I know this is O/T but I hope you can bear with me.
Charter Communications (a cable company) has me on their junk mail list and tells me that they CAN NOT take me off it.
I know that there is someplace that I can write to and be removed from all junk mail lists but MY point is that Charter put me on their list so THEY should take me off, if I ask them.
They don't have my name on the junk mail, just 'current resident'.
Have any of you good people taken issue with a company under these circumstances?
Can I sue them for harassment in small claims court, for instance?
Oh, yes they can. Tell them you consider it to be continued harassment, and that if they do not 'cease and desist' immediately you will file charges. Follow up if they do not do so.
You can sue anybody for anything -- the question is "will you win?" Several states and the feds maintain "do not call" phone lists [but don't enforce them]. AFAIK there are no enforcable "do not mail lists" but contact your state attorney general's office.
In a nutshell this describes the problems of American business -- how do you expect to make sales by p***ing people off? We have fragmented the functions to the extent that for this manager the sole business objective is sending out flyers( but if is what he is rated on who can blame him?)
Sounds like time to, at a minimum, find a better ISP.
I don't get much if any junk mail, and I never did understand why. At least it costs them something to sell, unlike spam which uses the equipment and bandwidth that _I_ pay for.
Dunno. I'd google for "junk mail lawsuit" and see what comes up.
There are Do Not Call lists that (allegedly) have the force of law behind them, but the US Mail isn't nearly as restrictive. The only lists for Junk Mail I know of are from the Direct Mail Association trade group.
If it comes to 'Current Resident', chances are that they are renting a 'complete mailing list of all valid addresses in the area' from a mailing house. Or they assembled one on their own from Post Office records (or cribbing from the last rental list).
Either way, they can't delete the record for just one customer, or it ruins their "complete list". How will they know when you move out, and someone who might want to be a customer moves in?
The only time I can see them taking an address off the list is for a non-occupied building - maybe. They have a mailbox at the curb for the "clubhouse" at one of the Condo HOA's I do work at, since the building has an assigned address (and the House Power meter for the streetlights and pool filters).
The box is regularly found stuffed full to overflowing with "Occupant" Junk Mail that nobody will ever read, to the point where the door won't close and it all gets moldy. (Needless to say, all official mail for the Association goes to the Property Management Company or a rented PO Box.
No, I just warm up the ol' crosscut paper shredder, let it crunch their expensive four-color printing into pretty confetti, remind myself why I never want to do business with those crooks ever again, and then get on with my life.
You can try - What are your actual damages? (The judge might give you a judgment for $10, but you'll waste a LOT of time to get there.)
Of late we've been bombarded by junk mail from Capital 1. In this case, they include a pre-paid return envelope. My understanding is that they must pay 37 cents for the return of each one they receive, so we've been sending them back, individually, but all mailed at the same time, once per week, with only our name and address---by tearing it off the application form (credit card, which we rarely use) giving them the opportunity to remove us from their mailing list. If they don't, we'll continue tossing the junk into the recycling bin (we live in paper country) and watching them spend the investor's money on mailings that are doing nothing more than alienating potential customers. Like you, I'm totally annoyed with these folks. The wasting of natural resources is disgusting.
You'd think that receiving a half dozen returns per week from the same two individuals would provide a message----and maybe it has. For the past week, we've received nothing. They've either decided it costs too much to annoy us, or they're between cycles. Time will tell.
Hell, have some fun with them.......... pack a box of all your shop swarf and send it to their corporate offices. Enclose a note: "Remove me from your mailing list, I'll remove you from mine."
There is a form you can fill out at your local post office that blocks any mail _you_ deem obscene.
There is no definition as to what one might consider obscene so any company you list will be blocked. IOWs, this doesn't just apply to stuff with nekkid bodies.
Naturally, if you do business with them (like purchase cable service from them) the monthly bills will be blocked also.
Maybe an email or letter with content - to Cisco - ask for their search engine kill the email from Charter a major network spammer... :-)
Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
at least one individual was sued successfully for sending a brick (or some such thing) back by return mail to one of these places - so I wouldn't add extra stuff, but you can do two things;
always mail back the post paid envelope - it raises their costs
put inside a note with your address saying you find their material to be obscene and demand to be removed from the list - you must use the word "obscene" - as I recall, there is a federal law requiring that they react if you claim the material to be obscene (of course I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advise)
A while back I made a big mistake with Capital One. I needed a Visa card so I could use BidPay, but I only have a MasterCard. One of the more reputable credit card companies turned me down (I later learnt that they were more fussy than most) so I opened a Capital One letter which promised they'd accept me and filled out the form. A week or so later I received their terms and conditions and decided against getting a Capital One Visa card. Their terms and conditions were full of little clauses which allowed them to charge extra fees. So I chucked the agreement away, and now I get about three times the amount of Capital One junk mail I used to get!
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