I have been in contact with CNN reporter Melanie Hickenabout this blog. She is on both the retirement and the Big Data beat. Junk mail is both of those smashed together in a nightmare of pleas for money for everything from saving Social Security, to saving cute fuzzy animals with big eyes. If you want to tell her about your battle with junk mail you can email her at Melanie.Hicken@turner.com.
One of the questions she asked was how much money did she give away? I didn’t know. Her family didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. But for this project, we took a peek. We only went through the last year of her account, before we wrestled the checkbook out of her hands.
Impeach Obama – $600 When we saw this one we shut down the computer and walked away.
Total: $800
Grand Total: $3,740
Those are only the big checks. Not the little $20 ones she sent off to the sweepstakes scams in the Netherlands. Or the ones for cash that were turned into money orders and sent off to who knows where.
After that glimpse it is a good guess to say that she gave away about $100,000. Or most of the value of her house.
I’m not gonna lie the mail can get boring. They send the same mailpiece over and over. They do that because once they find a mailpiece that brings in money they will send it out forever until it stops being effective. It is rare that junk mail has a topical, ripped-from-the-headlines subject.
This week Larry Klayman’s Freedom Watch sent a mailpiece that talks about ISIS. Of course it is trying to scare the money out of you, with the envelope screaming:
ISIS terror cells now on American soil… protect your family: open now!
Thanks Larry, I will just go crawl under my bed now.
Remember America’s Heritage, a project of the Caudill Foundation (Charity Navigator page) run by Kip Caudill. Generally I don’t like to link to Facebook but for Kip I will make an exception. To opt-out call Right Concepts Inc (703) 222-8440
Office of Magister Davids PO Box 3 NL 1693 ZG Wervershoof Netherlands
Immuno Corp, Aleksander Olsen 2340 Mira Mar Ave Long Beach, CA 90815 Immutol by Ralph Wallace
How seven sick salmon, unconventional wisdom, serendipity, and a beer brewery saved an economy, healed the hopeless, and changed the course of modern Immunology. They have an F from the BBB.
Affiliated Opportunities Group (AOG) PO Box 25220 Miami, FL 33102-5220
Carmen Dumas PO Box 1061 NL-3600 BB Maarssen Netherlands
4 pre-paid envelopes stuffed and ready to go
Only 1 form 1500 this week. It is the scam from Miami.
I didn’t think that I was going to write an entry this week. I had no junk mail from May 9th to May 17th. It was the 8 best days I have had in 2 months. No giant stacks of mail in my arms, as I trugged back to the house from the mail box. No paper cuts, or getting stabbed by my letter opener. It was wonderful.
Then on Saturday the mail man dropped 30 pieces of mail on me. I consider this a victory. I was expecting the mail to get better the week of May 19th. The fact that it got better a week early is great.
The best pairing of the week was definitely Rand Paul and Al Franken.
As if you needed more prof that this lady’s mail is very messed up. No one should be getting mail from both these people at the same time. And yet here we are.
As for the rest of the political junk mail, take a look:
Awww, the FRC is reduced to 1 piece. How the mighty have fallen. Opt-out here: FedofRespCitizen@aol.com.
Americans for One Language a program of the American Service Council, inc, opt out here office@americanservicecouncil.com. Or better yet opt out form their direct marketing firm Response Unlimited
We have a new winner for most junk mail in one week. It was a hard fought battle, there being only one day of competition and all.
3 from Diversified Marketing Group, I knew they had it in them. Opt out here info@divmarketgroup.com.
Update: Don’t bother with the e-mail it won’t work. Instead fill out a form 1500 to make them stop.
On the international scam seen we have all our favorites from the Netherlands
The one from Zetten came by way of China, PO Box 1000102 Beijing
On the US scam front
Topeka KS and St. Louis MO continue to send the most stuff.
Only Planned Parenthood had a pre-paid envelope. But I had 3 hits on duplicate scams from the US. I only send out from 1500’s if they send me 2 or more. I then keep the duplicate return envelope as my record.
This week the junk mail went back down to normal levels of craziness, only 124 pieces. I’m starting to be able to tell that all the emails I have sent out are having an effect. I only got 4 letters from The National Center for Public Policy Research. When you consider that I was getting 8 in one week, before I contacted them that is a drop of 50%. I will take what I can get.
Let’s do the rundown of this weeks biggest spammers Citizens Against Government Waste. Wiki Page, Source Watch page, Charity Navigator page 2 stars (they are a 501(c)3). Oh the sweet, sweet irony of someone who is against waste, sending me 2 junk mail letters in one day, is so delicious.
