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LEGAL REVENGE AGAINST SPAM SNAIL-MAILERS

The USPS says that you can use a postage-paid envelope attached to any object or package (no dead animals, bombs, etc.) as long as it weighs no more than 72 lbs. . Old tires are great objects to send since the garbage man usually won't take them!!! . You can even tape the envelope to a large rock if you want.....it's all LEGAL.

I have a pile of old tires I need to get rid of ...

Realist

Quoted: www.vertical-visions.com/_temp/postagepaid/index2.html LEGAL REVENGE AGAINST SPAM SNAIL-MAILERS The USPS says that you can use a postage-paid envelope attached to any object or package (no dead animals, bombs, etc.) as long as it weighs no more than 72 lbs. . Old tires are great objects to send since the garbage man usually won't take them!!! . You can even tape the envelope to a large rock if you want.....it's all LEGAL. I have a pile of old tires I need to get rid of ... Realist

Just burn them.  Use the junk mail to start the fire.

Quoted: www.vertical-visions.com/_temp/postagepaid/index2.html LEGAL REVENGE AGAINST SPAM SNAIL-MAILERS The USPS says that you can use a postage-paid envelope attached to any object or package (no dead animals, bombs, etc.) as long as it weighs no more than 72 lbs. . Old tires are great objects to send since the garbage man usually won't take them!!! . You can even tape the envelope to a large rock if you want.....it's all LEGAL. I have a pile of old tires I need to get rid of ... Realist

AWESOME!!!  I just found a way to get rid of yard waste and debris that the city garbage assclowns won't take.

Now I can get rid of the old batteries Waste Management won't take!

Quoted: www.vertical-visions.com/_temp/postagepaid/index2.html LEGAL REVENGE AGAINST SPAM SNAIL-MAILERS The USPS says that you can use a postage-paid envelope attached to any object or package (no dead animals, bombs, etc.) as long as it weighs no more than 72 lbs. . Old tires are great objects to send since the garbage man usually won't take them!!! . You can even tape the envelope to a large rock if you want.....it's all LEGAL. I have a pile of old tires I need to get rid of ... Realist

I've been poking around the USPS site, and I can't find anything there to confirm this. Can anybody point me to a specific regulation or ruling that will confirm this?

I just throw the business reply card back completely blank.

Lord, do you really get that much junk mail?

That trick is at least 30 years old (if not older).

www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_356.html

Dear Cecil:

I read a lot of my "junk mail" with interest, so I'm not trying to end it all. But there are some junk mailers that really annoy me enough to make me want to make them pay, and pay, and pay. What's the best way to do this? The easy way, of course, is to send back their reply envelope ("no postage necessary if mailed in the United States") with no signature, address, etc., which makes them pay the business reply postage. But I keep wishing there was a better way. What if I stuff all the junk material that came with the mailing into the reply envelope, so that it weighs more than will go for the standard 20-cent rate? What if I enclose a sheet of scrap iron, or paste the envelope cover onto a brick? Surely there must be a legal method to make some of these villains think twice before they buy just any mailing list. --Winfield S., Chicago

Cecil replies:

Obviously, Winfield, you're a person who is consumed with cunning and wickedness. In short, you are my kinda guy. Come on over sometime and I'll buy you a brew. Unfortunately, your bricks-for-business scheme, admirable though it is in theory, won't work in practice. According to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual, when a business reply card is "improperly used as a label"--e.g., when it's affixed to a brick--the item so labeled may be treated as "waste." That means the post office can heave it into the trash without further ado.

Once upon a time, they tell me, things were different. Years ago, it seems, postal regulations required that all business reply mail be delivered, whether the cards were affixed to bricks, 2x4s, or hand grenades. Furthermore, the recipient was required to pay full first-class postage (a good buck, in the case of a brick) plus 18 cents handling per piece. However, the direct-mail firms usually worked out a deal with the local postmaster whereby unwanted building materials and whatnot (believe it or not, Win, you're not the first person to think of this) somehow became "lost" (heh-heh), getting the mailing firm off the hook.

