Should Jake and Max call themselves?

No they should call themselves...Santos L. Halper

pounds! wow should make a good bon fire to appease the credit gods.

As just one person I collected applications for about a year from 2005 to 2006 and then myself and my 4 and 6 year old sons taped them end to end (just the 8 1/2" wide pages) and came up with a line that stretched over six parking lot spaces wide.

We then fed the resulting line of applications through my shredder. My children loved it...

Just tell the credit agencies to take you off the pre-screened offer list. You can do this online [www.optoutprescreen.com] and you will get very little of this junk mail. Over the past year I have received exactly two credit card offers in the mail despite having an 800+ FICO score and a good credit history.

Here's a link to the FTC web site providing more info:
[www.ftc.gov]

Chase used to constantly send me credit card offers even though I already have their card. Nowadays I never get credit card offers! The global recession - saving trees since 2008.

@Inka Dinka: Where's the fun in that?? I find harassing behavior a turn on. You know you want it.

@Mr.DuckSauce: Isn't a good bon fire redundant? (In Fringlish anyways).

@Inka Dinka: I'll second the optoutprescreen.com thing. It's definitely saved my shredder a lot of work since I opted out a year or so ago.

It's supposed to last for 5 years if you do it electronically via their website but I have started getting 1-2 a week again lately. Prior to that it was down to maybe 1 every month or two which was nice. Even now I guess it's much better than the 1-2 a day I was getting prior to opting out.

I went through a spate a while back where I printed a stack of papers reading something like "I HOPE YOU LIKE JUNK MAIL AS MUCH AS I DO" in a large font.

I'd stuff that into the return envelope and drop it in the mail.

@Inka Dinka: It doesn't stop all offers either just a good portion of them.

I signed up for lifelock a year ago, and I've gotten less than 5 in the past year! I know there's a free way to do this without paying lifelock $9 a month, but I like setting and forgetting. Not to mention, they reset my fraud alerts for me every three months.

@ScottRose: I do something similar. I shred anything with my name on it (shredding is fun!) and mail empty "No Postage Necessary" envelops.

I want to know how many rolls of toilet paper that'd make. What a vicious cycle/ Carbon footprint creditors print this crap mail it I open it feed it to my shredder recycle it. Garbage truck hauls it off somewhere to be recycled.

I'm truly shocked that at least 12 of those weren't for the dog.

@mipakr: Awesome! I never thought of that.

Back when I had more time I used to open all the credit card offers I received. I would then clip coupons from the Sunday paper and any other coupon I could get my hands on and then mail the coupons back to the companies with their prepaid envelopes.

I just wish I could see some of their workers faces when they'd open their mail and find Pizza Hut and soap coupons.

And it's not just credit cards ... I scored quite well on my LSATs and I stacked up all the "Apply here! Here's a catalog!" mailings I got from various law schools as a result. The stack was taller than I was.

@Ash78:

Yes! and then they can buy a new dog and name him "Laddy"

@chiieddy: It will stop all unsolicited offers/applications/spam from entities that you do NOT have an account with. For the rest you can just call your banks. I don't think I've gotten anything in the past year now that I think about it.

@Eyebrows McGee: Ugh...I HATED the barrage of university solicitations that came from various standardized tests over the years. You'd think there would be some universal opt-out list for this.

@Inka Dinka: I did this a while back and it did stop a great portion of them. I would get so many in one day that if I missed a day checking my mail it would be too much for my little mail box and I would end up having to go to the post office to get my mail.

@springboks: this family could have just opted out of all pre-screen credit offers to eliminate virtually all of this junk mail and saved the paper and potentially their identities themselves.

@ScottRose: I have a stack of old porn (leftover from a long ago roommate) and will sometimes send a page in my envelopes.

I still remember our mailman kept asking my mom if I'd picked a college yet when I was in high school thanks to all the college brochures I would get.

