Does anyone know of a way to get off of junk mail lists? I’m not talking e-mail spam here, I’m talking all the junk that comes in my snail mail box. I get a million credit card offers and catalogs every day. Even moving doesn’t change things. We’ve been in our new house a month and I’m already getting junk here! That doesn’t count all the catalogs that are addressed to “Previous Owner’s Name or Current Occupant”.
Get in touch with the Direct Marketing Association, and ask to be put on their Do Not Mail list. It won’t magically eliminate all junk mail, but many direct mailers remove names on this list from their mailing lists, since they don’t want to pay to send mail to people who don’t want it.
Don’t pay any attention to people who suggest filling their pre-paid Business Reply Envelopes with junk and mail them back. It does nothing to stop any one, and if it makes you feel good, well, I guess it’s nice that you’re so easily amused.
You might try preparing a bunch of index cards with your name and address on them and a request to be removed from all mailing lists, and mail that back in the BREs. But I don’t know how effective that would be. It’s often the case that the BREs are received by order processing centers that don’t have a direct connection to the organizations sending out the mailings. But it would be worth a shot.
If you’re in the U.K., sign up for the Mail Preference Service
IIRC you can tell the post office not to deliver any bulk mail to you.
Here in The Netherlands, you can get a sticker with the text “NO, I don’t want any un-addressed mail” to put on your mailbox. Mail carriers and independent distributors are required by law to respect that sticker.
It works great; my mailbox used to get so filled up with junk mail every day that it would overflow if I left town for just a few days, but since I have that sticker I get maybe one piece of un-addressed mail every couple of weeks. I guess I could call the distributor about that last one and cause trouble for the delivery boy, but as long as it happens seldomly enough that it could be a honest mistake, I don’t bother.
With regard to all the credit card offers, just call the 800 number on the offer and tell them to stop sending them. I use to get 1 or 2 per day, but now I don’t get any. They were remarkably cooperative, all I had to do was ask.
::jumps on soap box:: If junk mail really bothers you, some of the suggestions above will work. But keep in mind that if all or even most junk mail were stopped the cost of postage would rise dramatically. Bulk mailings pay for your ability to send a letter from Hawaii to a rural box in Maine for 37 cents. By any standard I know of, that’s a good deal. The U.S. Postal Service is a business, and it has to make a profit to stay in business. For my money, they do a pretty good job. ::falls off soap box, lands on butt::
In that case, we’ll all simply re-direct the junk mail to you. 
A few years ago I had problems with supermarket flyers blowing about my yard, so I called the distributor and asked that they stop delivering to my home.
The flyers continued to be delivered.
I called again.
They continued.
I called a third time.
They still continued.
I tracked down the owner of the business and called him at home at dinner time.
He raged over the phone.
The next flyer delivery resulted in a call from me at dinner time.
He raged over the phone again.
Yet another flyer delivery, and yet another dinnertime call from me.
He raged, then I played back the tape and asked him if I must involve the police.
The flyer deliveries stopped.
More seriously, what you say is true, but for myself, I rarely use the mail. I communicate by fax, by email, and by telephone most of the time, and usually by courier when I have to send paper.
Whether it costs me 50 cents (what it now stands at in Canada where I live), or trebble that amount, I would prefer to not have junk delivered to me, for avoiding a potential significant increase in postal fees the potential it is not worth the risk of having my junk mail pile up for a couple of days when I am out of town. I don’t want house-breakers to know if I am away.
I didn’t think of that. Guess I travel too seldom. One can get the USPS to suspend delivery for a period of time. I’m guessing the Canadian postal service will do the same. You’d still have to tell someone you will be gone, though.
With the USPS, there’s a 30 day hold limit. I’m currently out of my house for considerably more than 30 days. Luckily I live in a super neighborhood and my neighbors get my mail (and let me know my sump pump’s not broken!), but even so, I overheat my shredded every time I get home.
I wish the USPS would just stop bringing me non-first class mail. They won’t, though. There’s no option not to receive it. You can use the porno laws to stop receipt, though, but that’s a pain, too.
I’d say 99% of Junk Mail in the US is addressed to you by name/address. So even if the mailman obeyed that, most of it would still get through. However, if you take a week’s worth of junk mail and call them all to remove you from their lists, eventually this will make it back to the main databases. The reason is that junk mailers send back their cancellation lists to whomever sold them the list. Or at least they said they would.