A friend (a rather gullible friend that questions nothing) emailed this to me. I’m thinking that it has to somehow just not be this simple. Am I wrong?
Well you’ve come to the right place to ask. This was answered in these hallowed halls in 1984.
Can I mail a brick back to a junk-mail firm using the business reply envelope?
Technically speaking, it’s probably mail fraud to knowingly mail back a brick or other ‘obviously not the intended item’ type thing to the sender of junk mail, but they would certainly not catch you if you stuck it in an anonymous mailbox. That said, why bother?
I’m sure the bulk junk mailers have a staff of minimum wage people who process returns and probably know to just throw out anything bigger than the envelope that is supposed to come back, knowing that it is dog shit, a brick, engine block, phone book, etc. The logic of the website seems to be that you are helping the postal service since there have been layoffs due to e-mail. Maybe so, but if the junk mailer takes enough of a hit, they’ll have layoffs too, so it’s the same difference. Huge companies, like Capitol One, probably use third parties to handle this mailing for them anyway, so you probably aren’t hurting them directly any more than the people who do the whole “don’t buy gas on a Wednesday to show the evil oil companies” people do. And if by the grace of God you manage to put the junk mailer out of business, Capitol One will just hire a new junk mailer to send them out next time that is still in business.
But if you want to waste your time and effort to mail garbage back to junk mailers because you have nothing better to do, have a good time.
Whoops. Looks like I missed the edit window and Bleach beat me to the punch. This does bring up the point, however, of whether I can heat my house during the winter months by getting the booklet described in Cecil’s article that will get me incrementally more junk mail which I can use to fuel a continuous burner of all the crap mail.
What good would it do for the junk mail staffers to discard the brick? The damage has already been done by that point: They’ve had to pay the USPS for shipping a brick.
Nope Yarster, I sure don’t. Just lookin’ for a little ammo to take with me when I tell her she’s goofy. Usually I can handle it myself (like last year when she told me about the strawberry metamphetamine. Since she is a post office employee though, I didn’t want to go in unarmed. Thanks guys. 8)
I was wondering about that myself… Yarster??
Because you don’t know it’s a brick till you open it. It could be a pile of dog crap.
So in addition to paying the postage there would be a “Yech” factor 
That 1984 article brings up another question: Where can I find this “domestic mail manual”? USPS site doesnt seem to be of much help. Domestic Mail Manual | Postal Explorer has nothing in the 900’s and the article says the rule is 917. something.
Many years ago, I read about a man who did exactly this. He got himself a post office box and told all of his friends send their mail to it instead of his home address. Then he used his home address to sign up for every bit of junk mail he could find, and he used junk mail to heat his house all winter. He mentioned some issues about the residue and emissions from the ink and paper, but he did prove that it was possible.
The junk mailers have cut back quite a bit these days, thanks to internet advertising, the rising cost of sending mail, etc. so I don’t know if it is still possible to do this.
There might be better, easier ways. After all most places bricks and boxes cost money.
I once experimented with returning the junk mail as “obscene, discontinue”. Back then, back there it worked. BTW, it really obscene how much junk mail the cable company sent me so I wasn’t even being disingenuous.
You’re right Shig. It looks like 917.243(b) is gone. I did find this though.
Domestic Mail Manual, Section 9.0: Business Reply Mail (BRM).
(bolding mine)
Sounds like that’s the updated language in the Domestic Mail Manual and would be good information for your friend.
I have this vague memory that when you mail something inappropriate back to the junkmailer using their return envelope that the Post Office eats that cost instead of the junkmailer. So, if thats the case, you really arent sticking it to the people you really want to. Though, if the Post Office got shafted often enough they might change their contracts and or junk mail policies.
I worked for Canada Post, and dealt with Business Reply mail. There’s no way this would have flown, because it is an understood that BR mail is only for envelopes, and that the envelopes involved can’t be attached to any other items.
The fact that the BR franking and Permit Number are on an envelope shows that only envelopes are contemplated to be covered by the Permit.
Maybe the USPS handles it differently, but I doubt it.
Okay.
But what happens if you just mail back the crap they mailed to you in their own envelope?
They take you off the list. OK, maybe not all of them every time, but I make a habit of sending back any postage-paid envelope with a quickly scribbled “Please stop sending me mail” and they do seem to take note.
Ah, now see, this is the way I originally heard it used. Usually the BR envelope is only part of the mailing, and is usually inside another envelope, with a pamphlet, or sales literature, or whatever as well as some sort of order form.
If you take all of that stuff and put it into the BR envelope, then they will have to pay to get it, and will open it up to find not an order, but their own crap back, which would serve them right.
Point made.
What have they done to you that you want “revenge”? Just put a recycling bin by the mailbox and use it, what’s the problem?
In any case, none of these ideas gets “revenge upon the company”- at best you’re making some poor minimum wage schmucks job a little bit nastier. In other words- you are being the asshole.
Yeah, thats the way I heard it way back when too. I wonder if they have to pay for that or not?
Another thing to consider it that the Postal System may make good money on junk mail, so all that junk mail may be subsidizing your non junkmail use to some extent.