The current regulation makes it unnecessary to resort to this subterfuge. But most people don't realize the mailing firms won't get stuck with the tab, so a fair amount of oddball junk still finds its way into the nation's mailboxes. The postal service regards this as a major pain in the neck, and therefore I have been implored to convey to the Teeming Millions the following message: putting bricks in the mail could bring American civilization to its knees. (That's the impression I came away with, anyway.) Also you might be charged with "abuse of the mails."

The postal service suggests the following course of action instead: write the offending mailer and respectfully request that the SOB take you off his mailing list. If that doesn't work, write to the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association, 6 East 43rd St., New York NY 10017, and tell them you don't want to get any more unsolicited (i.e., junk) mail. Every three months the DMA makes up a computer tape that they send around to the major mailing-list companies with all the people who want their names deleted. The drawbacks here are that you can't be selective, you can't do anything about local small-time operators, and if you ever subscribe to another magazine in your life (or, for that matter, buy anything through the mail), your name goes back into circulation.

Incidentally, Win, of the 161,000 people who wrote to the DMA last year, 116,000 wanted more junk mail. They were sent a booklet entitled "How To Get More Interesting Mail" (as God is my witness, I am not making this up), which tells you various key catalogs that you can send for to guarantee you'll be deluged with stuff. Just in case you have a change of heart.

--CECIL ADAMS

I wonder how many of the 116,000 had someone else in mind................

Quoted: I wonder how many of the 116,000 had someone else in mind................

I’d say about 116,000 people who had Ted Kennedy’s home address.

Quoted: I wonder how many of the 116,000 had someone else in mind................

My ex-GF was probably one of those 116,000.

When we were living together she ordered a catalog of free catalogs (for real).

A week didn't go by when there wasn't at least 3-4 catalogs in the mailbox.

You name it... everything from art supplies (neither one of us could draw a straight line if our lives depended on it), to X-mas gifts for pets, and everything in between.

I'm reading the domestic mail manual right now. There is no 917.243(b). I find this odd, as a Google search for this ruling turns up countless forum posts and debunking-type sites that parrot this statement. The USPS has moved to a new numbering system. These guys need to update their sites.

Here's what I DID find:

507.8.4.2 Payment Guarantee The permit holder guarantees payment of the applicable First-Class Mail or Priority Mail postage, plus a per piece fee, on all returned BRM. This includes any incomplete, blank, or empty BRM cards and envelopes and any mailable matter with a BRM label affixed.

Woo hoo! But wait...

507.8.4.6 Intentions of the Permit Holder   BRM may not be used for any purpose other than that intended by the permit holder, even when postage is affixed. In cases where a BRM card or letter is used improperly as a label, the USPS treats the item as waste.

So there you have it. The idea is no good. Any arfcom lawyers care to comment?

I just send the thing back empty, or put a pebble or some hand pulled grass inside.

  Ahhhh…..just do as I do and drop a couple Refrigerator magnets in the envelope. The weight goes up and it is not used as a ‘Tag or Label’. I am always looking for ‘weight’ to put in them. Lead flashing works good too, just cut to fit and away it goes……

What if you put the brick in a cardboard box?  They wouldn't know what was in it then, and it wouldn't stand out as inapporpriate.

I've taped a few to boxes of gravel and I even sent my old brake drums to one mailer.  I've also switched the envelope contents around and dropped them back in the mail that way.  Of course there's no return address and I take the parts with my name and address off so I've never heard anything back from any of them.  My girlfriend used to tell me what a waste of time it was, but it gave me something to do while I was cooking dinner and I got some measure of self amusment out of it so it couldn't be all bad.    

A more effective means of foiling junk mailers is to take junk mail from one advertiser and put it into the postage paid return envelopes of another one.

These mail houses contract their mail opening and processing, which means that the advertiser gets charged with a per envelope opened cost regardless of what it contains.

When people start costing these advertisers in processing costs at an amount greater than what they earn from the response of the advertising, they will quit spending the money to mail dead trees to your house.