Like most people, I’m sure, I get a fair amount of credit card offers. What I like to is read the details for a good laugh. For example, in today’s mail, I got an offer from First Premier for a Gold MasterCard at a fixed 9.9% interest rate (well, cash advances are 23.9% APR). Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, now comes the fun part.
Account Set Up Fee $29(One-time fee)
Program Fee $95(One-time fee)
Annual Fee $48
Participation Fee $72 Annually (Billed at $6 per month)
Additional Card Fee $20 Annually (if applicable)
Oh wow, how I can possibly pass up an offer as great as this? Guess I’d better hurry before this offer is gone and I have to wait a few more weeks before getting another one.
This is almost as bad as an offer I got once, a while ago, for some VISA that said that it had no annual fee, but it did have a $10 per month service fee. Hmmm, most cards that have an annual fee have one for about $50 to $60 per year which works out to $4 or $5 per month. But why do that when I can pay $10 per month.
Seriously, if I thought it would do any good, I’d write a nice letter to some of these credit card companies thanking them for insulting my intelligence and telling them to never again send me such shitty offers. Well, maybe I’d word it a little bit nicer, but not much.
But… but… if you act now, we’ll consolidate up to three other credit card balances into this one! How can you refuse? Note: Transferred balance counts as a cash advance - interest fees will acrue daily.
Stuff the return envelope with junk and mail it back them. Harmless and won’t cost you a cent!
(Well, I guess you could argue its not “harmeless”, but close enough)
Insert sig here.
Unfortunately, the sort of people who really need the envelope of junk won’t get it. Instead, the poor schlub in the mail room is the one who’ll have to open it…
True, but the company still gets billed for the postage. Better yet, tape the envelope to a box full of rocks and drop it in the mail.
Yeah, I got one like that from Fleet yesterday. Transaction APR: 7.9%. Cash advance: 18.5% or thereabouts. Made me suspicious too. Into the bin it went.
Sorry for the hijack, but I saved all my credit card offers for a year and ended up with a stack of mail a foot high. Ya gotta think national mail traffic would drop by half if all the credit card offers magically disappeared.
Did you know you can opt out of receiving pre-approved credit offers? I found this out from a PCWorld article published in January 2002. I finally got around to doing it this year.
You can’t do it online (or at least you couldn’t at the time). You can call 1-888-567-8688. You have to answer some questions (voice response system) and they send you a confirmation letter. You might have to respond to that, too, but I (already sigh) can’t remember if you have to send something back or not.
I expect my incoming mail to decrease in a big way from this. This makes me happy since the less junk I have to deal with the happier I am.
Sorry dude.
I don’t recommend mailing back junk mail either; some of that stuff might have your personal information on it, making it a bad idea.
My favourite thing to do is clip out a few good comic strips from the newspaper, make a decent paper airplane, or find some cheap flat toy or something, and mail that. It uses up credit card mailers resourses, and might make the poor envelope opener a bit happier. And given that they aren’t in telemarketing, you must agree they deserve it. 
I don’t think so. I’ve seen it happen here in the past, albeit not often. Maybe Canada Post hasn’t caught on the same way the USPS has.
My company has some mailers that are prepaid reply mail. Time for an experiment!
Kewl. Lemme know if works - some lucky mail room worker can have my brother’s old bike. 
Hehehe, well actually, I only get tranfer or consolidation options from the good credit card offers. So if I wanted to pay off another card using one of the crappy ones I get offers for, I would have to get a cash advance.
That might be fun, but I don’t think it would get my message across. They’d probably open it up and think, gee, what a weirdo.
Maybe I could put a note in the envelope saying “Please pass this along to your supervisor. Thanks.”
There’s probably a weight limit for the envelope, and you probably can’t attach it to anything, but that probably wouldn’t be too bad an idea if I could.
Sure, and maybe monkeys will come flying out of my…oh, oh, I’m sorry, that was rude of me, wasn’t it
Thanks for the info, I might just give it a try.
I got a credit card offer today from a bank that I already have a credit card with! You’d think they’d notice! (I know, I’m a hopeless optimist.)
So you can’t send anything that’s ovbiously junk mail back to the company, but if you stuff the envelope with crap, the post office isn’t going to be any the wiser now will they?
:eek: Now I KNOW that that won’t work.
Some time ago, I don’t remember when it was, I got a good offer in the mail, so I applied. For some reason, I forget what, I got turned down. A few weeks later, I got the same offer from the very same bank. A week or two after that, I got the same offer again. Talk about persistent :rolleyes: