunting and fishing, but
we're more into skydiving these days, so check, you know,
And and then all of a sudden, like I got
skydiving magazine. Come ons, you know there's a master card
is sending me like a pre approved card with a
(15:33):
skydiver d like we know you'll like this, sucker, and uh,
it's it's it's bad. So never fell out a warranty
card because you know we talked about extended warranties before
you have your receipt. Warranty, that's your warranty. Because if
they say you're you have a warranty, and you have
the receipt, then you have the warranty. You don't need
to fill out a card to ensure that you have
the warranty. Exactly. It's just a big scam. It is
(15:56):
a huge scam. You know those bits that sometimes you'll hear,
like the morning radio shows do where they'll call like
the head of the telemarketing company, you know, midnight and
wake him up and say, how do you like it?
You do you know your company and all that stuff.
We should find out the person. There's one person, I'm
sure where all the junk mail originates. Find out where
this dude lives, and let's just go and like wallpaper
(16:18):
his house with grocery store flyers. His name is Rusty. Yeah,
he would. Rusty would wake up and try to look
out his window and all he would see is like
ground beef dollar. He'd be like a piano player with
a bunch of choke mail dumped on him right, and
here is screams sorry, Rusty exactly you've probably saw on yourself, Rusty,
Um the chuck. We're not quite done here. Okay, there's
(16:41):
other there's actually businesses that you can subscribe to that
will go to the trouble of getting you off list.
I know our producer recommended one. Yeah. Um it's Green Dimes,
I believe um. And basically our producer Jerry said that
she there's a free service, um where you can just
(17:02):
kind of I guess, do the basic job. But there's
their twenty dollar annual membership fee. Actually, these people actively work.
If they can't send something in on your behalf, like
it needs your signature, maybe your Social Security number, which
you will be asked for once in a while. This
is not you being lured into an even bigger scam, um,
(17:23):
but they need it for verification. I'm not certain that
they need it, but they require it for verification. So
if Green Dimes can't just do it as a third
party telling somebody else to back off, they send you
all the stuff that you like, these form letters, but
you sign mailing back to them and Green Dime mails
it for you, and then they monitor and by the way,
I don't own any stock in Green Dimes or anything.
(17:44):
I'm just kind of taken by this company. They may
not be publicly traded anyway. They well, my dad didn't
found it, if that's what you mean. Um. They they
monitor all these lists um mailing lists every every month
on a monthly basis to make sure your names stays
off and if not, they go after the people. But
just we're twenty bucks a year if you ask, and
(18:05):
they plant five trees when you join. Really, well, there
you have it. Four bucks a tree. Yeah, that's awesome.
Sure it dip it. Well, it depends on the tree. Yeah,
that's true. I'm gonna sign up for that. I didn't
know about that. And and remember never fell out a
warranty card. Don't You Never respond to a publisher's clearing
house sweep steaks one thing? What does it say on
(18:26):
that you may have already won, But a lot of
times it's name in your name. It'll just say yeah.
If you respond to that, you will end up on
what's called a sucker list. And and and that's actually
what it's called in the industry, because you have shown
that you were gullible and your junk mail will increase
tremendously and your name pops up on the sucker list,
and that's when all these companies go, oh, we got one,
(18:47):
we got one, let's get in there. Yeah, that's the
that's the lead of leads right there. And that's my
impression of a junk mail dude. Yeah, that was good. Thanks,
So there you go. UM. I also want to recommend
an article on MSNBC by uh Sig Kersheimer, whose name
I mispronounced at the beginning of this podcast, Sorry, Mr Kerheimer. UM.
(19:08):
It's called Hey, junk mail, follow these steps and Mr
Kersheimer has going to the trouble of basically giving every name, address,
telephone number, and website you would need to completely rid
your life a junk mail. So it's definitely worth reading.
And if you want to read our take on it,
you can type can I Stop getting junk Mail in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com for
(19:33):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and I'm sorry I was
going to do the thing. And I'm Chuff Bryant and
this is stuff you should know that was totally off
(00:23):
the cup that I think we should say. I think
it's been chuck. You ever been to Austin, Texas? Yeah?
