I hate direct marketing, as do roughly 99.999% of all humans [citation needed]. For most people direct marketing probably has a negative effect, that is, it really pisses them off. While telemarketing is just plain annoying, junk mail is also an environmental problem. Each year, 100 million trees are used to produce junk mail and the yearly production and disposal of junk mail consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars. [wikipedia]. So why do they do it? The answer is simple: unfortunately there are people who will fall for anything. 50% discount, a chance to win amazing gifts, some flattery and a few other tricks are enough to fool these people. They’ll buy anything from you.
Fortunately there’s an easy way to dispose of junk mail – return it to the company that sent it to you. It’s their problem in the first place. Some of them are kind enough to even provide you with a prepaid return envelope. How convenient! Here’s how it works:
The fine Finnish Tiede science magazine sent me a “special” offer in a nice giant envelope. If I subscribe NOW, I could win an amazing car, 50000€ in cash and whatnot. No thanks, I’ll pass this time.
The envelope is full of stuff. There’s a subscription form already filled out with my full name and address, a bonus “double your chance of winning” card and some stickers that you need to stick to the subscription form. How nice.
Here’s what we do next. Crumple up every pice of paper that they sent to you and stuff them in the return envelope like so:
You probably need to step on it in order to properly seal the envelope.
That’s one hell of a heavy and thick envelope, but the postage bill is already paid for by the magazine. This is a nice way of letting the company now that you don’t want them to send you any junk mail. Maybe they’ll leave you alone. Probably not, but at least it’ll make you feel better.
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