My 89-year-old mother has been swamped with junk mail for many months, and has tried to stop solicitations by carefully reading everything and then sending notes like this "Here is $7.00. I can't afford this anymore." To her this makes perfect sense and she doesn't understand why she keeps getting more and more junk mail.
I see that her name and address are for sale on at least ten mailing list websites, so the sooner I attend to this, the better.
I waded through about 80 letters and have contacted almost all of them, some with a letter, others via phone calls, but most of them got emails from me. Good grief, I hope this works.
Many of these organizations are nothing more than predators of the elderly. Especially reprehensible is "Americans for One Language," whose correspondence is shockingly hateful. Circled in red on one of their letters was this sentence:
Mobs of Mexicans? And what's up with the Emily Dickinson-style of capitalization in this letter? The self-righteous money-sucking bastard needs English lessons himself.
On behalf of my mother I wrote a special request to Americans for One Language:
On behalf of my mother I wrote a special request to Americans for One Language:
Por favor, elimine me de su lista de correo.
If that doesn't help get her off of their list, I don't know what will.
UPDATE: February 2013. It's two years later. The only thing that helped was to change her phone number and put that number on do-not-call lists. The mail gets intercepted by a health care worker who tries to get to the mail box before my 91 year old mother does, not always an easy task. My mother still feels as though she is "doing business" with these ridiculous money suckers. She is so forgetful that she doesn't remember from one day to the next if she's written a check. Luckily almost all of the mail gets checked now, either going in or coming out.
Good luck with all of that. My husband's grandmother was scammed that way, they got her credit card number and billed her monthly. Fortunately, my mother in law took notice before too much damage was done.
ReplyDeleteMom, you rock.
ReplyDeletelove,
Jessica
Ha ha! Well done, you.
ReplyDeletePreying on people who are just trying to do the right thing is the worst. What a bunch of dicks.
So I have supposedly taken her off of all of the mailing lists, put her on the national no-call list, and contacted the national direct marketing association. The onslaught of mail will take 3 months to dwindle away because the direct marketing people prepare and stamp mail that far in advance.
ReplyDelete