I love Austin. I've heard nothing but good things. Keep
Austin weird and all. I've never been very but I
do know that if you go to Austin, Texas right now,
and you go to MLK Boulevard near the corner of
Alexander Avenue, you're gonna find a little gallery and it
(00:45):
is called the Flatbed Press Art Gallery. Interesting. And if
you go into there, like I said, right now, you're
going to find a piece of art in art installation.
It's called free paper. Have you heard of this? Yes?
Because you told me, Well, I'll tell everybody else. The
uh There's a woman named a Net Lawrence and she's
(01:05):
a Texas artist, right and basically what she did was.
She saved UM a year's worth of junk mail and
it came to total two sixty five pounds by the way,
just junk mail. And she tore it into two inch
strips and then basically installed it. UM put it together
in stacks by month, and then UM put it on shelves.
(01:26):
So there's twelve little separate it's almost like a cross
section of junk mail. And the way she did it,
I wouldn't have thought to do it this way, but
it really gets the point across with minimal space. It's
quite beautiful until you think about you know, it's junk mail.
So I and as I understand, she's not the only
junk male artist that's going on right now, surprising, there's
(01:47):
a bunch. And I have another one here and her
name is Barbara Hashimoto, an American artist and she works
with junk male. She does provocative like art installations, interactive
type of thing. She's a provocateur. And what she's done
and this is generally like most junk male artists are
probably making a political statement and an environmental statement, and
(02:10):
that's what she's doing. And she is in Chicago and
she set aside the junk mail from her business for
a year, so it was quite a bit more, obviously
than a person would get, and she ended up with
three thousand cubic feet of Then she shredded it, actually
with a paper shredder. She had one called junk mail
with grand piano. And what she would do is she
(02:32):
got this piano player with a grand piano and put
him in a in a in a room facing a
street with you know, glass that people could see and obviously,
and he would start playing this symphony some you know,
not symphony, but some you know, nice piano music. Sound
like it's such a lunkhead there. I'm a musician too.
And so he's playing the piano and she starts dumping this, uh,
the shredded junk mail on him and on the piano
(02:53):
as he's doing it. And basically it's a process. And
at the end of it, this guy can't even be
heard anymore. He's completely cut or the pianos completely covered,
and you hear just these little muffled, hammered sounds of
the piano string and it's the point across that, Yeah,
that's pretty cool. Okay, So for the rest of us
who have neither the time nor the inclination to play
with junk mail, right and make statements with junk mail.
(03:16):
I should say, um, you know, obviously it's it's annoying.
I shouldn't even say that, it's just so blatantly obvious.
But it's also kind of harmful. Junk male is harmful
extremely Um. Number One, you can very easily become the
victim of identity fraud just from preapproved credit card applications. UM.
I think there's uh something like four hundred thousand cases
(03:41):
of identity theft every year, um that are attributed just
to pre approved credit cards. Interesting, that's as sig Kirshner's
by the way, that's his figure. He's a CONSUMERU. That's good. Yeah,
So um, that's that's a problem right there. And well,
you know, people, my wife is a master shredder. She
(04:01):
is on top of our household as far as the
mail and the bills, and she shreds everything like that.
She shreds things that I mean like stupid, you don't
need to shred my sports illustrated re up thing, and
she will. And coincidentally, we've never had our identity soul.
And so people that just toss that, people that just
toss that into the trash. It's ruthly not very smart.
(04:23):
No it's not. I usually burn mine. That's good, just
had a spite. Well, I don't have a shredder. I
don't want to just toss it in the trance either,
so you heat your home with it, or sometimes this
is kind of weird, but sometimes I will um take
the most sensitive parts of it and tear it off
and then eat it. Really yeah, yeah, no going through
(04:45):
that trash pal Well, that actually what she said before
about burning it leads me to an interesting stat that
I've just flown in from the home office. Two hundred
and fifty thousand homes can actually be heated from a
single day's worth of junk male in the United States
by burning it. That would be awful. Not a single household, obviously,
it's all the junk mail in the country, right So
(05:05):
but I'm saying I don't think we should be setting
this on fire right well now, it's just to kind
of drive the point on the four million tons a
year in the United States alone. And a final stat, Josh,
if you're interested, forty four and this is a really
sad one of all junk mail goes unopened and is
put into a landfill eventually. Yes, and Chuck, I have
another stat for you. This is our stat Heavy Junk
(05:28):
Mail Podcast special. Um, did you know that with the
amount of paper that's thrown out by Americans every year? Um,
you're junk mail and just paper. Well, junk mail is
part of it. That's include junk mail. This is just paper.
