GOOD TO KNOW: Spring-cleaning starts in your mailbox

With winter (finally!) over, the time for spring-cleaning has arrived. In addition to cleaning up and sorting through what you already have in your home, there are a few great (and free) ways to avoid future clutter in your home by eliminating unwanted junk mail before it arrives in your mailbox.

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the consumer credit reporting companies (Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, Innovis) are permitted to include your name on lists used by creditors or insurers to make “firm offers” of credit or insurance that are not initiated by you. These are the all-too-familiar “you have been approved” credit card offers and offers for insurance of all varieties that clog up your mailbox.

Fortunately, the FCRA also provides you with the right to opt-out of receiving these firm offers. If you choose to opt-out, you will no longer be included in the lists provided by these four consumer reporting companies. Go to www.optoutprescreen.com or call 888-567-8688 to be removed from the major credit bureaus’ mailing lists for pre-approved/pre-screened credit card and insurance offers. You can register online to opt-out for five years or by mail to protect yourself permanently. (A printable form is available on the Web site and through the mail by phone request.)

In addition to credit- and insurance-related junk mail, you can have your name removed from mailing lists for most other types of unsolicited mail as well. The Direct Marketing Association is a trade group for companies and nonprofits that send advertising mail. At your request, the DMA will remove the names and addresses of everyone in your household from their mailing lists for three years. You can make your request by registering at https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action or by filling out a one-page form (attached) and mailing it to:

Mail Preference Service P.O. Box 643 Carmel, NY 10512

(Unlike the online removal form request, the mailed written request has a small fee of $1.)

According to the DMA, removing your name from their lists can reduce your unsolicited mail by up to 80 percent. The DMA has three general categories: catalogues, magazine offers and “everything else” (donation requests, bank offers, retail promotions etc.). The DMA allows you to decide which lists you do and don’t want your name removed from.

You can request that all three categories of mail from all companies be eliminated. Or you can choose to continue to receive all catalogues but request all magazine offers and everything else to cease. Or you can choose which companies within a category you want to prohibit from sending you mail but allow others to continue.

However, if you have purchased items in the past through a particular company (for example, a particular company’s catalogue), registering with the DMA will not remove your name from that company’s mailing list and you will have to write the company separately to request removal.

Finally, remember that you can also eliminate unwanted telephone solicitations by placing your name on both the national “do not call” registry and the state of Wisconsin’s “do not call” list. Under its authority under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the FCC established, together with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a national do not call registry. The registry is nationwide, applies to all telemarketers (with the exception of certain nonprofit organizations), and covers both interstate and intrastate telemarketing calls. Commercial telemarketers are not allowed to call you if your number is on the registry, subject to certain exceptions.

The registry does not cover the following types of calls: • Calls from organizations with which you have established a business relationship;

• Calls for which you have given prior written permission;

• Calls which are not commercial or do not include unsolicited advertisements (for example: polls, surveys or calls with a political purpose);

• Calls by or on behalf of tax-exempt nonprofit organizations.

You can register your home phone number on the national do not call list either by phone or by Internet at no cost. To add a phone number to the national do not call list via the Internet, go to www.donotcall.gov. To register by phone, call 1-888-382-1222 (voice) or 1-866-290-4236 (TTY). You must call from the phone number you wish to register.

Once you have placed your home phone number on the list, callers are prohibited from making telephone solicitations to those number(s). Your number or numbers will remain on the list until you remove them or discontinue service – there is no need to re-register numbers.

Telemarketers and sellers are required to search the registry at least once every 31 days and drop from their call lists the phone numbers of consumers who have registered.

Wisconsin’s no call list is maintained by the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Adding your name to the list identifies you as someone who does not wish to receive telemarketing calls. It’s free and available for all residential and cellular telephone customers in Wisconsin. Customers can sign up by calling 1-866-9NO-CALL (1-866-066-2255) toll-free in Wisconsin or online at https://nocall. wisconsin.gov/web.registration.asp.

Adding your name to the list should stop most telemarketing calls but there are exceptions for:

• Calls made to an existing customer – for example, calls from: your bank, your phone company or your credit card company;

• Calls made in response to your written or verbal request or permission;

• Calls encouraging you to make a donation of property, goods or services to a nonprofit organization;

• Calls encouraging you to purchase property, goods or services from a “nonprofit organization” unless sale proceeds are subject to Wisconsin sales tax or federal income tax;

• Calls made for noncommercial or political purposes such as polls and surveys.

If you have any additional questions, you may call Pat Hafermann, elderly benefits specialist with the Aging and Disability Resource Center, at (920) 459-4389

Resource: “The Specialist” April 2009