Junk Mail

Terry O'Reilly's Age of Persuasion segment on 23 things I'd like to change about advertising is great stuff. An interesting note: his website includes a link to the red dot campaign which suggests that in addition to posting a notice on your mailbox indicating you don't want junk mail, you need to send a note to Canada Post that indicates your wish to not receive unaddressed junk mail (or ad-mail as Canada Post prefers to call it).

 

The note that the red dot campaign supplies for you reads:

Please remove me from all unaddressed mail distribution. This letter, combined with a “No Junk Mail” sign on my mailbox, expresses my wish to stop receiving unaddressed flyers and mail. I understand that it may take a couple of weeks before the database is adjusted and the junk mail stops.
I also understand that Canada Post will still deliver some unaddressed items, such as community newspapers and letters from the House of Commons, provincial and municipal electoral offices and Elections Canada. And I realize that some unaddressed mail comes from distributors other than Canada Post, so I may still receive mail from these other services.

This would be ideal. After listing to O'Reilly's episode, but before I knew about the red dot campaign, I wrote Canada Post a rather testy email:

I understand there is a way to opt-out of unaddressed admail but after searching on your site for 45 minutes I've given up trying to find the form I need to fill out.

I received this response:

Consumers who do not wish to receive unaddressed material should put a note to this effect on their mail receptacle. The note should be placed inside the receptacle in the case of a community mailbox, group mailbox or postal box. As a result of such a note being placed on or inside a mail receptacle at a particular address, Canada Post will no longer deliver the following mail items: free samples, coupons, flyers and newspapers, government mailings, free distribution magazines, catalogues, non-profit and event information. As well, Canada Post will no longer deliver municipal service notices (e.g. schedule of snow removal, changes in garbage pick-up, announcement of town hall meetings). However, since Canada Post is only one of many distributors of unaddressed materials, consumers may continue to receive these materials from other distributors. The only unaddressed materials that Canada Post will continue to deliver to these customers are as follows: community newspapers, as well as House of Commons, provincial chief electoral officers, municipal electoral offices and Elections Canada mailings.

NB, that the list I received from Canada Post is a lot more exhaustive and includes things I would actually like to get, like municipal service notices (it also doesn't say anything about having to send a note to Canada Post which actually makes things easier). Sigh . . . I can't decide if I want to opt-out or not because, as usual, they make you opt-out of so much more than you want.