Freedom’s Defense Fund, Open Secrets page Jerome Corsi. Salon article also about a ring of PAC’s that all have the same treasurer in common: Scott Mackenzie. Who works for Base Connect “direct mail fundraising company”. Opt-out here info@base-connect.com
The National Center for Public Policy Research. Only 4 this week. That is a 50% drop since I stared keeping count. Opt out here: info@nationalcenter.org, with the subject header “Delete from Solicitation”
And this week we have a new winner of the most junk mail in a single week:
16 from Policy Issues Institute
In the Junior Division
Only one from Annette Bosworth this week. So sad. I need more glossy photos of her kids running around with baskets of vegetables. I know you are wondering why Sarah Palin‘s SarahPAC is in the Junior Division. She is not running for office, but her PAC donates to baby politicians just getting their start. Or she is supposed to, the PAC isn’t run very well. The Daily Beast did a nice write-up on SarahPAC and how it handles it’s money. Opt-out here.
23 charities some good, a lot bad.
11 international scams
18 scams from the good old US of A
including 2 of scams from St. Louis MO. My new #1 city that is sending me scams right now.
Here are the left overs
17 envelopes stuffed, sharpied, duct taped, and ready to go.
I also sent off 14 form 1500’s to the Pricing Classification Service Center in New York.
Here is this weeks big box of junk mail, 154 pieces in all.
Noooo! Stop sending me junk mail!
NO! No no no! How could this happen? I have been pounding the keyboard for a month to make the junk mail stop. How could I go backwards, and get 154 pieces in one week?! It is like I have kicked an angry hornet’s nest of junk mail.
This is what my mailbox looks like everyday.
How could you 2 let me down? I was counting on you to keep the mail away.
The biggest set back I had was, I got the official paperwork back for the first few USPS form 1500’s I sent out. It doesn’t work on foreign mail, only mail from the USA. Darn it. 22 out of 38 this week were from either The Netherlands or Australia. Now I will just focus 100% on US based scams. Look out St. Louis MO, there are lots of form 1500’s coming your way.
Let’s run down the biggest junk mail senders this week:
Tea Party Patriots. (Wiki page) It is time for her to renew her membership. Sorry guys that ship has sailed. You aren’t getting any more money from her. The other one wants John Boehner to resign. That has to be the worst photo of John Boehner ever. I couldn’t find the original, but the flag he is standing in front of is huge. The stars are the size of his head.
16 from Federation Of Responsible Citizens. Opt-out here: FedofRespCitizen@aol.com. I wanted to make sure everyone saw the large envelopes this week. They are usually buried under all the smaller mail
The week of May 19th can’t come fast enough.
The junior division is getting feisty. Both Annette Bosworth and Ben Carson are mad I didn’t feature them enough last week, so they sent me more stuff.
Annette sent me the same letter and blow-up of a camera phone photo, that she did last week.
But now I can show you the taking points on the back of the photo. This week she compared people who receive food stamps to wild animals in National Parks. I hope who ever is paying for all this expensive mail gets their moneys worth when she is elected.
Ben Carson, I mean the people who have nothing to to with Ben Carson, but are asking him to run for president, have stepped up their game.
I now have a Teen Beat style Pin-up poster of Ben. That is like so cool, I will totally like put it up next to all the like old NKOTB posters in my like bedroom. Like.
Jordan is like so dreamy
15 Charities
Lots of note cards and address labels were included this week. They will come in handy for stopping scam junk mail.
38 scams
16 of them are eligible for a USPS form 1500. And I just went to Costco and got a 100 pack of stamps. Bring it on scammers.
Here they are 17 pre-paid stuffed, sharpied envelopes.
I wrote a special note for the fine folks at Run Ben Run. That group is headed by John Phillips Sousa IV. His great-grandfather wrote this little ditty:
It was quite the hit at the time. Just imagine that I wrote to Blue Ivy and told her that her mom’s song “Single Ladies” sucked and you get the idea. They had better stop sending me stuff, or next time I will say something mean about Stars and Stripes Forever :-O
Here are the leftovers from this weeks 154 pieces.
I am giving offerings to Our Lady and St. Rand. Hopefully it will be enough to keep the mail away this week.
It looks like my prayers to St. Rand Paul the patron saint of junk mail, and our Lady of Blessed Contribution Dr. Annette Bosworth worked. I got ten fewer pieces of junk mail this week – 124 🙂
I got 2 from everyone’s favorite front group for Big Pharma 60 Plus.
Thank you for your generous donation to my “Stop Junk Mail Fund” it will be going to stamps and envelopes to stop scam junk mail.
4 with a similar look and PO boxes in Houston TX. OMG one of them is The Western Center for Journalism run by Floyd Brown! How many of these things does he have his fingers in?
And this week’s the winner of the most junk mail sent by one 501(c)(4) is:
16 from Federation Of Responsible Citizens. Good job guys! Opt-out here: FedofRespCitizen@aol.com
In the junior division we have these people running for office:
Come on Dr. Annette Bosworth only 2 in one week? You need to step up your game, if you are going to play with the big boys. Ballotpedia page
12 charities. It was a big week for blind kids and horses.
30 scams.
It was a tough week to pick out the worst of the worst. For most of the week it was scams from St. Louis MO leading the pack. They combined a fake lottery with a fake charity.
