Sunday, November 30, 2008

How to Eliminate The Deluge of Catalogs

Posted in Pursuit of Happiness tagged , , , , at 8:00 am by Elaine Petrowski

once and for all.

Who doesn’t want fewer catalogs cramming the snail mail box? Especially when it means less weight to haul to the curb in the recycling bin, less junk mail (a.k.a.” promotional material”)  to wade through and maybe one or two trees saved in the process.

we-still-get-catalog-at-our-house

I'm still working on the pile that comes to our house, but it's definitely smaller.

Take a few minutes to go to Catalog Choice. (If you don’t have time now to enter the required data from your catalog covers, tear the covers off and save to do some  afternoon when real work has no appeal.)

I first visited this well-organized, easy-to-use site in March ’08 and since then have requested that 51 (!) companies eliminate me from their mailing list. Not all retailers “participate,”  as the site politely phrases it, so there were three companies who wouldn’t take me off their list. But 19 have complied and 20 some odd more are pending. FYI: I was so totally ticked off at the three who wouldn’t remove me that I used the phone numbers provided by Catalog Choice to call and verbally accomplish the opt out. (Must have been a slow work day.)

If you are receiving multiple catalogs from the same company, or if the unwanted catalogs continue several months after you register your opt out at the site, recheck that you have entered your name exactly as it appears on the mailing label, i.e. Ann Brown, Ann B. Brown, AB Brown etc.

Which reminds me. Be patient. It can take a few months for the opt out info to reach the powers that be at the catalogs.

here’s their mission statement from the site:

The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unwanted catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate their mail preference for catalogs, and businesses can receive the list in a secure manner so that they can efficiently honor the requests.

And now that you have the good news, please pass it on.