But it's gonna leave me back around at a second,
so so bear with me. Um, you could build a
twelve ft tall wall from New York to Los Angeles. Really,
(05:50):
that's annually. They should build that wall. Think about how
how incredibly thin paper is. You can make it twelve
feet tall and all the way from New York to
l A How thick? Yeah, okay, it would be much
of a wall. No, no, no, I mean like you're
laying a piece of paper flat on the ground and
stacking them up until so it would be what eight
(06:11):
and a half inches? Why, I thought you were taping
it all together so it would be would be stupid. Well,
this is the Clean Air Counsel. I would like to
think that they wouldn't toy with me like that. But
you know, as always, as Mark Twain said, there are
three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. You
should always take statistics with a grain of salt. But
how about this. Clearly there's a ton of junk mail
(06:32):
that's wasted every year. Can we bring on that or
a million tons? Yes, that is a statistic. Two Okay, So, um,
you've got credit card fraud, you've got waste. But not
just um waste. It's also input. You have to consider
the input. It takes a tremendous amount of water actually
to make paper, um, which is kind of odd because
(06:54):
papers dry, But to separate the fibers and make this
in a pulp, they add tons of water. There's actually
a process where they first they washed wood off right
at all any impurities. They send it into a steamer
for four hours. Then they chop it up and turns
(07:15):
into a pulp, and then they add water to the
aratio of about two hundred to one two hundred parts
water to one part pulp. Yeah, and then they dry
it out. Right. Were you laughing in my amazement? No,
it's like I was laughing at the this this astronomical
use of water to make paper, right, so um, and
then they dry it out. Um. And when they're drying
(07:38):
it out, they're actually using um steam heated rollers. So
there's more water right there. And then there's another part
to the the end before they do the final dry
where they add more water and then dry it out
to make it slick and glossy. Yes, so that's a
lot of water. Of course, a lot of trees are
are are used specifically for paper about a hundred million
(08:00):
a year, is that right, that's what the University of
Oregon says. If I'm not mistaken, that's a lot of trees.
It is a lot of trees, and it's kind of
sad to think about it, but there's many are grown
specifically to become paper. Right. Yes, I must say that
paper mills do reuse water just for cost effectiveness. Um,
(08:22):
so they are reusing water. But still there's twenty eight
billion gallons of water used annually to produce paper. Okay,
that's input, So you know that's if they're reusing it,
they're still using a lot of water. And I hate
to use the I don't mean to be inclusive and
exclusive and in group and out group like the paper
industry is just the evil you know, tobacco industries, which
(08:45):
God knows they're evil, but um, you're holding paper right now,
I am holy paper. I use paper, but I recycle
all paper like you. You know, we have that single
stream recycling thing where all the waste baskets at the
desks are basically recycling. I never throw anything away in there,
the only paper. Yeah, I practice what I preach. Friend,
I'm not calling you to death. But all right, that's fine.
(09:06):
I can settle down because my fight or flight response
is just pumping. Okay, so chuck. It's a waste, right,
It's annoying, it's potentially threatening as far as finances go.
With identity threat, what can an individual do to fight
the good fight against direct mail? Well, which, by the way,
(09:27):
I can give you one more figure. This is a figure,
not a status, so it's much more reliable. First of all,
did you even know that there's such a thing as
um direct mail pharmaceuticals? No, get pills through the mail.
Now you can get pills through the mail, yes, but
this is like advertising direct mail advertising for pharmaceuticals. I
(09:48):
have never gotten one. I don't know. It's probably because
I don't have a primary physician. But the direct male
pharmaceutical market alone in two thousand and eight racked up
ten points x billion in sales based specifically on direct mail.
