Recently I got this incredibly brilliant idea from Monsieur. Because I am a “young borrower” meaning I haven’t (yet) defaulted on my student loans or had any late payments, I get about 20 “special offers” per week to incur even more debt at a “Special One-Time Introductory Rate”. I complained about them as if there weren’t much I could do about it except shred the offers and toss them into the recycle bin.
“Why don’t you just send them to them?” Monsieur suggested.
“Because I don’t want the credit cards! I have enough debt as it is,” I protested.
“No,” he said, pouring two cups of tea, “you should shred them first, then stuff them into their Business Reply envelopes. The recipient must then pay the postage on the garbage that they have generated, and then they must pay to have them thrown away. If more people did that, perhaps the marketing geniuses would figure out that people don’t need credit until they ask for it – and even then, probably not.”
Brilliant.
Now, I’m quite sure that sending in my twelve envelopes of shredded confetti per week to Chase, Washington Mutual, and MBNA won’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things, but I do know that putting them into the outgoing letter box and hearing them drop brought a certain serenity to my mind that simply can’t be bought at any price, at any annual percentage rate. And there’s no annual fee!
2 comments:
I love doing that. Same to a certain political party that hasn't got the message.
Here in the UK we're at least able to register with the Mailing Preference Service's database, which direct marketers are obliged to refer to. Thereafter, any junk mail received can be offically complained about and there are penalties for offending companies.
But before I registered I used to put my own pre-printed stickers on the unopened envelopes saying that this was junk mail and please remove my name from your database before popping the offending material back in the post box. I believe that the charge to the company for receiving it would have been more than the Business Reply rate ;o)
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