• Chase (Ink Cash Business Card)
• Comcast (six mailings in the eight weeks)
• TCG (Theatre Communications Group)
• Hendrick Honda
• Community OWL (Form 1500 filed with the Post Office)
• Best Pick Reports (a huge waste of money for this catalog report about local home services).

I also am receiving junk mail from the Domain Registry of America again. I can’t believe I haven’t written about them before. DRoA sends out junk mail that looks like an invoice for your domain name registration. It is a scam! While the mailing itself is legal, it is also targeted to make it look like the bill is for services you’ve already agreed to. The fine print acknowledges that if you pay the bill, you are actually transferring your domain name from your current registrar to DRoA. Their rates are horrible, anything over $10/year and you are paying too much! I’ve had several clients pay the bill and then I’d only find out what happened when I get the transfer request via email. I think I’ll need to file a Form 1500 on them as well.

On a positive note, I have stopped receiving the The Washington Post/PostPlus mailer. Call 202-334-7730. You’ll get the voice mail for a gentleman who works at the Post. Be polite, leave a message with your mailing address, and the mailings will stop in about two weeks.

So I visited Vistaprint, and tried to log into my account, the one that was closed. I spent a good amount of time with a Vistaprint customer service representative back in April, and told him to close my account. Well that really worked. I guess I now need to worry about my address getting further sold. The privacy policy for the motivational speakers says they will market the information they collect. I now get to file a Form 1500 on them.

I’ve now emailed Vistaprint and submitted my request that they close my account. Tomorrow I’ll be mailing them the request. Of course, at this point, I doubt they will really do anything.

Just yesterday my office’s T1 line went down. I call the helpful UUNet number to discover Verizon owns UUNET, or MCI, or whoever the heck it is. I have more important things to do than keep up with the name of the company currently providing service to the service I have had for over 5 years now. It used to be when the line went down (which was rare) I’d call the 800 #, a technician would answer the phone, he could ping my router, and if the ping didn’t work, tada, a ticket was opened.

Now how does Verizon handle the same problem, my T1 is down? The phone is answered by a “customer service representative.” She isn’t helpful. Friendly, but not helpful. She takes down my trouble description. And enters it into some computer. Then an engineer will look at the problem to see if it really is down. Then they will start working on it. I should expect a call back in about an hour. Yes, an hour. Totally unacceptable. It actually took about 90 minutes before I got a callback. Luckily it was fixed by that point. Tough, on Monday I start searching for a new broadband provider.

And yes, the 800# first thing says to try to get help on their web site. The same thing they say when I called in about my DSL being down a few months ago. I hate systems that are created by someone that doesn’t use the system.

If you prefer not to receive future promotional mailings of this type from Microsoft, please send this mailing back to the sender with the following text visible to the recipient: “return to sender” and “unsubscribe me from your list.” We will promptly update your contact preferences; however, please be aware you may still receive previously initiated promotional communications.

The sender? That would be “Microsoft adCenter.” The nice letter was signed by a Corporate Vice President, Joanne Bradford, should I mail my note to her?

Why can’t they simply set up a web page somewhere at microsoft.com to allow me to opt-out? There is already a unique code on the inside of the mailing, which is also on my address label printed on the envelope. I’m so sure that MS has a staff of people waiting to go through dozens of opt-out requests. Or they could hire one programmer (I’m sure they have some out there somewhere that aren’t busy screwing up Vista and Office 200x) to spend a couple days to integrate their address label system with an opt-out system.

They also helpfuly tell you to opt-out with the Direct Marketing Association to help reduce your junk mail. Why don’t they do everyone a favor and simply respect people’s privacy and NOT SHARE SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION? My opinion of MacWorld has gone down slightly, although my opinion is slightly helped by them providing opt-out information fairly easily.

I just got some junk mail from the University of Phoenix. It was sent to me at work, with one the web sites I manage as the company name on the address label. Wow, I am so excited! I can now get my Bachelor’s degree. Wow! I guess my Masters Degree doesn’t count for anything. What a lame company, to manualy scrape web sites looking for recruits, and totally ignoring the facts that were right in front of them. Idiots. Everyone raise your hands if you got your degree through a school you learned about through junk mail. 7b1d91231a87fb75e0054e886a0dea57

I also emailed one of these companies to get their address. Their web host is so screwed up, their email bounced with relay errors. you have got to love junk mailers, they are so close to the competence levels of spammers. Maybe a junk mailer bred with another junk mailer to give us spammers?

The Post Office though will give me the mailing address of the Bulk Permit owner. But it will cost me $4.40. Let me get this straight: First I have to get this garbage in my mailbox. Then I have to pay the USPS to get the address to complain about. Then I have to pay postage to mail the forms into the Post Office.

And then I discovered as I was filling in the opt-out form, the USPS gave me someone else’s mail! That must be against the law! I hope no one is getting my mail.

And isn’t it amazing that Comcast sends their spew from mailing addresses all across the country?

Luckily, I was able to get a prohibitory order againt AT&T from sending me more of their garbage.