Archive for the ‘Junk mail’ Category

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The Vilna Shul: We just don’t feel like removing you from our mailing list

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

November 26, 2009

Jack Swartz, President
The Vilna Shul
18 Phillips Street
Boston, MA 02114

Dear Mr. Swartz,

I am writing to you because my efforts over the past two years to resolve this matter through The Vilna Shul’s executive director, Steven Greenberg, have been unsuccessful.

Over two years ago, I embarked upon an ambitious effort to eliminate the junk mail – paper mail delivered by the postal service, not junk email – that our family receives. These mailings are bad for the environment because of the resources consumed by producing and transporting them. Furthermore, they are a waste of money for the organizations and companies that send them, because we don’t actually read them.

Eliminating all the junk mail was an ambitious undertaking, because my wife and I support many non-profit organizations, and they all felt the need to write to us at least once per year, and in many cases much more often than that. Furthermore, the non-profits we support sometimes rent and sell their mailing lists to others to whom we have not donated in the past.

Therefore, for over two years, I have contacted every company and organization that has sent us junk mail and asked each of them to remove us from its mailing list. This has been a very time-consuming process, but it has also been very successful. The vast majority of institutions I have contacted have been more than willing to remove us from their lists and have had no trouble doing so. Unfortunately, there have been a few marked exceptions. I’m sorry to say that The Vilna Shul is one of them.

(more…)

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Posted in Boston, Consumer activism, Judaism, Junk mail | No Comments »

The most obscene “guilt mailing” I’ve ever seen

Friday, October 16th, 2009

UPDATE [March 19, 2012]: If you’ve arrived at this page because you received a solicitation for charity from St. Joseph’s Indian School and you are investigating whether the school deserves your support, then please see the comment below from David Fitzpatrick, a CNN investigative producer who is researching a story about St. Joseph’s and their fundraising vendor, Quadriga arts. He would like to hear from you, especially if you have a mailing from St. Joseph’s which you haven’t yet discarded. You can email him here.

Now, back to the original blog posting…

You’ve all gotten them, right?  An envelope, or sometimes even a box, from some alleged charity you’ve never heard of before.  You open it up and discover personalized mailing labels, greeting cards, a notepad, a tree ornament, a cheap electronic doodad, a coin, or whatever, along with a plea to send a donation.

The strategy the charity is employing is twofold: some confused old people and idiots will think they’re required to send a donation in exchange for the junk, and some others will feel compelled to send a donation because they would otherwise feel guilty about accepting something for nothing from a charity.

I call these “guilt mailings.”

(Interestingly, the UK’s Institute of Fundraising says they’re a no-no (page 8): “Fundraising organisations OUGHT to be able to demonstrate that the purpose of the enclosure was to enhance the message and/or the emotional engagement in the cause and not to generate a donation primarily because of financial guilt or to cause embarrassment.”)

I know what the senders of these mailings are trying to do, and I know it’s slimy, so I’m completely immune to their efforts to generate guilt.  Not only that, but rather than prompting me to donate, guilt mailings tend to have the opposite effect — I tend to put any charity which uses them onto my “do not donate” list for good.  If the freebie is useful, I go ahead and use it without any qualms at all.  I’m heartless about it… when they send reply envelopes with stamps on them, I cut off the stamps and use them to send my own letters, just on principle.

I thought by now I’d seen it all, but I received in the mail today the guilt mailing to beat all guilt mailings, from St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota: (more…)

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Honda Village continues to send me junk mail in deceptive envelopes

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

[You can read the whole series of Honda Village postings here.]

Since I first wrote about them in June, Honda Village has sent me many more pieces of junk mail enclosed in envelopes that do not have their name or return address on them and that have been intentionally designed to make the recipient think they are some sort of official business so that the recipient will open them rather than throwing them away.

As I wrote then, I consider this type of direct marketing to be exceedingly slimy.  I finally got annoyed enough about it today that I’ve sent Honda Village this message through their Web site.  We’ll see if they actually listen.

