Indeed, this is an old hack - when I was a kid, I asked my Mom if most of the family was Democrat or Republican. She told me that my grandfather, who was once an Indiana state senator, used to get fundraising letters from Republicans and would fill the business reply envelopes with gravel from the driveway before mailing them back :)
A related hack (and/or fraud?) - every month, the company that manages the apartment I rent sends me a bill in the mail. They send it to me in an envelope with a stamp, but they always place the stamp a couple inches below the top-right corner. This way, the cancellation machine misses the stamp, leaving it unmarked, allowing me to pry it off and use it to mail my rent check back to them! They must have gotten tired of the "I couldn't find a stamp!" excuse for late rent payments. Though perhaps if they took the time to invest in a modern e-payment system it wouldn't be an issue in the first place...
Doesn't work when you have persistent companies who won't take the hint and stop mailing you even after being on that list and even after calling them and even after replying to the twelfth or so missive saying you're not interested.
I had to take this tack with Good Sam (an RV "services" company, insurance and maintenance and such) who wouldn't get lost. Once after about 3 or 4 instances of being told to GTFO, they sent me this large manilla-envelope thing with a similarly sized reply envelope.
I shredded everything but the reply envelope into confetti, emptied my shredder (few days worth of stuff) into the envelope, threw a few pennies in there to increase the weight, and wrote on a sheet of paper "TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST".
Haven't received anything since then. Perhaps coincidental, perhaps not, but so very satisfying.
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Back in the day, people would use business reply mail to get a small amount of revenge on companies that wronged them.
1. Wrap a cinderblock in brown paper
2. Tape a business reply envelope to the top of the package
3. Drop off the package at a mailbox or post office
4. Recipient pays first-class postage
I don't know if it's true, but I heard of people mailing used truck tires and big boxes of rocks or bricks this way.
Probably wouldn't work today, since anti-terror regulations require identification for packages above given dimensions.
Indeed, this is an old hack - when I was a kid, I asked my Mom if most of the family was Democrat or Republican. She told me that my grandfather, who was once an Indiana state senator, used to get fundraising letters from Republicans and would fill the business reply envelopes with gravel from the driveway before mailing them back :)
A related hack (and/or fraud?) - every month, the company that manages the apartment I rent sends me a bill in the mail. They send it to me in an envelope with a stamp, but they always place the stamp a couple inches below the top-right corner. This way, the cancellation machine misses the stamp, leaving it unmarked, allowing me to pry it off and use it to mail my rent check back to them! They must have gotten tired of the "I couldn't find a stamp!" excuse for late rent payments. Though perhaps if they took the time to invest in a modern e-payment system it wouldn't be an issue in the first place...
It didn't work then either. You were just annoying the postal workers.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/566/can-i-mail-a-br...
Looks like this trick still works in the UK, as people are sending bricks and other flotsam to the UKIP's freepost address.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/people-are-wasting-ukips...
And in Utah, 80,000 bricks were sent through the mail to build a bank.
http://www.stampsofdistinction.com/2008/07/bank-that-was-sen...
But it'll still work if I stuff the envelope full of crap, right? Along with, of course, a politely worded request to take me off their list.
If your intent is just to stop getting junk mail, this will do it: https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php
Doesn't work when you have persistent companies who won't take the hint and stop mailing you even after being on that list and even after calling them and even after replying to the twelfth or so missive saying you're not interested.
I had to take this tack with Good Sam (an RV "services" company, insurance and maintenance and such) who wouldn't get lost. Once after about 3 or 4 instances of being told to GTFO, they sent me this large manilla-envelope thing with a similarly sized reply envelope.
I shredded everything but the reply envelope into confetti, emptied my shredder (few days worth of stuff) into the envelope, threw a few pennies in there to increase the weight, and wrote on a sheet of paper "TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST".
Haven't received anything since then. Perhaps coincidental, perhaps not, but so very satisfying.