"Not planning another wedding anytime soon, she has no need for a subscription, and called to cancel."

Maybe the Orwellian Amazon BuyNet has come to life and knows something that Valerie does not.

I was engaged at one point and registered for a wedding website for wedding ideas. I got a ton of junk mail. A TON from all sorts of vendors. After we broke up I tried calling and opting out but nothing worked. Just recently, what would be about a year after my wedding date I started receiving Parents magazine like they actually calculated my due date. I thought it was hilarious. Freaked out my current boyfriend though.

I've been getting unwanted bridal magazines and such through the mail since I was 21 (I'm 25 now, never engaged, never married), resulting in a never-ending side-eye from my dad and questioning about, "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

If somebody knows how to make this stop, please do share. I'd like to stop getting unwanted stuff (at my dad's house...still...and I live 550 miles away now) and stop having to say, "Jesus, man! No - I'm not engaged!" That'd be great. Thanks.

@MostlyHarmless:
It is quite likely that Valerie and the Hubby's future offspring one day grows up to destroy Amazon. Amazon is only trying to defend itself, and planting ideas in Valerie's head so that the future offspring never happens.

idk, free magazines are always awesome.

A number of years ago, parenting magazines started being sent to me at my father in law's address. (I live overseas and use his US address if I need anything sent there). I don't remember exactly how, but we figured out it had something to do with Amazon. I never had a registry with them, but we did order some toys and maybe some baby things from them?
Anyway, we never had to pay for them and eventually the subscription ran out.

I've been getting "Teen Vogue" magazine in my mail for a year now. Rest assured I am not a teen girl, but a man in my 40s. I didn't subscribe to it, and as near as I can tell from my CC statements have never been charged for it.
Apparently this is another of those mystery subscriptions.

I'm embarrassed every time I see it in the mailbox; hopefully the mailman doesn't know I'm the only one in my house and thing I'm some sort of perv.

About 1 year after we got married, we started receiving Field and Stream magazine for no apparent reason. We can't figure out how or why, but we don't owe them any money so they can keep sending and I'll keep recycling them.

Neither my husband nor I hunt, fish, camp or even want anything to do with the outside. (He has asthma and I had Lyme disease.) At least the Babies R Us spam mail and the like made some sort of sense.

I hate when you get signed up based on things like this. My wife found out she was pregnant and at about 8 weeks along bought something from a maternity store in the mall. She had a miscarriage a couple days later, but ever since, we have received formula samples, coupons, magazines, etc. It was pretty rough every time she got a reminder of the lack of baby.There were so many different companies mailing us junk that it was impossible to try and figure out how to opt out of the mailings.

They'll probably send a Kindle-1000 back through time to kill everyone with her name.

I guess if I couldn't stop them, I would try to send 'em to someone who would want 'em. Has anyone tried changing the mailing address to a shelter, teen center, or public clinic? Even a bridal magazine would be an improvement over some of the selections I've had in doctors' offices.

@Vanilla5: Doesnt your dad get the clue after like 4 years of the same thing? He sounds like my mom.

Get married. That will switch the junk over to maternity magazines. Or maybe divorce attorneys.

@redskull: Maybe you bought some questionable teensy things from amazon. Its your own fault. I make all my jailbait bait at home.

In related news, I once ordered some relatively rarer Georgette Heyer books for my "its complicated" a couple of times, and now every time Amazon keeps on suggesting godawful victorian romance novels for me.

@redskull: I'm sure he doesn't think that. Drag would be a better guess... it is Vogue after all.

@MostlyHarmless: You would think, right?

That's ok - he's gotta have something to talk about, I guess.

@redskull: On the one hand I sympathize with you, but on the other hand I'm LOLing.

Weirdly, a ton of the unsolicited "mothering" crap we get comes addressed to my husband. Who has a manly name. And I have a girly name. Neither of us is named "Chris" or "Robin" or "Pat." Hardly ANY of it comes addressed to me; almost all of it to my husband. And it all says, "New moms like you need good formula ..." or "Join our new moms club!"

Amazon thinks my 83 year old mother needs pregancy tests.

The previous resident of my home never set up mail forwarding so I printed out a bunch of "return to sender" labels and keep them in my mailbox. Whenever I get mail that isn't for me (or I don't want) I just stick a label on it and put it right back in the mailbox. This method seemed to work for making an unsolicited magazine subscription stop.

@MostlyHarmless: You can go through your past history and tell it not to include those things in your suggestions. I have a few friends with truly appalling taste in books; it helps a lot.

