How to piss off credit card companies and get away with it.
Here's a little secret that might piss off credit card companies and potentially get them to stop harassing you with upwards of 20 credit card applications per week. Some people have known this for years, and since a fair amount of people will read this I feel that it's my duty and obligation to share this secret with you, because based on the email I've received, I don't always get the sharpest tools in the shed reading my site (as opposed to the regular tools who read this site). For the slow: I'm saying that you're stupid and wouldn't come up with this idea on your own; pay attention.
There are two types of junk mail that everyone gets: coupons for stupid bullshit that you don't want, and credit card applications for credit to buy stupid bullshit that you don't need. Here's how to take care of all your junk mail in one fell swoop: use the postage-paid envelope that credit card companies send you with their applications to send them the OTHER junk mail you receive. It's just that simple. Imagine the frustration of credit card companies when they have to spend millions of dollars every year on first-class postage just to open up an envelope and find Pizza Hut coupons inside. The envelopes are intended to be used for "BUSINESS REPLY MAIL," and so use them for their intended purpose. You're sending them valuable money-saving coupons which could mean big savings to credit card companies, and it makes good business sense to use them. Consider it a reply to their business proposition with a business proposition of your own: 35 cents off a large, one-topping pizza. In fact, they should be thanking you for giving them these money-saving opportunities. Or how about sending them credit card applications from other credit card companies? Be creative.
Not only will you be pissing off the credit card companies by wasting their time and money (since they have to spend time opening all your mail), but you'll also be pissing off all the other companies that send you junk mail: Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Burger King, Papa John's and endless AT&T and AOL "free trial" offers (although I do admit that the free trial CDs make great coasters). This is of course only true if the credit card companies don't have the business sense to use your valuable coupons, and if they did then everyone would be happy.
Consider it an added bonus for your efforts to frustrate the mafia-like credit card companies. They'll do anything short of giving you head to get you to join, and I'm sure they haven't thrown out that idea entirely (Star Trek fans rejoice). Canceling is a ***** because they always try to "cross-sell" when you call in, even when you call to terminate your service. Cross-selling is when credit card or phone companies try to sell you junk in addition to what you ordered because they're greedy *******s and want to charge you as much as they can with every transaction they make. Ever call in to order something over the phone and the representative tries to sell you a service that is "free for the first three months"? That's a cross-sell. They're trying to get you to sign up for some useless service that will be billed to your credit card long after you've forgotten to cancel after your "free" three month trial period. What a crock.
What more: every time you sign up for a credit card, the credit card company gives your name to telemarketers (unless they explicitly state that they don't). Telemarketers then call to sell you a service that the credit card companies pay them to sell to you. That's not even the worst: phone companies sell you services to block telemarketers, then they bypass their own filters to have telemarketers call you to sell you more products from the same company.
So it's time to grow a pair and fight back. If you've ever been annoyed with their junk mail, send it back to them with some junk mail of your own. What can the credit card companies do? They only have two options:
1. Stop sending postage paid envelopes--unlikely since they know they'll lose a lot of applications if people are expected to pay for their own postage.
2. Stop harassing you with an endless flow of credit card applications.
They can't do anything about it because this is simply your way of telling them you're not interested, and giving them valuable coupons that could save them a lot of money, so spread the word: junk the junk.
http://maddox.xmission.com/junk_the_junk.html
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I read this and thought, "Wow, why have I not already been doing this?"
And I have a bunch of those application envelopes around, but no coupons
So I rounded up all the granola bar rappers that were sitting around the computer room (along with the stems from a bunch of apples/peaches), and sent those off to them. I hope they enjoy them.
JohnT... you have problems if you're sitting around actually spending time to do something like that just because of some junk mail that takes two seconds to throw away.
