ProQuo’s Stop Junk Mail Service Seems to Work
My dislike of unsolicited print marketing messages delivered to my home isn’t limited to the yellow pages. However, unlike the yellow pages, most direct marketers are perfectly willing to allow you to unsubscribe from their mailing lists since they’re smart enough to realize that it’s tough to sell something to someone who doesn’t want your catalog, coupons, etc.
For catalogs, I mostly contacted the companies sending them through their website’s contact forms. That worked well.
And for other forms of junk mail, I signed up with ProQuo. They maintain contacts with direct mail companies, so you can input your contact information once then choose which lists you’re like to be removed from. They have a paid and free service. I use the free one.
Here’s an update I recently received from them:
Overall, I’d have to say that this service works. While it’s tough to directly measure whether ProQuo was responsible for the drop in junk mail we receive, I can say that we receive very little junk mail. In fact, we can often go a day or two without receiving any mail at all.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I’ve been going through the same thing. I started using ProQuo last fall and noticed a definite difference in the amount of junk mail I receive. I recently went through the remaining steps of printing out and mailing in requests to the companies who don’t allow you to unsubscribe virtually (they weren’t offering their one-click paid service at the time). I’ll give it a bit before I see whether that does another round of good but I did receive a return letter from i-behavior, confirming my removal request which was nice.
I wrote a bit about it here: http://glimpsesofsoul.com/blog/2009/02/26/dont-postal-pester-me/
March 12th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Try Catalog Choice for your catalogs. They are doing a great job for us. It is so much more convenient than going to each website. They also provide a record of the confirmation email in my account. Pretty cool that they do this without ever releasing my email address. They have quite an informative blog on the whole process – the good, bad and ugly.
Jim
March 13th, 2009 at 2:40 am
ProQuo.com looks like it hosts or uses the exact same web app that DMA provides (for free): https://www.dmachoice.org
I’ll let you know what happens with the DMA service, it’s only been a week
D
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Greetings from Catalog Choice. I noticed that you mentioned ProQuo on your blog on March 11th on this story about eliminating unwanted mail. We thought you should know that Pro Quo has gone out of business (as of July 2, 2009). As a courtesy to your readers, you may want to let them know that if they had a ProQuo account, they can create a free account with Catalog Choice and set their mail preferences. In addition to catalogs, this fall we will be adding other forms of mail that ProQuo supported, including credit card solicitations, insurance offers, phone books, coupons, and more. Catalog Choice has also launched a digital alternative to the paper catalog — the iCatalog. This is a great way to shop without all the paper. We’ll have more than 100 iCatalogs up for browsing and sharing before the holidays. Just visit http://www.catalogchoice.org/icatalogs. Thanks for passing the info on to your readers!
October 6th, 2009 at 8:01 am
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