My brother once ordered me some needlework supplies from Nordic Needle (a truly excellent embroidery supply company with kick-ass customer service, in case anyone's in the market) for my birthday, as I do fine embroidery as a hobby. A couple months later, he came in from work and his roommate is standing there holding the Nordic Needle catalog addressed to him and asked, "Is there something we need to talk about?" My brother's like, "Crap." And indeed, his friends still haven't let die the joke that he's busy knitting booties or sewing tea cozies in his free time.

All companies really need the "I'm buying this as a gift, don't send me your embarrassing-to-my-demographic catalog" checkbox.

@MostlyHarmless: You can fix that by looking at your purchasing history in your account and unclicking the "use this to make recommendations" box.

If it was purchased from her Amazon bridal registry, anyone could have bought it and it won't show up on her credit card.

You're kidding, right? Anything that comes to you in the mail unsolicited is yours. No questions asked. Why fuss over it?

I received "Glamour" magazine for a year, unsolicited, unpaid, unrequested. Since I am about as "Glamour"ous (NOT) as a person can be, I promptly gave it to my Fedex delivery lady. She enjoyed it and looked forward to receiving MY copy of Glamour every month for a year.

What I suspect they are looking for is for me to "forget" that I didn't originally order the magazine and to pay for a renewal.

Not a chance!

@MostlyHarmless: I keep getting Bangles albums recommended due to similar circumstances.

@billbillbillbill: I've heard this mentioned by several people. It must be heartbreaking. The companies that designed these systems should have a little more sense.

If you know your mail carrier you can ask them to trash stuff like that without delivering it. Some mail carriers are cool like that and will remember things like that. I lived in an old apartment with lots of former tenants and the mail carriers was very good about pulling out the mail for people who no longer lived there.

is calling, e-mailing, and writing letters to consumerist really less work than just dumping the mag in your recycling bin every month?

Keep in mind that periodicals generate far more income from advertising than from subscriptions, and high subscription numbers mean more ad income. Thus, the publishers have every incentive to inflate subscription numbers, and no incentive to pay staffers for reducing the subscription list. In short, there's just no one who cares enough to resolve this.

It's entirely possible the magazine signed you up for free based on you having the registry. Or that Amazon somehow got you hooked in.

But if they don't have your billing info (how could they?) and aren't charging you, and you've made a good faith effort to cancel, I say let it go. It's not your fault, you didn't ask for it, you asked them to stop...if they want to keep wasting their time and money, let them.

You can also write "Refused: Return to Sender" on any of your junk mail. It is returned to the sender AT THEIR COST.
I was getting an "involuntary subscription" to InStyle, and if you knew me (more likely to buy bike shorts and hiking shoes than anything vaguely coture- see? I can't even spell it!) you would burst out laughing.
I called InStyle, and they gave me an email address of a marketing company. I sent a very arch, polite "love letter" and told InStyle to cancel the subscription.
The glossy pile of stink actually stopped arriving in my mailbox pretty quickly.
So, somehow, marketing companies are getting people's addresses, and sending them magazines based on some algorithm that doesn't seem to actually work.
What a waste. It's like the dumb crap on Facebook about the latest thing a mom has discovered.
Resist, refuse, send it back, make them pay.
Have fun!

Emily D-G
the bodymech

@bubbledumpster: Maybe--so what? This isn't a one-off--it's a fairly common thing, I suspect because it enables the magazines to claim inflated circulation statistics for the purpose of advertising. It's a considerable amount of needless waste, and I think it's reasonable to try to stop it.

I was able to make my randomly arriving subscription to Prevention Magazine stop. Darn, I'm behind on exciting news about the acai berry.

If you figure out how to do it let me know. I have been receiving Fitness magazine for at least a year and every couple of months the date on the label changes for a much further date. Right now I am "paid through" March '11. I just throw them in the recycling bin. I wish I got something good for free. I love mags. Just not this one.

@billbillbillbill: This happened to a friend of mine who lost her twins about a month before they were due. It was absolutely horrifying. We lived in the same building and the mailboxes didn't lock, so I actually started taking the formula diaper samples out of her box so she wouldn't have to see them.

I'm pregnant right now, and this is exactly why I didn't give any personal info at the store where I bought maternity jeans!

If you are a resident of California, you could employ a law called SB 27, the "Shine the Light" law, to Amazon and these other companies to demand that they disclose their direct marketing parterships. See [epic.org]

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): @utensil42: I know. but doing that is less lulzy.

Valerie, call again and ask to put a "mail stop" on your subscription. This will suspend your subscription until you call back, which will be never.