(Do not add my email address to any bulk email lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my email address only so that you can respond to this request. NO OTHER USE OF MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)

(Do not add my postal mailing address to any direct-marketing lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my postal address only so that you can remove me from your direct-marketing list as described below. NO OTHER USE OF MY POSTAL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)

For months now, you have been sending me junk mail in envelopes that you have intentionally designed to deceive recipients. You’ve made them look like some sort of official certified or registered mail, and you’ve intentionally left your company name and return address off of the envelopes. These envelopes are clearly designed to get people to open them, when they would just throw them in the trash if it was obvious they were from you.

This kind of deceptive direct-mail advertising is exceedingly slimy. It is distressing to me that I purchased a vehicle from a company that employs such slimy tactics. You have proven to me, unfortunately not for the first time, that my initial impression, that you were different from all the other slimy car dealers out there, was wrong.

Whatever mailing list I am on to be sent these slimy mailings — please get me off of it. Right now. And leave me off of it. Permanently.

Thank you.

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More on the DMAchoice.org debacle

Monday, September 28th, 2009

My blog postings about the DMA (initial and followup) got picked up at The Consumerist and got over 5,200 views, which is a respectable take, but not nearly as good as when Continental lost my daughter :-) .  You will also find on The Consumerist a rebuttal from the DMA which doesn’t actually respond substantively to any of my complaints.

My detailed analysis of everything that’s wrong with the DMA’s Web site from a security point of view was published in the RISKS Digest.

After my complaints were published on my blog and at The Consumerist, I continued to have additional problems with the Web site.  I contacted the DMA through the form on the site and asked for assistance, and they did not respond.  Apparently, they’ve decided that they don’t actually have to support users whom they don’t like.

(more…)

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Posted in Computers, Consumer activism, Internet, Junk mail, Web | 9 Comments »

DMA site is not only broken, but insecure

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Earlier today, I wrote about the many ways in which the DMA’s MPS Web site is broken and about the fact that the people who run the site don’t really seem to care all that much.

I forwarded a link to my article to the DMA’s consumer affairs email address.  To their credit, they responded the same day.  Unfortunately, there response did nothing to reassure me that they have a clue about how to run a proper Web site; exactly the opposite, in fact.  Here’s why: (more…)

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Posted in Consumer activism, Junk mail | 7 Comments »

DMA’s Mail Preference Service: Once a fraud, always a fraud

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Since 1971, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has offered a service called the Mail Preference Service (MPS).  The alleged purpose of the MPS is to allow consumers to register which kinds of direct marketing mail they want, or to opt out completely.  DMA members are then supposed to scrub their mailing lists against the MPS lists and not send mailings to people who don’t want them.

Why would an association whose members make their money from direct mailings offer a service to allow people to opt out?  While they cloak their motives in all kinds of fancy language about consumer choice, protecting the environment by reducing unwanted mailings, etc., the real reason why is to offer voluntary self-regulation to dissuade the states and federal government from regulating the industry.  And it works — the mail direct marketing industry is essentially unregulated.

However, as noted, the DMA’s members don’t actually want consumers to opt out of their mailings, so they’ve always made it difficult and annoying to sign up for the MPS.  For example:

  1. Enrolment expires after three years.
  2. There is no notification from the DMA when your enrolment is going to expire.
  3. Obviously, the DMA and its members are intimately familiar with utilizing the U.S. Postal Service’s change-of-address lists to update their mailing lists when people move.  They could easily use the same lists to update the MPS, thus obviating the need for entries on the list to expire at all, but they don’t do this.
  4. Long after everybody under the sun was doing things like this on-line, the DMA continued to require people to send in forms by U.S. Mail to enroll in the MPS.
  5. When they did finally start letting people enroll on-line, they charged a fee, and the enrolment Web site was awful. (I’m not certain, but I think there was a time during which they were even charging a fee for enrolments sent in via the U.S. Mail.)
  6. They’ve finally started letting people enroll on-line for free, but the (new) Web site is just as awful and doesn’t work, and they don’t care, which is what has prompted me to write this blog entry.

(more…)

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Posted in Consumer activism, Junk mail | 15 Comments »

Where all those Boston real-estate agents get your name and address

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

(Simulblogged on universalhub.com.)

