Is There A "Do Not Write" List?

There's a radio commercial running all over the country these days for a company called Lifelock. In the ad, the owner of the place gives you his Social Security number and virtually dares you to do anything nefarious with it. Because he is covered by Lifelock's annual service agreement, his identity is completely protected and is totally immune to fraud. As someone who has had experience with creeps trying to start Nextel credit card accounts with my SS#, I can appreciate the need for it. I remember the time from my NY days when I had to rent a tuxedo for a business function in Manhattan. I held the rental on my American Express card. One month later, my Amex statement showed up and I was very generously paying for some Colombian drug dealer's extensive travel to South America. So, you can definitely see how easily shit can happen. Of course, if you join Lifelock, you will also have nothing but headaches everytime you yourself try to open up a credit account and you are asked to prove that you are you.

One of the alleged side benefits of Lifelock (per their owner) is an immediate reduction in junk mail, most notably with the endless and daily credit applications that clog our mailboxes. Indeed, if American companies were truly devoted to saving our planet, they would immediately curtail the gross waste of paper that goes into this daily postal oversaturation. But, I digress...

If Lifelock can stop this glut of garbage, they might be worth the subscription fee. I would say that 90% of my daily mail intake doesn't even get into my house. I essentially come up from the mailbox and stand by the garbage room as I dump one unopened envelope after another down the trash chute. Of course, these credit card companies (who probably can tie into the surveillance camera in my apartment hallway) have figured this out and have gotten crafty. Now, they hide the fact that they are indeed credit applications.

You will see clean white envelopes with only the words "check enclosed" on the front, as if anybody really will telegraph the notion that they are sending you a check in the mail. There are other envelopes that will give you the semblance of being handwritten, which is true folly these days since no friend has sent me a personal letter in over 20 years.

If you can't figure out that a particular envelope is junk mail, you end up opening it to find this bizarre salutation: "We are writing you this because we have tried unsuccessfully to reach you otherwise."

Huh?

Trust me, folks, I am embarrassingly easy to find. All those telemarketers from India and Pakistan, who are allegedly on my "Do Not Call" list, have absolutely no problem finding me when I am home and eating dinner. If a credit company can't find me, they are incredibly inept. But, I guess they do score a victory. They got me to open the freakin' envelope and, perhaps, a less educated recipient might be truly enticed by the prospect of "zero interest" as they grope with gasoline prices of six dollars a gallon.

So, how do you stop this? Short of signing up every year to Lifelock, which might work only slightly better than that stupid "Do Not Call" list, there are several ways you can combat the junk mail phenomenon. It may not stop the glut of mail, but you can certainly mess with the heads of the senders. I've dipped into all of these retaliations a bit, and, at the very least, they momentarily made me feel a little better.

For instance, I kept getting a mysterious envelope addressed to both Len and Leonard, as if I was keeping a cloning machine in my bathroom. That alone pissed me off and I was doubly annoyed when I found that it was from the local Beverly Hills branch of Jehovah's Witnesses. Perhaps they were one hammer short in the erection of a new Kingdom Hall on Roxbury Drive. Regardless, I ripped up the first letter. When another one showed up two weeks later and it was apparent that the forthcoming Judgment Day had unlimited postage capabilities, I decided to take additional action. I stuck a post-it inside that said both Len and Leonard were debating their religious choices and neither one of them was considering a conversion to Jehovah's Witnesses. I marked the envelope "Return to Sender" and dropped it in a mailbox. As a matter of fact, the "Return to Sender" approach has worked well. Somewhere somehow, people are noting that and updating their address databases.

When credit card offers are particularly annoying, I have been known to fill out the applications with more fiction than Charles Dickens. They are, of course, thoroughly confused to discover that Mamie Eisenhower is looking for a reversible mortgage on her hot dog stand in Compton.

Also annoying is the embedded junk mail in legitimate correspondence. You get your Macy's bill and there are mucho slips of paper for cologne, lingerie, you name it. The easy way to deal with that is to send those right back to them with your on-time payment. They, too, should be aware of that fabulous new scent from Hugo Boss. Actually, those slobs that stuff the envelopes probably need it more than I do.

Of course, my feeble attempts at Guerilla Warfare would not be necessary if we actually had "Do Not Call" or "Do Not Write" lists that really worked. But, for every person like me who dreads the daily opening of my mailbox, there's somebody else out there who is looking for that next great opportunity to further bury themselves in debt.

America. The land of opportunity. And ever-expanding credit limits.

Dinner last night: BLT from Cafe 50's.