The reason to do this instead of canceling (or whatever), is that some magazines keep sending issues to canceled subscribers to maintain their circulation numbers. They may do this for years. Also, there are some subscriptions paid by third parties that are very difficult to cancel by the consumer, despite the insanity of such a concept.

A "mail stop" will cure the problem. The computer will be happy that you are still subscribed and you will be happy that you no longer receive the magazine.

Fill out and mail USPS Form 1500 to the US Postal Service center in New York with the "opened" magazines. The order is legitimate for all objectionable mail, and since you object to Brides Magazine, sending it along will push an order of no-mail to the publisher.

The next time you get another Brides Magazine after you filed the form, you contact the Postmaster General and have them go after the publisher for violating the order. Check Junkbusters for details.

@wickedpixel: Same here, it got annoying living in an apartment and getting mail from 5 previous families of tenants. One of the families had stuff addressed to 6 or 7 different names coming to a 2 bedroom apartment!!!

And one of the other previous tenants had apparently ordered some of those lovely videos available on late-night television, because he received a postcard about a Girls Gone Wild class action lawsuit. Priceless.

@bodymech: Drat, I was going to suggest this one. Still, it's great advice - when they start getting the magazines back at their expense, they'll put a little more effort into figuring out the problem.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): This happened to my dad when I was pregnant. We don't live together, we have no joint accounts, and I use my married name. I guess it's because my mom bought me gifts. Maybe they sent stuff through the CC company, where he would be the primary cardholder?

I wonder what's up with Amazon pushing subscriptions. I've been getting some "special offer!!!" emails from Amazon when I purchase things; for example, I bought some mp3s from them and I got an email offer for Rolling Stone magazine.

The most amusing thing to me was that I used a $5 music credit from a previous electronics purchase to purchase said mp3s, making the whole thing one long, twisted Amazon offer chain.

Call Conde Nast's manhattan offices and ask to speak to someone in the circulation department. The 800 customer service number in the masthead is just the fulfillment house, not the publisher itself so it'll definitely be helpful to contact the publisher directly. Tell them it's not ABC (audit bureau of circulation) compliant to be counting customers as "paid" subs when they never actually paid anything for the magazine. They'll love that. Or you can just tell them to cancel your sub...Hope you're able to get ahold of someone. At the publisher that I work for, it's pretty easy.

But I think it's probable that your cancellation worked - the names of subscribers for an issue are pulled weeks in advance of the issue mailing so even when you cancel, you could receive mags for up to 6 weeks.

I feel better now. I thought I was the only one who got mystery subscriptions. About 3 years ago "Dwell" magazine started showing up every month. It is a mid-century modern architecture/living magazine. This has always baffled me because I do subscribe to Old House Journal. After all, I live in a 120 year old Victorian.

I never thought to blame Amazon. However, I did buy a portable workbench and some power tools from them previous to the magazines arriving. Why they decided this meant I lived in a mid-century house, I have no idea.

I also subscribed to Better Homes and Gardens about 5 years ago and paid for 3 years at the time. I'm now paid up through 2013 and I've never sent them another check. Weird.

Call the magazine and change your address to the local Post Office

I -- 57 yo writer, mom, grandma; liberal; pacifist; animal lover; never owned a gun or a fly rod in my life -- began receiving "Field & Stream" magazine last year. I can't imagine what item I may have ordered, or from what vendor, that generated this subscription! It made me laugh. And... right into the recycling bin those babies went.

@arcticJKL: Instead, find a retirement center to send it to. The old men there will be quite amused.

@TinkishDelight: I've been recieving "Parents" for about two years now, and could not figure where it was coming from! I think you just hit the nail on the head! I had forgotten about our Amazon.com and Bed Bath & Beyond wedding registries almost three years ago.

Parents is the subscription that will not go away. I even though that sending them back refused would help (and I talked with our head Post office guy - he is certain to send them back for monetary punishment). It doesn't. I've called and written, and still recieve that blasted magazine.

I'm not one to advocate lying, but I think I might try calling them up again and telling them that I medically can't have children and their magazine is not only harrassment, but torture and that I'm calling a lawyer. Think it would stop then?

@bubbledumpster: How about having to get a bigger post office box for an additional fee because of all the junk mail crammed into the box? Or having to wait until Saturday morning to get your mail for the entire week since too many catalogs came Monday and filled your box (and you cannot get to the post office during regular business hours because of work)? Or how about having to lug all those magazines and catalogs home, then have to lug them all over to the recycling center? Do you really consider any of this to be less work?

@katstermonster:

I was wondering where my postcard went :)