I worked at Capital One for a few months, and heard some horror stories. Story goes that when the anthrax/mail scare went around (5, 6 years ago?), a lot of employees were called on to help sort the incoming mail. My manager said she would find bricks, toy trucks, all kinds of stuff attached to the envelopes (either with rubber bands or a tie of some sort).

I thought she was exaggerating, but there were a handful of other people standing around with us who confirmed it because they had helped out too. So apparently the post office has to deliver it, and Cap1 pays for it based on it's weight, not whether it's actually in the envelope!

Except then won't they just raise the rates and fees to the consumer to cover costs?

On some of the prepaid envelopes now, i see a little disclaimer that seems to warn against people "misusing" them. I'm not sure what they can really do though.

Why stick it to the CC companies for a lousy 41 cents? Do what I've been doing for years! I have a little pile of Valpack coupons, etc. by my desk that I save. They fit perfectly into those larger return envelopes. I stuff those envelopes as full as I can, sometime I even have to tape them shut. The CC companies have to pay based on the weight. So if I'm stuffing them that full, I'm guessing it will cost them between $3-4 for each one they receive from me. I get a naughty little thrill every time I do it. I've dumped off as many as 12 at a time at the PO. And under that very scary sounding warning stating that tampering with this envelope might lead to prosecution, I occasionally write "SO SUE ME".

My first thought was that this seemed kind of petty, and a waste of resources.

My next thought was to check Snopes, the urban legend site. (I should have thought of it first; I must be slipping.)

This idea was credited to Andy Rooney and collected on the Internet in 2004, but I was getting it in email "forwards" for years before that, when my friends first started using email for pleasure (as opposed to work only).

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/telemarket.asp

Snopes says:

"Returning junk mail to direct mailers on their dime (by stuffing it back into their postage-paid return envelopes) may cost them some money and provide you with a bit of personal satisfaction, but it won't cut down on the amount of junk mail you receive. In fact, it may actually *increase* your junk mail load, since the primary metric used to gauge the effectiveness of many direct mail campaigns is the number of responses received (even if those responses are negative)."

Lovely. Following the posted trick will only make things worse??

Snopes had SOLID advice as to how to flog the junk mail dead horse:

"The best way to decrease the amount of unsolicited mail you receive is to register with the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) (http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist) Mail Preference Service (MPS). The DMA
maintains a "do not mail" file of MPS registrants which they regularly update and send to their members, who are required to remove the listed entries from their rosters of prospective customers targeted for mailings. (The file is also made available to non-DMA members, but they are under no obligation to use it.)"

They go on to say:

"Taking advantage of the "one-stop" opt-out option [by calling (888) 567-8688 or visiting the (https://www.optoutprescreen.com) Opt-Out Prescreen web site] to prevent the major credit reporting agencies from making your credit information available for pre-approved offers of credit or insurance will also go a long way towards significantly reducing the amount of junk that ends up in your mailbox.

I copied this for anyone not familiar with Snopes and not wanting to look up the information. I personally have called the people at the second place, and have stopped getting credit card offers. The information is given to the credit companies and you ARE removed from the list. (The information was on the envelope I received with one of my mailings.)

For anyone who enjoys writing, here is my favorite, simple research trick, which I learned on planetfeedback.com during a forum discussion: if you're double-checking a fact, go to go to Google (this doesn't yet work with Yahoo!-based search engines) and type

[the key words] site:snopes.com

This will search within Snopes.com (an urban legend megawarehouse!!) for those key words. By typing "site" + colon, followed by a URL looks only within that URL.

If you use MySpace or any community site with bulletin boards, you'll be amazed at how often you'll find out that stories (and, often, Amber alerts) include incorrect data.

This is a TRUE story as I know the person who did it. It happened in 2002.

My husband's roomate in college got a lot of junk mail and often from the same credit card company, even after he had called them to get off their list. So one day he did just what people have mentioned above, EXCEPT he filled the envelope with change... a lot of change. I think it was several dollars in coins (to add weight), sealed it up well and sent it on it's way. Well, to say the least the credit card company was very unhappy about it. I think they even called him to complain about abusing the use of their prepaid envelope. His reply was that he did not want their credit card, had already called to get off their list and if they were going to continue sending him offers, he would continue sending them back stuff in their prepaid envelope. As I recall the representative on the other side was not happy at all, they might even have hung up on him. Anyways, a few weeks letter he got one last piece of mail from the credit card company, it was a check for the amount of change he had sent in the envelope. Hey, at least it wasn't another offer.

I love doing this. I put the heaviest pieces of junk, like cardboard, that I can in those and sometimes write them notes, or ask them to do things for me, like send me a donation for the cat spay/neuter volunteer work I do. I feel they owe me favors and donations in return, because they risk my personal ID security when they send credit card applications in the mail to me. That's not nice. ID thieves love to steal those credit card applications, pre-filled out with your personal information, from mailboxes, just after the mail has been delivered.

They never send donations, however. I never feel their love in return. Sometimes, I get disappointed in people. But I keep trying.

Taping it to a brick supposedly won't work:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_356.html

but I like the idea of stuffing the envelopes as fat as they can get with other pieces of junk mail. Whether or not it stops the problem, it's cathartic.

Used kitty litter.

u know what? u suck.

I sent a brink one time attached to a label, but it was in 1996 so perhaps the laws were different back then. I handed it directly to a postal carrier, he looked at it and shrugged, "Yeah, we can mail this". I have no idea if it actually made it to its destination.

Also, and I can not stress this enough, check out Postal Form 1500, the form to eliminate erotic/obscene mailings. You can actually use this form with any mail that YOU find to fit that category...so basically any mail. It means that it becomes a felony for the person sending you mail to keep sending it to you for something like 7 years. Works like a charm.