You’ll recall that a few weeks ago I wrote rather enthusiastically about Catalog Choice and how it was going to help cut down on the amount of catalogs showing up in my mailbox–and therefore cut down on the amount of paper I had to recycle. For awhile there I thought it was working, but now the catalogs are back and showing up more than ever. In fact, in today’s mail alone, I received two catalogs from companies I’d never done mail-order business with.
So I checked in to my account on Catalog Choice and discovered something quite surprising: of the 18 catalogs I’d entered, in a month’s time only three had confirmed that they’d taken me off of their list. The other 15 were still “unconfirmed.” Never mind the fact that one of the catalogs that showed up in today’s mail was from one of these “confirmed” companies.
You see, Catalog Choice categorizes your “take me off your list” request in four ways:
- Processing: We’re currently communicating your opt-out to the merchant.
- Confirmed: The merchant has confirmed receipt of your opt-out.
- Unconfirmed: We’re waiting for confirmation from the merchant.
- Refused: The merchant has refused to honor your Catalog Choice opt-out.
Even though this one company sent me a catalog today, Catalog Choice says that I have to wait another whole month before I can attempt to opt-out again. Basically, it seems that it takes up to three months for your opting out to “stick,” if it sticks at all.
Obviously, this website is not the panacea that I’d hoped for. However, for the time being, visiting one website to enter my opt-out options is much more efficient than calling each of these companies individually. I’ll give Catalog Choice until the beginning of April, and then I’ll have to figure out what my Plan B is.
In the meantime, I’ve had people write to me to let me know about other one-stop, junk mail-stopping services. The one below is free, though I haven’t tried it, so can’t vouch for it. Despite all that you might want to check it out.
* ProQuo.com: Here’s the blurb they sent to me. “With a few clicks, consumers can select the marketing mail they do want to receive, while stopping the junk mail they don’t want to receive. ProQuo has done all the research for them and provides easy steps to putting an end to the overflowing mailbox…all for free.”
I know that there are other companies that help you to get off lists, and some of these charge a fee. If you’ve had good luck with something other than Catalog Choice or ProQuo, let me know by posting a comment below.
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