In Pursuit of Less Junk Mail

I love to read, and I really enjoy a number of periodicals that contain good information and news and interesting content. What is distressing is the vast amount of unsolicited, unusable, and from a general sense “undesirable” junk mail that also comes my way. There is no doubt that advertisements for fast food and hardware are less glamorous in scope than the multi-million dollar ad campaigns generated for countless industries interested as much in manufacturing my desire for their products as they are in making the products in the first place. What is facing me constantly is the landfill factor or constant recycling demanded by the sheer volume of material. Why should a company send dozens of copies of their monthly catalogs to the same address? Is there a benefit to them in doing that?
Back in the days of infinite credit offers, I kept a stack of the “imitation credit cards” that came with the offers. In less than a year I had more than 100 cards. All of them suggested that I was “pre-approved” for their offers; which in bank speak means, I can apply. The fact is I just don’t care to have a credit card with frequent flyer points that requires an interest rate above the average in order to also be able to have a logo from my college alma mater that will get some infinitely small contribution if I should sign up.
Sales gimmickry is as close to a magician’s slight of hand as we can get these days. The fine print is ever more maddening when you realize that your recently used discount coupon also enrolled you in an “automatically deducted” or “billed to your account” something that you never wanted and will now require your spending two hours canceling while trying to talk to a machine that requires you to punch through fifteen number sequences before finding out that there is no human being home to talk to.
I spent 30 minutes one evening trying to explain to a person from another distant country that I was not interested in the free $1000 of life insurance that was mine because I had a certain account. What she could not understand is why I wanted to cancel it before I received the free year, knowing that a year later, when the charge for the monthly service rose to a very high rate and would automatically be billed to my account that would again hide the charge in the fine print…I would likely have already been billed one or two months in advance before noticing the extra charges.
After being responsible for helping my elderly in-laws handle such things for several years, I realized that many of these offers are predatory in nature, because they appear as one thing, only to be discovered later as something else. Those with less than excellent vision, a magnifying glass, and a lot of time will inevitably be “caught” at some time or another.
Retail establishments often use similar means. The buy one, get one at half price will only be a 5% difference than the frequent 20% off on certain days offer, but you will have bought twice as much as you might have otherwise…and be assured the store profited from your decision.
One day I tried for an entire day to “just say no” to the kinds of things were “baited offers of one sort or another.” It was amazing how much time I saved by not responding to those things that implied I would “get something for nothing.” I did not scratch off for the free year of gas at the gas station with my fill up. I did not go online to check my bottle cap numbers on my soft drink to see if I had won movie tickets. I did not fill out the customer survey on my receipt to be entered into a drawing for a free shopping card. I did not sign up for the discount rate at a national hotel chain if I stayed with them during the next month. I saved a lot of time that day for better things. I also felt empowered to remember and recognize the subtle pressures every day of being lured by something less than quality and value. I learned to ignore what in effect was a subtle but powerfully abusive manipulation of my time. It made me a little angry at the thought of the energy wasted on such nonsense. Perhaps if we all would heed the words of Jesus and remember to pay attention to the present moment for exercising faith in Him, and trusting in who really is our hope…we would glorify God in some visible ways and find our time better spent in service to Him.