I have determined that I have spent an hour a week — so 52 hours over the last year — doing something that has not been at all effective.
Today is the one-year anniversary of this activity, and I have decided to stop.
It started a year ago when a colleague passed on information about a new Web site, Catalog Choice, where you could supposedly enter information about the catalogs you were receiving and Catalog Choice would take care of opting you out of them.
After a year, I have seen no appreciable drop in the number of catalogs my household receives. Catalog Choice has not delivered for a number of reasons (and probably many more that I’m not aware of). First, as one of Catalog Choice’s staff members (Chuck, I believe) noted in the site’s blog, “changing the practices of a $68 billion dollar industry takes time” (that industry being direct-marketing). Second, not all catalog mailers are participating in Catalog Choice. Of the 435 (!) catalogs I’ve attempted to opt-out of 173 vendors have confirmed their participation in Catalog Choice; 222 have neither confirmed nor said they weren’t participating; and 40 have said they are not participating.
Even among those that have said they are participating, I still get catalogs, even when I’ve reported multiple “violations.” One trick some vendors seem to engage in is changing customer numbers. Say I opt out of a catalog for which a certain customer number is assigned to my name. Many vendors theoretically stop sending catalogs to me at that customer number but simply assign me a new customer number and keep sending catalogs. Some vendors who say they participate in Catalog Choice don’t switch customer numbers but nevertheless keep sending catalogs when they’ve pledged not to.
I recently contacted the Sundance catalog people directly. I probably receive a Sundance catalog almost weekly and have faithfully entered the catalog info into catalog Choice each time. Catalog Choice has somewhat recently begun to provide direct links to vendors’ Web sites so one can contact these catalog purveyors directly to request not to receive catalogs. When I wrote to the Sundance folks, they claimed they had never received any requests from Catalog Choice to end my catalog mailings! Sundance might have been covering its posterior, but that claim certainly added to my sense of futility and the 52 hours I’ve wasted on Catalog Choice.
I will say that I have a greater sense of success since I have started to contact catalog mailers directly. I have had responses from most of them telling me they’re removing me from their catalog mailing lists. Whether the catalogs will really subside remains to be seen.
Some vendors have suggested I contact the Direct Marketing Association and have given me its Web and mailing addresses. But it’s unclear what I’m supposed to say to the DMA or what magic words might end my catalog mailings, and the DMA Web site is not remotely consumer-friendly.
Don’t get me wrong … I appreciate what Catalog Choice has been trying to do. I wonder if they knew how daunting it would be to get catalog mailers to cut back. And while I think the exercise of entering catalogs on Catalog Choice’s Web site is currently ineffective, it may not always be that way, and at least I have made some progress through the sites direct links to vendors.
So, on Thanksgiving, a day on which it’s not unusual to think of waste (all that potentially wasted food!), I have ceased to waste my time on Catalog Choice trying to reduce the waste of catalogs that make a short journey from our mailbox to the recycling bin.