I got “called out” on this a little bit ago, but I’m going to explain why I do it and why, at least in my opinion, they deserve it. You can tell me if you think that I’m in the wrong.

So any mailer that I get with a self-addressed, postage paid envelope inside, I put that envelope back out into the mail empty. It costs the sender money, which I figure they deserve, and they get nothing out of it. Why? Let me explain.

There’s a back story here. 2 years ago or so, my wife’s parents both died. My wife is the trustee of their estate, so we went ahead and put in a change of address so we’d get all of their bills and we could handle them. Easy enough, right?

Granted, both of them gave money to a bunch of groups. My father-in-law was a veteran who gave money to all kinds of veteran organizations and the like. My mother-in-law helped fund public radio and things of that nature. Now that they’re gone, no more money is going to be going out. People need to deal with it.

I started out  being really nice. I sent letters to  the first couple of places explaining that they were dead, please stop sending things to my address. In fact, one of the first ones was a veteran’s organization, I can’t remember who it was. Maybe the USO, maybe another one, don’t get mad if I can’t recall exactly which one. I wasn’t keeping track.

We got a nice letter back that said they were sorry for our loss, which is fine, but thereafter, it asked if we wanted to sign over some or all of their estate, and barring that, did we want to take over their “obligation”?

Obligation? Yes, that was the word used. There is no obligation to charitable giving. That letter got ripped up and from that moment on, every single piece of junk mail with a paid return envelope, it went  back into the mail empty. I could fill them with a ton of junk, but that takes more work than I’m willing to put in.

These places don’t have to pay for postage until the return envelope hits the mail stream. Then, they get charged for its usage. As far as I’m concerned, they deserve it.

It’s not like we haven’t tried to make it stop. We went to the Direct Marketing Association and paid the $4 to get it to stop. It doesn’t stop. Granted, the DMA doesn’t control everyone, only the people that are their members and we have no idea who is, but it hasn’t slowed down one bit. It’s endless junk mail, even from people we’ve told to stop. We are on their Deceased No Contact List. It doesn’t seem to matter.

So as far as I’m concerned, fuck these people. If I have to take the time to open these envelopes, they can get charged the idiot tax.

Do you think I’m in the wrong in any of this?  Please explain why, because the person who criticized me couldn’t actually explain why. They just got mad and ran away. That’s pretty typical.