How can I prevent Amazon from sending me junk with my purchases?

August 16, 2009 12:27 PM

How can I get Amazon UK to quit sending me flyers with my purchases?

Anything I purchase directly from Amazon UK (not from a third party seller) seems to arrive with several flyers inside the parcel. Is there any way to prevent Amazon from sending me this junk? An opt-out button I've missed, perhaps? A freepost address I can return them to so that they can be reused?

I realise that I can deal with them when they arrive. What I want is to prevent them from arriving in the first instance. How can I do that?

posted by Solomon to shopping (7 comments total)

No, there's no way to prevent that.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:37 PM on August 16

I have also wondered about this + the silly amount of packaging for a single book!
posted by errspy at 12:59 PM on August 16

You can prevent Amazon's flyers from arriving by not buying things from them.

That is likely the only way.
posted by toomuchpete at 1:55 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

Jesus, guys. You seem so certain. Have any of you looked through Amazon's help pages? Or contacted them?

I agree with you btw. It's just that in future, you might try actually trying to help the guy.
posted by I_pity_the_fool at 2:24 PM on August 16

They have a standard shipment routine. It's variable per customer to the extent that what gets shipped is based on the invoice, but everything else about it is standardized, including the step that reads "insert advertising fliers".

Places like Amazon gain efficiency by having standard routines for this kind of thing which their employees learn. Anything that makes the routine conditional and variable increases time and expense and increases mistakes, so they don't include any more variation than is absolutely necessary.

All of which is to say that the "insert advertising flier" step is unconditional. If you ask Amazon to skip it in your case, they'll ignore you. From their point of view, "insert advertising flier" is necessary and there's no good reason for them to make it conditional. They're certainly not going to revamp their shipping procedure just because one customer complains about it and threatens to take his business elsewhere.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:42 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

What Chocolate Pickle said. Or - more specifically to answer your question: you need to convince somebody in Amazon or Amazon.co.uk that the gains to be made in paying for an opt-out of flyers service (happier customers like you, greener image from reduction in packaging, contented environmental lobbying groups) outweigh the costs (software development and testing, packaging line complexity, loss of a marketing channel, staff training complexity, user profile complexity). That is a decision that only somebody fairly senior could take. My strategy would be to write to Brian McBride (see profile) who is the Managing Director or Amazon in the UK. You can reach him at this address.
posted by rongorongo at 3:14 PM on August 16

I contacted Amazon, who said that they were looking into letting certain customers opt out of receiving mailings. However, they have no idea when this will be in place.
posted by Solomon at 3:04 PM on August 21