Their return on investment for one dollar was ten dollars
twenty seven cents. Every dollar they spent on direct mail
(10:10):
advertising rate them in ten dollars and twenty seven cents
in two eight. That's just one sector. Well, we're in
the wrong business totally. I've always said we need to
start making our own pharmaceutics. Never looking is just not paying.
We're not making ten billion, I'll tell you that. And no,
we're not or anything actually, So what can be done.
I'm gonna leave the second part to you about the
(10:31):
official websites and things. I thought you left the first
part to me. I'm gonna go with the first part.
One thing you can do is you can actually send
it back. Uh. This is not about stopping it from
coming to your home, but instead of being angry and
just burning it or whatever you do, shooting it with
your eating it with your gun, eating it and processing
it through your own miserable body, some ink is better
(10:52):
than others. I can tell you. I bet you can
actually send it back. Um. Junk mail is usually first
class or third class, which is called bulk rate. And uh,
if you if your envelope is stamped, address correction requested
or return postage guaranteed. You can return it unopened to
the sender by writing refused return to center on the envelope.
(11:14):
Stick it back in your mailbox, and flip up your
little flag. Oh flag, I didn't think you're just a flag. Yes,
flip up your flag. But you can only do this
on bulk mail with that special notification on it. Um.
If you have a solicitation solicitation sorry that has postage
paid reply envelope, then just put a note saying that
(11:34):
you want to be removed from the mailing list and
include that mailing label and or write refused on it
and you might actually get taken off that list. So
that's one way to do it. Well, thanks to our
friend the Internet, it's gotten a lot easier to stop
getting junk mail ryes um. There are actual sites that
are dedicated to you not getting junk mail. And remember
(11:56):
they do not call registry right. Well, there's been several
attempts to create a you know, do not mail registry
basically UM, and it hasn't taken off. It may in
the future, who knows, but as it as it stands
for now, it's up to the individual to take care
of their own junk mail stream right um, And like
(12:16):
I said, the Internet is a great tool for that.
They're like, uh, opt out prescreen dot com is one
place you can go. And basically the reason we have
junk males because your name and address in personal information
is actually valuable. It's valuable on its own in a
very small amount fractions and fractions of assent as a
(12:36):
single individual. Well when you put it together with thousands
and tens and thousands and hundreds of thousands of other
people millions, millions, I'll go with millions, um, then all
of a sudden that list as a whole becomes valuable.
So people who have your information or millions of people's
information can put these things together and make some extra
scratch on the side by selling it to direct marketers.
(12:59):
And one group that aggregates these this information are credit
reporting bureaus. They are allowed by law to give out
certain personal information about you, like name, address, preferences to
some stuff that you've provided, to sell it for their
own behalf. You get absolutely nothing for it and they
make money off of it. Yeah, and what you get
in the end, it's junk mail. So the opt out
prescreen dot com website basically UH makes it so the
(13:23):
the four major credit reporting bureaus can't sell your stuff
any longer. Um. And it'll take a little wild to
get off the lists, but you will eventually hopefully be purged.
Um and that last for five years or I think
you can also do a lifetime block right on selling.
Why wouldn't you just do that would be great? I
don't know, it doesn't make any sense. In five years,
(13:45):
I might want to get this junk mail, so I'll
just go with the five. Well, you know, actually there
are there's this this group called the Direct Market Association
UH and they may be um, the bane of most
people's existence because they're actually a trade association of direct
marketers right and UM. Luckily, they have a nice little
(14:07):
website that you can access to get out, to opt out.
It's called d m A consumers dot org and they
have basically the same thing that you'll find an opt
out pre screen. They have fifty member companies and it's
not just for profit business. Nonprofits, political action groups are
members of of the d m A. And when you
(14:29):
get taken off the d m AS list, you get
taken off of all these people's mailing lists. So that's
another thing you can do. Um, there's steps you can take,
or actually there's steps that you cannot take that can
keep you off warranty cards. Warranty cards, Like think about this.
When I researched this article, I hadn't thought about it
at the time, and I thought back to, you know,
(14:51):
when I filled out in a warranty card, because I
must admit I am one of the suckers who actually
has filled out a warranty card and melded in. Um,
why the Queens and Art company who's blender I just purchased,
would care whether my UM household would be most interested
in hunting and fishing magazines or skydiving magazines, Like it
(15:13):
didn't dawn any at the time, Like that's a little odd.
