Twelve years ago, I made an effort to cancel the delivery of a free weekly newspaper that I have been receiving for years—and never read. It turned out to be an easy thing to do and they happily took my cancellation.
The delivery of that paper immediately stopped—until I installed my new mailbox!
I understood the confusion because my new mailbox sports a self-contained paper box. The week after I installed it, not only did I receive the newspaper that I wanted, plus the one that I didn’t want, but also a third paper that I’d never seen before!
The third paper never showed up again, while I called again to halt the second paper. Now things were back as they should be.
After I canceled the free newspaper, I was inspired to tackle all the free magazines that I received but didn’t want.
I’ve canceled about ten of them, with more still to do. Some have been easy to cancel, be it a call center or via the Internet. Others were a bit more challenging but glad I did so as my part to help the environment.
Another technique that gives me gleeful pleasure is dealing with the unsolicited offers I receive, especially for credit cards.
Whenever they include a prepaid envelope, I take their offer, write “not interested; please remove me from your mailing list” on it, and return it in their envelope, at their cost.
Generally, that quickly stops the unwanted mailings. (Plus, it provides additional revenue for the post office—which they desperately need. As I recall, they’re projecting a 2.1 billion dollars loss for that year.)
Next was the catalogs. There was a website to make it an easy and painless task.
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Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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