The fucking groups who send me all of their ads and shit must be really thick. Being well under the age of those who normally hold credit cards, I wonder where they got my name and address. Their fucking mailing lists mail me shit like “Buy a boat, interest free!” and “Do you want to know more about your mortgage?”
Well fuck off. I take all of their shit, including the envelope their shit came in and I stuff it all back into their self addressed envelope, and while I’m at it, I toss in any small trash I don’t want to get up and throw out. Right now some place in Delaware has a torn up envelope, 4 snickers wrappers and some gum wrappers. Stop sending me shit!!
Want to really piss 'em off. Tape their postage paid, buisiness reply envelope to a brick and send it back. Pay the postage on that, bastards!
Alright, I admit it. Photog, you made me smile. There.
Okay, this may sound really stupid, but would this actually work? I have a nice big box of junk that I was going to throw out, but it would be much more amusing to me to tape the envelope to the top and send it to that stupid company that just won’t give up on me.
Don’t go overboard, guys. Check out the master to find out why.
For anything more light-weight, and therefore likely to annoy the suits who are ultimately responsible for your inconvenience, rather than the poor schlub down in marketing who has to open it, I’d suggest the following:
Place all of the materials in your own envelope. Find out the name of the directors of the company. Address the envelope to one of them, marked “Personal and Confidential.” Take it to the post office, and mail it as a registered letter.
Yes, it will cost you some personal money. But it will target the source of the problem, instead of the folks, who, just like your family are just trying to feed and clothe themselves and their kids.
Important Warning!
Do not- say again-Do Not under any circumstances whatsoever send feces or decaying matter through the US Mail.
Feces is a biohazardous material, and the new post-anthrax laws regarding mailing such materials are enforced to the hilt!
I kid you not, True Believers! This is a Federal No-No. & can get you sent to the House Of Many Doors But Few Exits.
Clayton , You are my hero.
Let me jump on the Important Warning bandwagon here and, at the risk of being a Funkiller™, warn you NOT to mark envelopes addressed to directors of a company “personal and confidential”. If the dire posters in my local post office are to be believed, this makes the envelope Highly Suspicious, and is just one step down on the Uh-oh-meter from filling it with baby powder.
Just recycle the shit. It’s really no skin off your ass.
I remember that in a similar thread one of our pals used to dispose of kitty litter through the business reply envelope.
Obviously, that too is a no-no these days, if it ever wasn’t.
Yeah, but poor schlubs get paid by the hour, so wasted time is on the company’s dime. And, when management notices a sudden decline in the number of applications processed per schlub per hour, that’s when they find out people are sending their junk mail back to them. It’s a win-win 
Here’s a better suggestion: Throw the stuff away, or in your recycling bin, and move on with life. Don’t give them the benefit of knowing that you wasted one precious minute of your life on them.
I did summer work at St. Jude’s donation center. We got some really bizarre returns in the mail in our donation envelopes. Most common was snippets of porn…really really gross porn in some cases.
The real culprits, the people who SEND the donation requests (or credit card apps, etc.) out, never see what is returned. People like me, temps working for little more than minimum wage, use big machines to open thousands of envelopes a day. We pull out the checks, ignore any comments, throw the junk away, and get a giggle over the porn. It doesn’t encourage us to quit, and we really don’t care.
Never having received anything like a brick, I don’t know how it would be handled, but it probably won’t even stop the mailings, so why waste your time?
Yes, but lilray, when you start sending them lots and lots of crap and you get others to do it their janatorial staff goes (no pun intended) postal, killing off the entire company.
How old are you, clayton_e? Are you in college? The reason I ask is because I didn’t get CCC (credit card crap) until I started attending the local state university. I suspect colleges sell information about their students. Many of the solicitations have a line about how I must now have tons of college-related expenses. Now, unless they have a million secret operatives scouting college campuses all over the country, how the heck would these companies know I’m a student?
It doesn’t make me any happier that my own college sends me Official University CCC.
Here I am, nearly three years since graduation, and I still receive those damn things. They must think I’m on that ten-year plan…
I toss their junk into the shredder. I hate having stuff with my name and address preprinted on them floating around for God-knows-who to find. (Yes, I’m one of those paranoid types.)
Look on the bright side: you now know which companies to avoid getting a credit card from.
Thanks for the safety tips, Bosda amd Dragonblink, and forget I posted anything except the link.
Oh, just use the old stand-by – fill out the application, with a personal note scrawled on it in subliterate lettering, saying “Please send me the card right away – I lost my job and I want to buy a boat.” They’ll stop bugging you.
Audrey, you aren’t being paranoid. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes, in the UK at least (I wouldn’t really know about the states). I’ve heard more horror stories than I really care to about invitations for cards being stolen from communal postrooms or old addresses and applied for by nefarious individuals. Hell, just the other day on the radio there was a woman who suddenly found that she owed £25,000 (about $36,000) on credit cards that she knew nothing about.
I have a whole host of sticky labels with “RETURN TO SENDER - NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS” printed on them. When I receive junk mail I try to remember to stick one on and return it straight away. Most companies then take you off their mailing list. This seems to me to be the most sensible thing to do.
pan
You could also try calling 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) to opt out of the mailings.
(information from http://www.nbc4la.tv newslinks 3/12.)
kabbes, my comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I remember not long ago there was a thread here ridiculing people who shredded or marked up unsolicited mail that had their names and addresses printed on them.
I would find a way to be taken off those companies’ mailing lists, but I just got a new shredder, and I’ve been having lots of fun feeding whatever I can get my hands on through it. I’ll take whatever crap they can send me for now. 
Thankyou Mr Arthur Anderson.
The babyjesus has been getting CCC for a couple of years. He’ll be 5 next month.