Long-time readers of my blog know that I have been trying, for almost two years, to eliminate junk mail — the paper kind — from my mailbox.  I’ve registered everyone in my family with the DMA’s MPS, tried out various Web sites that purport to help you stop junk mail, and most time-consuming of all, contacted every single company or organization sending me junk mail and asked them to stop.

I am doing this for three reasons:

  1. Reduce the time I waste dealing with junk mail.
  2. Reduce damage to the environment caused by the production and transportation of mail that I don’t want or need.
  3. Reduce the expense to charities I support of sending me solicitations that won’t make me donate to them more or more often.

There is, however, one category of junk mailers that has been distinctly resistant to my efforts — Boston-area real-estate agents.

We receive a regular stream of postcards, refrigerator magnets, “free sale consultation” offers, etc. from area agents.  They are usually addressed to us by name “or current resident,” so the agents are clearly getting a database from somewhere, but they’re not filtering us out based on our MPS registration, so they’re clearly not typical bulk mailers.

Furthermore, the proportion of agents who respond with “Sorry, I can’t do that” when I ask them to stop writing to me is much higher than that of any other category of mailers.  This prompted me to wonder for quite a while what exactly is going on, until one of the agents actually clued me in.  I’ll explain by way of an example.

(more…)

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Posted in Boston, Computers, Government activism, Internet, Junk mail, Web | No Comments »

Micro Center enters the junk mail hall of shame

Monday, July 27th, 2009

July 27, 2009

Customer Complaint Department
Micro Electronics, Inc.
4119 Leap Road
Hilliard, OH 43026

To whom it may concern:

I first asked you to permanently remove me from your postal mailing list on October 10, 2007. I received a response that same day confirming my request. I received two more mailings that month, and then the mailings stopped. At least, they did until February 2009, when they started again after I bought something at one of your stores.

On February 16, I sent a message through your Web form, asking you once again to permanently unsubscribe me from your mailing list (yes, that means that even if I buy something from one of your stores, I don’t want you to put me back on the list!). I sent another request March 15, and a third on April 30, this time by email to csrs@microcenterorder.com.

Since I asked you on February 16 to stop sending me mailings, I’ve received six, most recently today.

(more…)

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Another reason why we will never buy another car from Honda Village (Newton, MA)

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

[You can read the whole series of Honda Village postings here.]

Long-readers of my blog may remember the experience my wife and I had when we bought a minivan from Honda Village in Newton, MA. To summarize, the salesman from whom we bought our van outright lied to us about one of the warranties he convinced us to buy, then ignored my complaint letters about it, then promised a refund check which they never sent.  I had to threaten legal action to get them to refund the cost of that warranty as promised.

Well, I’m sorry to say that Honda Village is up to their slimy sales tactics again.   (more…)

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HP customer service jumps the shark again

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I suppose given my prior experiences with Hewlett-Packard’s customer service, I shouldn’t be surprised by yet another negative experience, but since this one has a new angle, I guess it’s worth posting…

I asked HP in November 2008 to stop sending me junk mail.  They assured me that my request would be processed and would go into effect in “several weeks.”  Six months later, I was still receiving mailings.  Therefore, a couple of weeks ago, I attempted to use their live chat service to once again ask that they stop sending me junk.

The first time I attempted to chat with an HP support agent, my chat session was disconnected immediately after the agent connected to the session.

The second time, the agent disconnected my chat session, after I had taken the time to explain the entire situation in detail, because I failed to respond to one of her questions for 43 seconds.

The third time, I explained the situation all over again and finally got the agent to claim that she had updated my record in their database and I would no longer receive mailings (of course, they said that last time, but we’ll see).

I told the agent in the third chat session that I was extremely dissatisfied with the treatment I’d received at the hands of the live chat service, and I asked her how to contact someone to whom I could complain.  After I’d asked three times, she finally told me that when I received the transcript of the session in email, I should reply to it with my complaint.

This I did, explaining in detail in my email reply that I was complaining about the quality of the live chat service.

Of course, seeing as how the live chat agents and people responding to the emails are all employees of some offshore contractor for whom English is not their native language, the agent who responded to my email a day later misunderstood my complaint and explained to me how to be unsubscribed from future junk mail, which of course I’d already taken care of.

(more…)

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