Thursday, March 3, 2016

In which I complain about something really petty so if you want to accuse me of being selfish and self centered, go ahead - you would be right

Primo had to change Sly and Doris' mailing address to our address. He couldn't just tell the PO to dump everything. There are still bills for the house and someone has to pay them and that someone is Primo, which is OK because that is part of the deal.

Have I ever told you how I feel about junk mail?

I hate it.

It took me a year to almost eliminate the junk mail we were getting once I married Primo. I never got that much because I have always been hyper vigilant and shut that stuff down right away. But Primo used to get a ton of it and I made it my mission to stop it. First, it's wasteful of paper and gas and postal office time and second, it's a stupid waste of time to sort through it.

Once Primo agreed that I could cut the junk mail off at the source - he is a super control freak and didn't like the idea of my making decisions about what mail we get and what mail we do not get so this took a few years of negotiating LORD HAVE MERCY YOU GUYS engineers make great husbands as far as fixing things around the house but trying to get them to change an existing process is almost IMPOSSIBLE. And for them to trust someone else to do something? Honestly.

It took me a year. A year of identifying the junk mail with Primo, then emailing the vendor (having to track down the source of the junk first) to say, "Take us off your list. No, really. No, we do not want your cheap nasty products. No, we do not want your nice products. If we do, we will find you, I promise."

And they would promise to take our names off the list but then they would send us more junk or something would happen to trigger a new Junk Mail event and it took for darn ever.

But today, we get hardly any junk mail.

Sly and Doris got a ton of junk mail. They got almost every catalog that existed. I guess the green pear people (bless Doris' heart for trying to send us pretty things) figured that anyone who would buy a green glass pear will buy just about anything and that's a mailing list name you can sell.

Their house always had piles of junk mail. Going through their mail was their morning activity.

I always thought that was an interesting approach - that two people who were so staunchly environmentalist who condemned waste in others were very happy to have pounds and pounds of wasteful mail coming to their house and were happy to run their A/C all the time instead of opening the windows.

But their house, their rules. Whatever.

But now. Now all their mail is coming to us.

All their mail.

Including their junk mail.

Again, they are reaching from the grave.

We are getting their junk mail and that is not even the worst part of it.

We are getting things like mailers from Crate and Barrel.

I like Crate and Barrel.

Did Sly and Doris actually get those catalogs? Did they order from Crate and Barrel?

How can it be that they had access to the Nice Things at Crate and Barrel that I would actually have liked -who can't use more cloth napkins? - but they sent us green glass pears instead?

I know I am a bitch.

But man. It wasn't even that they didn't know that there are nice things you can get for a person. They just didn't want to.

16 comments:

  1. CatalogChoice.org is great for this!

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    1. +1 for CatalogChoice.org! We use it, and it's a pain to go through it all again whenever you move (because new address means that they can start sending you crap again, I guess), it works for most places. There are only a few that I've had to go back through to the source itself and contact them again.

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    2. Thanks! I will check it out when I get home!

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  2. I thought that the post office didn't forward junk mail (as it's not first class). Did you see this on the post office website?

    https://www.usps.com/manage/mail-for-deceased.htm

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    1. You're right, catalogs don't get forwarded, but ... The catalog companies request "Address Correction", then update the deceased address to your address, and off they go.

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    2. Exactly. We are getting mail for Sly and Doris at our house at our address. Grrrr.

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  3. HAve you tried writing "deceased - return to sender" in BOLD red letters and dropping the junk mail back in a mail box. The sender gets stuck with the return postage. so there is an incentive to stop sending it. just a thought.

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    1. I have not! I love that idea. Thank you.

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    2. The Queen of FranceFriday, March 04, 2016

      Be sure you draw a heavy black line across enough of the bar code so it can't be read. I found this out at work when we kept getting mail for clients who were no longer clients and had left no forwarding address. Writing "addressee unknown" or just "Return to Sender" wasn't enough since no real live person at the post office looked at it. It just went into the hopper to be scanned again, and would show up in the office once more a couple of days later.

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  4. Webb, thanks for the great tip. I am still getting mail for my Mother who passed in 2009!
    GD- What is Jack's reaction to Ted's antics?

    Love your blog. It reminds me that my family is not the only one with disfunctional individuals grabbing every penny they could get and bad mouthing all my hard work. They never volunteered to do a lick of work. Thankfully my brother flew half way cross country to settle my Dad's estate. He was a saint.

    Faithful MN Reader

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    1. Anon, Primo and Jack don't talk much, but in general, it is better not to antagonize Ted because he can be so vicious. I suspect Jack is just keeping his mouth shut.

      Dysfunction is everywhere. It is nice that we can share our stories and know we are not alone.

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  5. If you call them and tell them how upsetting it is to get mail for your dear departed it tends to get you apologies and list removal. I've played that card a few times...

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  7. Ugh. All the junk mail my dad got! It will be three years this month since he died, and I still occasionally get some generic flyer or something addressed to him. But the Paper Kharma app but a big dent in it.

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  8. Other people's junk mail! I moved into my house 3 years ago and still get junk from past owners/renters, at least 4 tenants back! Please tell me how to stop the madness because calling directly to the sender does not seem to help much at all!

    And no way, no how is this selfish or petty!

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    1. Any time there is a postage-paid envelope included, I stuff it with the mail they sent me and write, DECEASED!!!! on it. That seems to have been effective, except for Nancy Pelosi, who continues to send surveys to Sly and Doris. I tell you, I am sorely tempted to answer on their behalf.

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