Snail Mail Spam, how to stop?

March 30, 2006 3:49 PM

It seems like almost every time i open my mailbox i get this advertising mailer in there. How on earth do i go about complaining and get this crap to stop! I assume there are laws like there are spam these days, if you say "unsubscribe" they have to obey? Googling for it only came up with the link i pasted above and looking on the Kansas City Star website was no help either. Any advice?
posted by joshgray to society & culture (19 answers total)

Is it addressed to you or to "current resident"?
posted by smackfu at 3:54 PM on March 30, 2006

Snail mail advertisers are under no legal requirement to stop sending you something, just because you ask.
posted by nomisxid at 3:55 PM on March 30, 2006

addressed to "Postal Customer"
posted by joshgray at 4:01 PM on March 30, 2006

I feel your pain, but alas, I believe it's hopeless.

This site suggests sending a request to Farmingdale, New York to reduce your junk mail. But those second- or third-class adverts don't count, somehow.

Recently I had an idea, and asked a friendly mailman if it might work, submitting a Change of Address for "Current Resident" at my address, but he said it wouldn't.
posted by Rash at 4:02 PM on March 30, 2006

The Supreme Court has decided that those advertisers have a First Amendment right to mail those things to you. Your only recourse is to toss them in the ashcan every time; you have no right whatever and no legal power at all to compel them to stop.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:05 PM on March 30, 2006

Rash, it's against the law for the Postal Service to accept those advertising fliers from the mailer and then to refuse to deliver them.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:07 PM on March 30, 2006

If you consider the flyer to be sexually suggestive (wink, wink), you can stop them from mailing it with USPS form 1500. (details)
posted by smackfu at 4:10 PM on March 30, 2006

LOL, thanks for the info everyone but geez... In theory how is that any different than electronic spam other than the postal service making money off it? i think i just answered my question :(
posted by joshgray at 4:11 PM on March 30, 2006

The USPS makes money off bulk mailers, so they tend not to be interested in helping you stop getting it, even going so far as to fire postal workers who followed recipients' requests to not deliver the mail.

Although I much prefer the idea of claiming that grocery store ads are sexually suggestive, you could also try the The Center for Democracy and Technology "opt-out" Web site.
posted by stefanie at 4:15 PM on March 30, 2006

"How is that any different than electronic spam?"

The answer is that the First Amendment explicitly protects freedom of the press, so anything actually printed on paper has expecially strong protection against any kind of government regulation.

First Amendment jurisprudence is extremely interesting and, unfortunately, quite complicated. Different media are subject to differing degrees of control as a function of the nature and properties of the underlying medium. Broadcast radio and broadcast television are subject to the greatest degree of government control; newspapers and magazines to the least amount, and everything else (e.g. telephones, cable tv) land somewhere in between.

And in general SCOTUS takes an extremely dim view of content-based regulation. So legally speaking there's no difference between a political pamphlet, a newspaper, and an advertising flier. The publisher can pay to have those things delivered to you and the government is not permitted to regulate or control that in any way.

You're not forced to read any of it; but you are not permitted to prevent delivery. This is a case where different agents' rights have to be balanced, and SCOTUS has decided that the rights of people who own printing presses is more important than the rights of people like you who hate having their mailboxes filled with crap.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:29 PM on March 30, 2006

Hmm. i was wondering about this the other day. When I moved last I turned "off" (pay automatically or web-only) as many bills as I could, so that really there would be no useful mail to my house's box. (Friends&family, magazines I want, etc, mail me somewhere else.)

What if I never once touched my mailbox? It would get filled up really quick with this crap. Or what if I just removed it? Do I get cited for something? Does the post office actually 'hold' all that crap for me?
posted by neustile at 4:41 PM on March 30, 2006

I have a very small mail slot in my wall; standard-sized letters and NetFlix movies fit, but mailers and magazines do not. I also keep a large empty flowerpot on my porch nearby.

My mailman, who rocks, simply shoves everything that fits into the mailbox, and leaves the magazines and mailers (magazines UNDER the mailers, to discourage theft) balanced on top of the pot.

Every few days, I lift up the pile, pull out anything with enough mass to be a legitimate magazine or oversized piece of mail, then drop the rest into the pot. On garbage day, if I remember, I grab it and throw it in the bin.

Think of it as spam filtering for snail mail, with my mailman, my mail slot and myself as the stages of filtering. :)
posted by davejay at 4:56 PM on March 30, 2006

note that I never asked my mailman to do his part; he just figured out what the pot was for on his own, first time out, so I suspect it's common.
posted by davejay at 4:57 PM on March 30, 2006

The greatest difference between snail junk mail and spam is that you don't pay to recieve snail mail, the sender is paying for it to be delivered. With email the general consensus is that the reciever is being forced to pay (albiet a miniscule portion per individual email) in some fashion.
posted by nomisxid at 4:59 PM on March 30, 2006

It's called marriage mail (really), and *if* you have a co-operative PO, you may *request* that it not be delivered to your mailbox. Doesn't mean they'll stop, though. A friend of mine was able to get his local PO to stop putting it in his box, but he has to go through the same rigamarole every time he gets a new mail carrier on the route.

If you put a vacation hold on your mail, the PO will hold the marriage mail for you (although it may depend upon how big the PO is, and whether the sorter knows that you've got a vacation hold on). If you have no 'real' mail going to your box, you may or may not get the marriage mail -- it depends on where you live, etc. Rural routes and single family housing routes are less likely to get the advo mail dropped in their boxes if there's no other delivery. Apartments and those larger 'shared' boxes, where the mail carrier opens the top of the mail slot and puts the mail in each individual box, are probably more likely to get the ad mail. (It's a pain, but if the PO didn't deliver the bulkrate/advo mail, first class and parcel post rates would go up.)
posted by jlkr at 5:02 PM on March 30, 2006

Errr. I call flyer folks up and ask them to stop.

100% have stopped.

Good luck.
posted by mmdei at 6:14 PM on March 30, 2006

Well, you could always take the coupons and stuff, put them into the credit card application envelopes, and mail the coupons to the credit card companies, like some other people do. Makes for a little bit of fun at least :)
posted by antifuse at 12:43 AM on March 31, 2006

Open the flyer, and read it. Look especially for very small print along the edges of the paper. Many of these coupon vendors actually do have a means by which you can opt out, by mailing or faxing them.

I do think that, give it 10 or 20 years, e-mail inbox spam is going to create a sea change as to how postal inbox spam is treated. The former will continue to greatly decrease our tolerance for the latter.
posted by WCityMike at 7:48 AM on March 31, 2006

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I just removed my mailbox and its post entirely. (The ultimate opt out, so to speak.) I pay all my bills online and could care less for anything that shows up in snail mail.

I wonder if that is even legal?
posted by pjern at 9:21 AM on March 31, 2006