Ponderings in a corner of the universe

Join the [JAR] Revolution

You notice many things living in another country. Unless you are mentally limited in some crippling way. You also notice the similarities. This brief post is about one of those similarities, that in the USA is quite different to the UK.

Its easy to forget being in another country where the language is <almost> the same that some things can be rather different. Take junk mail for example. Oh I received it in the UK but nothing, NOTHING, prepared me for the amount of tat that I would have rammed in my mail/post box every single day. Seriously!

What makes up the bulk of these? The “0% APR for the first six months”, the “You’ve Been Pre-Approved” (I enjoy yelping this one at the top of my lungs and proceeding quickly chuckle to myself in self amusement), and of course all of the other credit card applications.

And when I say everyday, my exaggeration could be chalked up to; maybe not getting it once in a while. And like today when I didn’t get one, Marisa received three.

So what’s the revolution all about?

Well it just so happens that every single one of these little packets of rubbish making, earth littering, planet destroying packets (and I’m no eco-warrior) has a return envelope inside. So do you think these credit card companies want you to have to pay (not yet, wait for it, we know they want your cash)… pay for the mail in of the filled in form that will equal them many dollars of profit on your head? Think they would be stingey a stamp on this? No! Of course they wouldn’t.

So how do you join the revolution?

Shred (of course you have a shreader, you do, don’t you?) the stuff with your personal details on. Stuff everything that is left back in the addressed, stamped envelop and stick it in the next mail (post).

Okay, okay. Seems rather pathetic. It might be. But just imagain if every single adult in the USA, at least a million odd right? Ok, even if 50 million of us, six days a week, sent these back to the people who sent them. Event at one a day that’s 15,600,000,000. Or in layman’s speak 15.6 Billion pieces of mail a year. That’s $0.37 (per stamp) each. So not including processing fees and the impact on their processing systems; Almost $6B a year cost to probably 2-3 major credit card companies.

Don’t you think they’d notice that?

Viva la Credit Card Junk Application Resend Revolution (Lets dub it the JAR revolution just for fun).

Disclaimer: If you shred any way, this doesn’t waste that much more time. And again, if we all did it…

And of course there is the opt out way: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8827007/

Someone else who agrees with CC-JAR: http://www.sillyhumor.com/goodidea.html (I must stress this isn’t’ a joke, despite being funny)

Another bunch of crazy people who have similar ideas to this one http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=1006030310980

posted by Matthew Woodget @ 7:08 PM