And I think I even remember checking a box like, well,
you know, we're not really into hunting and fishing, but
we're more into skydiving these days, so check, you know,
And and then all of a sudden, like I got
skydiving magazine. Come ons, you know there's a master card
is sending me like a pre approved card with a
(15:33):
skydiver d like we know you'll like this, sucker, and uh,
it's it's it's bad. So never fell out a warranty
card because you know we talked about extended warranties before
you have your receipt. Warranty, that's your warranty. Because if
they say you're you have a warranty, and you have
the receipt, then you have the warranty. You don't need
to fill out a card to ensure that you have
the warranty. Exactly. It's just a big scam. It is
(15:56):
a huge scam. You know those bits that sometimes you'll hear,
like the morning radio shows do where they'll call like
the head of the telemarketing company, you know, midnight and
wake him up and say, how do you like it?
You do you know your company and all that stuff.
We should find out the person. There's one person, I'm
sure where all the junk mail originates. Find out where
this dude lives, and let's just go and like wallpaper
(16:18):
his house with grocery store flyers. His name is Rusty. Yeah,
he would. Rusty would wake up and try to look
out his window and all he would see is like
ground beef dollar. He'd be like a piano player with
a bunch of choke mail dumped on him right, and
here is screams sorry, Rusty exactly you've probably saw on yourself, Rusty,
Um the chuck. We're not quite done here. Okay, there's
(16:41):
other there's actually businesses that you can subscribe to that
will go to the trouble of getting you off list.
I know our producer recommended one. Yeah. Um it's Green Dimes,
I believe um. And basically our producer Jerry said that
she there's a free service, um where you can just
(17:02):
kind of I guess, do the basic job. But there's
their twenty dollar annual membership fee. Actually, these people actively work.
If they can't send something in on your behalf, like
it needs your signature, maybe your Social Security number, which
you will be asked for once in a while. This
is not you being lured into an even bigger scam, um,
(17:23):
but they need it for verification. I'm not certain that
they need it, but they require it for verification. So
if Green Dimes can't just do it as a third
party telling somebody else to back off, they send you
all the stuff that you like, these form letters, but
you sign mailing back to them and Green Dime mails
it for you, and then they monitor and by the way,
I don't own any stock in Green Dimes or anything.
(17:44):
I'm just kind of taken by this company. They may
not be publicly traded anyway. They well, my dad didn't
found it, if that's what you mean. Um. They they
monitor all these lists um mailing lists every every month
on a monthly basis to make sure your names stays
off and if not, they go after the people. But
just we're twenty bucks a year if you ask, and
(18:05):
they plant five trees when you join. Really, well, there
you have it. Four bucks a tree. Yeah, that's awesome.
Sure it dip it. Well, it depends on the tree. Yeah,
that's true. I'm gonna sign up for that. I didn't
know about that. And and remember never fell out a
warranty card. Don't You Never respond to a publisher's clearing
house sweep steaks one thing? What does it say on
(18:26):
that you may have already won, But a lot of
times it's name in your name. It'll just say yeah.
If you respond to that, you will end up on
what's called a sucker list. And and and that's actually
what it's called in the industry, because you have shown
that you were gullible and your junk mail will increase
tremendously and your name pops up on the sucker list,
and that's when all these companies go, oh, we got one,
(18:47):
we got one, let's get in there. Yeah, that's the
that's the lead of leads right there. And that's my
impression of a junk mail dude. Yeah, that was good. Thanks,
So there you go. UM. I also want to recommend
an article on MSNBC by uh Sig Kersheimer, whose name
I mispronounced at the beginning of this podcast, Sorry, Mr Kerheimer. UM.
(19:08):
It's called Hey, junk mail, follow these steps and Mr
Kersheimer has going to the trouble of basically giving every name, address,
telephone number, and website you would need to completely rid
your life a junk mail. So it's definitely worth reading.
And if you want to read our take on it,
you can type can I Stop getting junk Mail in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com for
(19:33):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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