black@uw-beaver (Andrew P. Black) (03/09/84)
Yes, the Direct Mail Marketing Association will take you off of their
lists. And for a month or so you will not get so much junk mail. But
after that, it will restart again.
Why? Because every couple of months, most direct mail companies submit
their lists of addresses to the US post Office to be "checked" and put
into Carrier Route order. In the process, the USPS will put your
address BACK ON THE LIST. You may not believe it, but my wife has just
gone through a three month paper chase with our Senator and the USPS
and I'm right. The USPS does not give out your name, but so what - the
junk is just addresses to "Resident".
One thing you can do is simply mark your mail "Refused" and leave it in
your mail box. Provided it isn't registered or certified etc., the
postal carrier has to take it away. If it's junk, they don't send it
back, just destroy it (I bet they don't even recycle it). But
currently this is the only way you have of protesting about the action
of the Post Office. Perhaps if enough people do this, the USPS will
stop giving out addresses.
Andrew Blackglc@akgua.UUCP (G.L. Cleveland [Lindsay]) (03/11/84)
In addition to junk mail coming via the Postal Service, we have
had a rash of *telephone* junk mail here in the Atlanta area.
These are firms with automatic sequential dialers which hook up
to a recording that gives you their pitch and then hopes you
will respond after the "beep" with your name and address for
them to follow up.
My telephone hookup is installed for my own personal purposes.
I have no desire for it to be used as a means of interrupting
me by some advertiser. Also annoying is to get these calls at
the office.
I can put a "No Solicitors" plaque on my front door and if some
door-to-door salesman ignores it, I have recourse to legal
action against him. Does anyone know if a similar provision is
available with their local telephone company where one can list
one's line as "off limits to solicitors"? Have there been any
instances of municipalities successfully legislating a
prohibition against such intrusive harrassment? I would
appreciate any substansive information which I could use to
approach our local officials. It would really be great to turn
this problem off before it gets out of hand.
Cheers,
Lindsay
Lindsay Cleveland (...{ihnp4|mhux?|clyde}!akgua!glc)
AT&T Technologies/Bell Laboratories ... Atlanta, Ga
(404) 447-3909 ... Cornet 583-3909wombat@uicsl.UUCP (03/16/84)
#R:akgua:-62000:uicsl:4400004:000:357 uicsl!wombat Mar 15 11:27:00 1984 A long discussion on junk phone calls is just winding down in net.consumers. A summary of things you can do was put in there just a few days ago. There isn't much you can do in the way of legal action, but there are tips for annoying the perpetrators, perhaps to the point of getting your number off their lists. Wombat ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!wombat