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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 03/24/2010 Fighting junk mail, or .. I think the post office people really should have
Saturdays off... With the
talk about the US post office stopping Saturday delivery, and with Postmaster
General John Potter saying he would like to see mail delivery cut to five-days-a-week
starting next year, I started looking into how that would effect me. Supposedly
the average American home gets over 41 pounds of junk mail annually. Can you
imagine the environmental impact of all that discarded junk mail if it wasn’t
printed on paper in the first place ?
There are
some junk mailers that have been junking me regularly for years, and I have
never responded to any of their solicitations. The one that comes to mind is
CTI Financial Services, who sends me something at least once a week. I
don’t even know what it is, as I just tear it up. I tried writing
“return to sender” on it but the postman wouldn’t take it
back. Even my own bank sends me unsolicited checks in the mail they want me to
run out and spend and get even deeper in debt, but I shred those. Once I
tried finding the source of them by calling my local bank branch and I was
told I would have to contact some other office of theirs, and they
weren’t sure if I could actually stop them from being sent. I get
product catalogs sent to me – thick full color expensive-to-print
catalogs – and I am the last person in America that would buy these
products. If their marketing departments had my consumer profile of what I will
or will not buy, and if they would ask the question “Do you think that
yahoo in Spocain, Warshington
would be interested in these lace doilies ? they’d never send the catalog. But they do ... So I
decided to checkout a way to stop at least some of my junk mail. Several
internet searches sent me to the site www.dmachoice.org
From their website: What is DMAchoice? DMAchoice™ is an online tool developed by the Direct Marketing
Association to help you manage your mail. At their
website you can sign up and create an account, and then tell them what your
preferences are for 3 of the biggest categories of junk mail – Credit
offers, catalogs, and magazine offers.
I turned
all these off – I don’t want credit offers, catalogs, or magazine
offers. They also
have another category which I didn’t notice last week but discovered as
I was writing this show – Other
Mail offers - Select this category to manage various mailings, such as: So I
turned all these off too. Ironically
as I was writing this show I got an email solicitation sent to my deceased
mother to renew her Newsweek subscription .......
The Newsweek
ad features two of their recent magazine covers – one is of Aliens and
the other is a really ugly picture of the crazy guy who runs Iran –
I’m not sure which is the least appealing to me, so I’ll just
have to pass on the 88% percent savings off their cover price. Hopefully
these DMAchoice.org choices I’ve done online will
kick in soon and all this will cease.
But somehow I don’t think so ... |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2009 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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