Stuff like this makes me angry. Take the application with your name in it print in large letters "remove from list" put it back in the SASE and mail back. You'll never hear from them again. Nor will you ever be sold to another list.

I swear I get no junk mail cuz I used to do this with everything I got.

Has anyone else noticed a big drop off in credit card offers over the past few months? I used to get four or five a week and now I'm down to maybe one.

@Eyebrows McGee: I got that same stack. I refused to apply to any school that sent me unsolicited mail. It helps that they're almost exclusively tier 3 or lower.

@econobiker: Sounds like a lovely teaching opportunity.

I don't get any pre-approved credit card offers really thanks to optoutprescreen and opting out of everything at all banks I'm associated with. My roommate gets a lot though those realyl awful ones that start with a $500 limit and #350 of fees on the card right when you get it. The last few we have mailed back the return envelopes full of confetti or paper towels with mayo spread inside them. I think for any ones we get in the future we might start printing out some goatse to pleasure them with...

@Inka Dinka: Thanks for sharing this info. I wasn't aware of that site...and yes I live under a rock. ;-)

@admiral_stabbin: Same here. I finally did it right before I moved because I couldn't bear the thought of so much effort being put into having that stuff get rerouted to a new address... Haven't gotten any more offers - but that seems to be balanced out by the truckload of junk mail HSBC sends now that I got a savings account with them. And they just will not stop!!!

You can stop this very easily: [www.optoutprescreen.com] or [www.creditsourceonline.com]

Opting out of preapproved credit card offers. I did this 2 years ago and haven't received a single one since.

I'm shocked that not many people know about this service.

@wesa: I did that. I have mediocre credit and was still receiving 2 or 3 offers a day, I haven't received anything but account information from my creditors since (And a new card..hunh..wonder why the new card discover....)

How do you stop those blank checks from the credit cards you already have? Call the credit card companies?

I call or write and demand to be removed from their lists. I also do NOT fill out anything where they can sell my name, and if I have to, I use a different middle initial and track who has what so I can see who sold my name.

Then I threaten to take my business elsewhere if they do release my name. In today's market no one wants that.

Lastly I take their mailings and stuff it all in the business reply envelope so they have to pay to get their own stuff back. Even send them the envelope it came in.

We started getting flooded with those things after we moved. We were getting so many I started throwing them into a box to shred later. After we opted out and they eventually slowed down I sat down to shred them. It took me from noon until 3pm to open sort and shred the box of these damn things. I was only shredding the apps. I did manage to stuff some of the other junk into those return envelopes and took a huge pile and mailed them back.

@cordeliapotter: I wish I knew! I've called and asked them to stop sending them and it worked for a while but then I started getting them again. I just keep shredding them and grumbling under my breath about the stinkin' credit card company.

When I get one of those, which isn't very often these days since I've used the opt out instructions posted everyplace, I tear them up and stuff everything back into the pre-paid return envelope. Let that crap fill up THEIR landfill instead of mine.

Currently, Discover Card appears to ignore opt-out attempts, I continue to receive offers from them and they get every one of them back, so they get dinged for postage both ways.

I get rid of any personally identifying information, including certain numbers, then send them back to a different credit card company postage paid by addressee! Who knows, maybe discover would like a chase credit card!

Any of those for Santos L. Halper.

Someone told me that if you do the optout thing that it keeps people from sending you catalogs with pre-screened credit card offers as well. I decided not to, because I love to get catalogs. Someone's targeted me with exactly the kinds of catalogs I like to get.

Too bad I'm flat broke.

@Ash78: @TheFuzz53:
"15 pounds of vancover smoked salmon! go ahead smell it."

I get the most from Bank of America, who has my mortgage and checking. They often say "Important account information enclosed" or "customer notice enclosed" and they have NOTHING to do with my existing accounts, they are all credit card offers. I seem to have learned to tell the envelopes and off to the shredder they go!

@ogremustcrush:
ooh goatse good idea.

take the entire stack and just drop them off at bank of america.
worst bank ever and it would piss them off. =)