Very dirty stuff. But then at the last moment this arrived:
I know what you are thinking, just another scam fortune teller. Let’s take a closer look, The exterior return address is 1250 Valley Brook Ave. #102 Lyndhurst, NJ 07071. But the Return envelope is PO Box 451 Oxenford Qld 4210 Australia.
And it came with this:
You are supposed to fill it out with at least $50,00 and send it back. I don’t know exactly what happens after that but it can’t be good.
This week’s aftermath:
Not nearly as good as last week. Let me show you why
Only 9 envelopes with pre-paid postage. Once I get conformation from each group that they are going to take my address out of their system, I stop stuffing and mailing their pre-paid envelopes. I am saving them though, just in case the mail doesn’t stop.
The form 1500’s this week go to 2 people, remember I only send these to the most thirsty scammers of the week.
One is going to my second favorite city in The Netherlands: Bilthoven. The other is going to Linden NJ.
I will continue to prey to St. Rand Paul the patron saint of junk mail, and our Lady of Blessed Contribution Dr. Annette Bosworth. Here’s hoping for 114!
This one took some doing. The website for Federation Of Responsible Citizens (FRC) is terrible. The one page I needed to work is the “Contact us” page. Click on it. All I get is a string of HTML code. I had to dive into the depths of Google to pull out the magic e-mail address that would stop the flood of letters from them every week: FedofRespCitizen@aol.com. At first I thought it would be dead because of the aol.com domain. But lo and behold this morning I got a reply from Denise Singleton that I was off the mailing list 🙂
but it may take up to 8 weeks to cycle out of the system 😦
The web is woefully bereft of information on Federation of Responsible Citizens (FRC) and Denise Singleton. She doesn’t even have a wiki page. Well good for you Denise Singleton. I suppose when you run a junk mail mill that scares old people out of their money, it is good to fly under the radar.
Here is the list of all the of Federation of Responsible Citizens (FRC) groups that are all connected:
American Federation of Senior Citizens
National Campaign to Guarantee Social Security
National Committee
National Campaign to Impeach Obama
National Senior Action Council (NSAC)
Political Headquarters
Letter head for each group
Here are some examples of the return envelopes from the FRC. They will all have “A Project of FRC” under the big headline name on the return envelope.
Last week I estimated that I received about 120 pieces of junk mail. This week I actually got 134 pieces. From the smallest post card to giant manila envelopes with photos of Rand Paul.
Here is a recap of the junk mail this week:
8 from the NCPPR
Opt out here: info@nationalcenter.org, with the subject header ‘Delete from Solicitation’.
4 from Citizens United
Opt-out here: info@citizensunited.org
Who can forget the 10 mailers from Global Reporting Network
Opt-out here: info@divmarketgroup.com
and 35 scams of one kind or another
These guys will all be getting Post office from 1500. 2 or more mailers in one week from the same address is an automatic smack down.
That little post card drives me nuts. It is ugly, and they send one every week.
4 from this one PO Box in Doorn The Netherlands
3 from one PO Box in Fort Lee New Jersey
and 2 from Providence, Road Island
Here they are all 6 wrapped up and ready to go. (Sorry I forgot to take photos of 2 of them)
This is what I started out with on Saturday morning
134 pieces of mail
Here it is all stuffed and ready to go in 20 pre-paid envelopes.
I found an old roll of duct tape in the garage so I used that to seal everything up (every ounce counts). Note the big USPS envelops. They have easy open tabs on the sides, I duct taped over them, just to be extra mean.
My new patron saint of junk mail, Rand Paul guards over what is left of this weeks junk mail. It is mostly exterior envelopes that were awkward sizes that didn’t fit nicely into larger envelopes.
I will pray to St. Rand this week, in hopes that there will be less junk mail.
Remember the other day when I said that I was going to let the American political junk mail go for a while. Well, I lied. Everyday I do more research and find out more about the junk mail industry.
When I was writing about The National Center for Public Policy Research I accidently tossed in a group that wasn’t theirs. How? It looked and was formatted exactly the same except for some small print under the group’s name.
I have highlighted the different parent groups in green. They are:
White House Watch A project of Policy Issues Institute (Can not find anything about this group except a brief mention on Floyd Brown’s wiki page.)
Something they do have in common (I can not prove Policy Issues Institute but I strongly suspect) they share the same print shop Response Dynamics Inc. “We are everything you need for direct mail success!” Wiki page. I still don’t know who makes their mail.
Here a nice story from 2005 about American Federation of Senior Citizens from Raw Story.
2 letters from Policy Issues Institute Floyd Brown’s group Policy Issues Institute: United States Health Congress, and White House Watch. TheWhiteHouseWatch.com is broken. The only website connected to this group that I could find is Impeach Obama Campaign. I think he runs WesternJournalism.com. So I sent a note to the Contact Us page. I also sent an e-mail to Citizens United a SuperPac he founded. Their e-mail is info@citizensunited.org. Hopefully it works.
Let’s end on a happy note. It is Publishers Clearing House season (Wiki page). At the end of April they will give out their prize. If you would like to opt-out of their mailing list do it here
Drowning in Junk Mail 