Cutting Down on Catalogs

I’m having some girlfriends over for breakfast tomorrow morning, after the kids go to school, which means that I’m spending most of today straightening up the house.Whenever I have one of these marathons cleaning sessions, inevitably I end up with stacks of mail that I haven’t had the chance to go through in the past week–and which I’ve done a good job of stashing throughout the house. I just picked up a pile from the sideboard in the dining room, another from the table in the entrance hall, yet another off of my husband’s desk, and I’m about to grab the pile in the kitchen by the phone.

I know that clutter busters say that the key to keeping a clutter-free home is to touch paper only once, but we get so much damn mail that it’s damn near impossible to touch the mail only once–meaning dealing with it on the spot. Because of what I do for a living–write for magazines–we get a ton of magazines, usually free subscriptions that I’ve finagled from airline miles I’ll neversuse. I’ll bet that I could open my own magazine library.

Because my husband and I are homeowners in good standing, we also get a slew of credit-card and so-called “mortgage-assistance” letters regularly in the mail. And, because we like to shop online, we get tons of catalogs.

Recently, I saw a Today Show segment (click here to watch it) about a new service called Catalog Choice. Designed to help consumers cut down on unwanted catalogs, it is a “sponsored service of the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California.” (I’m not quite sure who sponsors the Ecology Center, but they seem like all-around good guys since they’re in charge of Berkeley’s curbside recycling program and other good-for-the-earth initiatives in the Bay Area.)

Of course, you might not find the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) qualifying the Ecology Center as all-around good guys. In fact, it seems that the DMA (where I held a staff job in 1992, albeit briefly) considers the Ecology Center and its Catalog Choice program a direct competitor.

You see, the DMA not only offers its own opt-out-of-direct-mail program, called Mail Preference Service, much like Catalog Choice does, but DMA benefits financially from people who participate, in that they charge consumers a dollar for mailing in an application to be taken off of lists. (Registering online is free, much like Catalog Choice is.) Nonetheless, the DMA is trying to be all doom-and-gloom about Catalog Choice, seemingly freaking out consumers with claims that our privacy isn’t being protected if we register with Catalog Choice.

I find these scare tactics a bit over the top, since DMA’s opt-out program requires consumers to enter a credit card number to verify a person’s identity. And, I quote from the website: “The credit card number will be used to authenticate and validate the consumer’s identity through a no-charge transaction. As with many credit card verification programs, consumers may see an authorization pending for 3-7 days, and no charge will be issued to the monthly bill.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t like my credit card number being “out there” like that, though I’m sure the DMA does a solid job of using encrypted software on its site to protect people’s privacy.

I’ve got to get back to my cleaning now but in my next post, I’ll give you the 411 on how Catalog Choice works–and works for me. I’ve got quite a stack of catalogs to go through. I figure since I’m already getting email alerts from the retailers I want to continue doing business with, there’s no need for me to get physical catalogs in the mail anymore. If you’ve already successfully used Catalog Choice, I’d love to hear your feedback.