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.
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
I call the 1-800 numbers and ask to be removed from their mailing lists. It is the most direct and efficient way. No middle men.
Most companies tell me I will receive 1-3 additional catalogs since they have already been printed/en route.
Hang in there. I knew Catalog Choice was making a difference for me by the end of the third month. As of now, 20 confirmed merchants are consistently honoring my opt-out requests.
I’m still receiving mailings from unconfirmed merchants, but the Catalog Choice team is hard at work on that. They are adding more company accounts by the week. It’s a massive project to coordinate, and I don’t see any evidence that anyone’s doing it better than Catalog Choice. I bear no ill will toward ProQuo.com, but I didn’t sign up for their service because they are funded by venture capitalists, and their business plan appears to be dependent upon members eventually opting in to advertising (see ProQuo’s FAQ page). Their PR person, Carly, has been monitoring blog posts about Catalog Choice and has spammed a number of them with a copy-and-paste message to try to get a bit of buzz going.
On the plus side, ProQuo.com aims to cover a broader range of opt-outs than Catalog Choice.
Leah:
This is Chuck from Catalog Choice. First, thanks for taking the time to enter your opt-out requests at our site. We designed it to be an easy to use site.
Second, the service we are providing – delivery of your opt-out request in a convenient format for the merchants to honor – is working, as Tracy says. While we have faced lots of resistance from the industry (DMA told merchants to “JUST SAY NO” to our service and others), we are adding more merchants every day.
What we are experiencing right now is that some merchants are simply ignoring the request that we are sending on your behalf. We believe that this strategy is intended to erode your confidence in our service and go back to business as usual where you have to call each merchant to opt-out.
We know there are other services on the internet that do the same thing we do. You should know that no one has more consumers and more clout with the merchants than we do. We are in discussions with the top executives in the industry and we are making excellent progress getting their support.
I respectfully request that you stick with us as we continue the hard work of transforming the process of consumer mail opt-out. The systems surrounding Direct Mail that are in place today have been developed over 35 years. It is taking several months for us to change the systems so that you can control what gets in your mailbox.
Remember, they want you to give up. Have faith – we will not stop working for the rights of consumers to be the one who gets to decide what gets in your mailbox.
Thanks for your comments on Catalog Choice. I will give it a little bit more time, and you make sure you keep me posted on any changes going on on your side, too.
I had the same problem you did, after 8 months they all showed “unconfirmed” I currently use the services of MyJunkTree and it works great. I choose the catalogs I want to stop and hit a few buttons and it is done. It most cases I get response directly from the comapny within 48 hours letting me know I have been removed from the list. They do let me know I will probably get one more catalog, due to thier lead time. But after that it is done. I signed up to Remove Junk Mail but I stopped all the catalogs as well. I was even able to stop the phone books I never used.
If you want to do more than just Stop Junk Mail that comes to your home, this site might also be of interest to you. Stopping Free Papers. It is a free service and they help you stop the delivery of all the free papers that are thrown in your driveway. The site is sponsored by MyJunkTree and it is totally free!