I have two postal addresses — my home and a mail drop. At my home address, I am the recipient of mail sent to me of course, but I also get mail for my mother, who passed away in October of 2012 and for my dear friend Carolyn, who passed away in April of this year. The Carolyn mail comes in two varieties. I used to buy her a lot of mail order items, mainly vitamins and women's apparel and sometimes, we'd have the order shipped to my home address and sometimes, we'd have it shipped to her home address which now forwards to my home address.
What does this all mean? It means I get a shitload of catalogues and junk mail.
There's a mail order firm called Woman Within which seems to send out two catalogues per week and sometimes, for no visible reason, they send two copies to the same person. So they send one or two copies to Carolyn's old address and they're forwarded to me and they also send one or two copies to Carolyn at my home address and one or two copies to me at my home address. We once ordered my mother something delivered to her old address so they send one or two copies to that address which are forwarded to my home address. We also once had an order for Carolyn sent to my mail drop so they send one or two copies to her at that address and another one or two copies to me at that address.
I think I get a minimum of eight copies of every Woman Within catalogue and once in a while, up to twice that many. There was one day when I received nine.
The odds of me ordering something from these hover at or below Zero %. The only time I've ever opened one was to look and see if there was a little paragraph that said something like, "If you no longer wish to receive mailings from us, call this 800 number or visit this website to unsubscribe." I found none and so now I don't bother to open them at all.
Instead, the ads are pitched right into the recycling bin along with catalogues from Vitacost, J. Crew, Eddie Bauer and more than a dozen other companies from whom I will never-ever order. In fact, I've never-ever ordered from any of their catalogues as the orders I did place which started this tsunami were all off their websites. They have no reason to believe I've ever responded to or looked at any advertising they've sent me.
I assume that at some point, my total lack of response will get me off these lists but I have tried a few times to hurry that along. I called Woman Within's 800 number once and told them they could save a buck or twenty by a month by not sending me their catalogues. No one on the phone seemed to have any idea what to do with such a request except to put me on hold and leave me there forever. I also tried calling Vitacost once and was told that nobody in that office, wherever the hell it was, could do anything about the mailings.
I guess it must work. I mean, even with folks like me shot-putting every piece of mail from them into the dumpster, they must get enough orders from each catalogue to make them profitable. Still, I wonder what would happen if they sent out a mailing that consisted of just a letter and a pre-stamped postcard. The letter would say…
This is a test to see if you even read anything we send you. If you read this, send back the enclosed pre-stamped postcard which asks if you want to continue to receive our advertising. You can specify "Yes," "No" or "Yes but not as often."
No matter what you check, we will mail you a five-dollar bill, no strings attached. If you do indicate you want to continue to hear from us, you will see that our catalogues will have lower prices to reflect our savings from cutting all the folks who didn't respond off our mailing list.
If they did this, they might save a lot of money, their customers might save a lot of money and I'd make at least thirty bucks and I wouldn't have to unclog my mailbox all the time. Why is this not a terrific idea?