# Business reply mail & junk mail returns **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 6, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360 "2004-11-06T16:32:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![fortytwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f9ae1b/32.png) [@fortytwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fortytwo)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/21 "2004-11-07T16:51:13Z")
> [@Futile Gesture](#): > > … > > In a previous job we sent out a couple of mail shots. (To business addresses). The worse we got back was an old telephone directory. Still costs us excess postage. We viewed it as just one of the risks of the project, you can’t _make_ people only send back exactly what you want them to. That’s seems like a good idea, but if you didn’t have any old telephone directories could you send back an brick instead? ---
**Author:** ![justwannano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/22 "2004-11-07T16:58:23Z")
I guess I should mention that we were working at the bulk mailers warehouse. So your notes don’t really get back to the credit card companies themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/23 "2004-11-07T17:17:30Z")
[QUOTE=Sample\_the\_Dog] If you just don’t want junk mail from the sender, contact the sender. Here’s the secret folks… legit businesses _want_ to purge dead leads from their lists. It costs them money to send this stuff, and if you’re never going to open it or buy anything, they’d just as soon lose your name. [QUOTE] I have a hard time beliveing that, at least with some bulk mailers. I used to get, on average 3 Discover Card apps a week. If the above was true, they would have stopped after a while (I can understand the idea of sending several to the same address, but in 6 months I probably received in the area of 100 of them). The week they sent me something like 9 in 6 days, I called, asked them to stop and haven’t received another one since. ---
**Author:** ![fortytwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f9ae1b/32.png) [@fortytwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fortytwo)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/24 "2004-11-07T19:03:27Z")
[QUOTE=Joey P] [QUOTE=Sample\_the\_Dog] If you just don’t want junk mail from the sender, contact the sender. Here’s the secret folks… legit businesses _want_ to purge dead leads from their lists. It costs them money to send this stuff, and if you’re never going to open it or buy anything, they’d just as soon lose your name. > [@](#): > > I have a hard time beliveing that, at least with some bulk mailers. I used to get, on average 3 Discover Card apps a week. If the above was true, they would have stopped after a while (I can understand the idea of sending several to the same address, but in 6 months I probably received in the area of 100 of them). The week they sent me something like 9 in 6 days, I called, asked them to stop and haven’t received another one since. Haven’t you just contradicted yourself here? ---
**Author:** ![Tabby\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tabby\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabby_Cat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/25 "2004-11-07T19:46:47Z")
> [@Vetch](#): > > Haven’t you just contradicted yourself here? I think what **Joey P** means is that if they were so eager to get rid of the deadwood, they would have stopped sending the crap after a while of no receiving replies. Well, I dunno. You could discourage them by mailing back construction material, perhaps. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/26 "2004-11-07T19:47:06Z")
> [@Vetch](#): > > Haven’t you just contradicted yourself here? No, okay a little. What I’m saying is if you just ignore the bulk mail, it’s not going to stop on it’s own, showing that they don’t purge dead addresses off their list. However, if you CALL them and ask them to stop sending stuff to you, they seem to oblige (at least in the case of Discover). I guess what I’m saying is that they’ll keep sending you the mail until they get a response. Either you accept the offer or you call and refuse it. ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360/27 "2004-11-07T23:59:52Z")
> [@Joey P](#): > > I guess what I’m saying is that they’ll keep sending you the mail until they get a response. Either you accept the offer or you call and refuse it. Well, yes and no. Remailing is actually more profitable than mailing to new prospects. There’s a certain percentage who will respond, say, on the 3rd, or 5th, or 7th mailing. After 7 or so, depending on the product, it becomes more profitable to mail to cold names. Also, companies use multiple lists. Some firms have “house lists” but many do not, and all of them will buy lists from vendors, either list merchants or other companies who sell similar products. So if you, for some reason, ended up on a lot of lists one company is buying, you may be getting pelted with multiple “drops”. The fact that you got so many shows some kind of aberration in their system, perhaps a glitch in their “merge and purge” program. It’s still true that legit businesses want to get deadwood off their lists as soon as possible. But because enough people respond to remailings (maybe a new envelope catches their eye better than a previous one, or someone else tossed out the first couple of offers before the eventual buyer got a chance to see them), simply ignoring the first package won’t get you purged. You have to actively do that. In fact, opting out of a list can reduce the number of lists you’ll end up on further down the line. Right now I’m trying to see how much money Tempur-Pedic will actually spend on me, based on a single active request with no follow-up. It’s been going on for months – including several heavy glossy mailings, a product sample, and a video tape. Their margin must be enormous. (The fact that they’ve never once quoted a price also gives me that impression.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-reply-mail-junk-mail-returns/273360.md?page=1)