[HN Gopher] How to stop USPS junk mail
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How to stop USPS junk mail
        
       Author : user3939382
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2022-06-04 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (consumer.ftc.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (consumer.ftc.gov)
        
       | thenerdhead wrote:
       | I was looking for this website again for junk mail. It looked so
       | sketchy the first time, but I'm gonna bite the bullet and see if
       | this saves me time over the next ten years from having to throw
       | away junk mail. $2 is worth the experiment.
        
         | jrockway wrote:
         | I did this many years ago. 99.9% of my mail is still junk, just
         | junk where I have some sort of weaselly pre-existing
         | relationship with the company sending mail. ("You donated money
         | to us! Can we have some more!? We spent it all on this
         | marketing campaign and now it's gone!")
        
       | anonymousisme wrote:
       | I've done this and it makes a big difference, but I still get a
       | lot of junk from local businesses. Either those businesses are
       | not part of the DMA, or they are ignoring the opt-out list. I'm
       | not sure what to do about it.
        
         | btrettel wrote:
         | I've done this as well. Another issue I've noticed is that when
         | a certain item is set to go to "all" addresses, the mail
         | carrier will simply give one to everyone until they run out.
         | This is probably right most of the time. But I would
         | consistently get junk mail for my neighbor with an apartment
         | number one higher than mine.
         | 
         | I recall reporting this to the USPS multiple times without any
         | effect. The only thing that helped was putting a note inside my
         | mailbox to check for my neighbor's mail.
        
       | thrill wrote:
       | Probably works just as well as the do not call list.
        
       | ghaff wrote:
       | Honestly, it used to be far more of an issue when going away for
       | more than one or two weeks at some times of the year resulted in
       | a mailbox full of stuff--meaning you really had to get your mail
       | held. These days I find far fewer catalogs--and certainly thick
       | catalogs--get sent.
       | 
       | I did get a larger mailbox, mostly for packages. And I still get
       | a fairly high junk to organizations I do business with to
       | actually important mail ratio. But I can mostly ignore my mailbox
       | for a week at a time easily.
        
       | slang800 wrote:
       | As a matter of principle, I am not paying a $2 "processing fee"
       | to stop people from sending garbage to my mailbox.
       | 
       | Also, the permanent credit card offer opt-out requires me to
       | print and send a letter from each address I live at. This is
       | clearly designed to be as annoying as possible so nobody does it.
        
         | gaadd33 wrote:
         | 1.6 cents per month seems pretty reasonable to solve what would
         | otherwise just consume some of your time. An ideal world, there
         | wouldn't be a processing fee but we don't live in that world.
         | 
         | Aa far as the credit card opt out, you can also freeze your
         | credit and I believe that has a similar impact since no one can
         | make unauthorized inquiries.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | I've done both and it was worth it. Highly recommended.
         | 
         | One can also consider a mail processor if you're nomadic or on
         | the road often; you give out that address, pay $10-$20/month
         | for the service, and they dispose of the junk mail and scan in
         | any mail of value.
        
         | tablespoon wrote:
         | > As a matter of principle, I am not paying a $2 "processing
         | fee" to stop people from sending garbage to my mailbox.
         | 
         | I feel like that must be relatively new. I swear I used that
         | site and I'm pretty sure I didn't have to pay a fee.
         | 
         | I bet they added it to discourage people from going through
         | with the process.
        
           | ceejayoz wrote:
           | A $1 authorized charge would work for a little bit of "real
           | person here" verification, but I'd imagine the $2 is to
           | discourage auto-filling an entire town's worth of people via
           | a script; all you'd need is, say, a voter registration list
           | to get the necessary info of name and address.
        
         | ceejayoz wrote:
         | I kinda love that they're offering PayPal Credit as a payment
         | option. A six month loan for a $2 purchase?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-06-04 23:00 UTC)