Thursday, February 12, 2009

You Must Have Patience, Grasshopper

Over a year ago, I posted about getting useless junk mail. I used to get tons of it every day and then I started removing myself from the catalogs' mailing lists. My friend Unnamed had told me about the site Catalog Choice where you can enter in your request to be removed from the mailing lists and then you won't receive those catalogs any more.

Slowly, bit by bit, I received fewer and fewer catalogs every day. It is a mere trickle now. However, the other day I got a notice from Lands End saying they were just then removing me from their list. It has been a year. And, I might still receive some catalogs already in the pipeline.


They suggest that I might appreciate their e-mail newsletter instead. No, that's OK, thanks.

Everything comes to those who wait. Or, in this case, doesn't come any more.

4 comments:

Mama bee said...

I ended up just calling Lands End and asking to be removed from their mailing list. The person I talked to was very nice, and I got the instant gratification of knowing that I was being taken off the list right then.

But Catalog Choice has worked great for me for most catalogs.

Anonymous said...

Hi Laura:

Chuck here from www.catalogchoice.org.
Yes, patience is the operative word. We work everyday calling merchants on behalf of our million members. Good news is that, for the most part, we are successful in getting requests honored. While it takes a longtime to get requests honored from some merchants, once we get their commitment, it is better for all our members.

We are building some new tools to let our members track the progress of their request.

Thanks for your continued support.

Chuck

Laura said...

Hi Chuck.

What a great service you provide. How did it begin? Was it easy to get the merchants to comply?

Thanks for visiting.

Anonymous said...

Hi Laura:

It began at a board meeting of an Environmental foundation when one of the Board members asked if there was a way to stop all the catalogs they get in the mail. Several years later, we have 1.1 million members who we are helping get their mail preferences honored.

Is it easy to get merchants to comply? Great question - some are great, others are getting better and unfortunately, some still don't want to honor requests entered through our service. The short answer is that it has not been easy to get compliance. But we are pushing forward getting more merchants on board everyday. With positive blog posts like yours, our job is much easier.

Thanks,

Chuck

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