My response to American Corporate Marketing Schemes

After seven or eight months of phone calls and mail congratulating me on my "new arrival", I got fed up today when a package arrived on my doorstep via UPS containing infant formula. Last year I signed up for a free subscription to American Baby magazine for my sister when they were in the process of buying a new house (which is why I didn't simply send the magazine to her address). I had no idea I would be inundated with so much marketing crap!



May 24, 2007

Meredith Corporation
Opt-Out Postal
Attn: Circulation
1716 Locust Street
Des Moines, Iowa 50309


Dear Circulation Supervisor:

I am outraged by the amount of mail I am receiving for signing up for a free subscription to American Baby. What makes the outrage worse is that I am not preparing for the birth of a "beautiful baby girl or boy". Nor am I expecting a little "bundle of joy" which your advertisers and money-grubbing cohorts use as teasers in the various flyers, letters, coupons, samples, and other marketing gimmicks they send to me. I am not about to have a child at all and yet, almost every single day I am reminded of that fact by the myriad of companies you have sold my name and address to.

Thank you very much for the aggravation you have caused me. Consider this my OPT-OUT letter to remove my postal address from your profiteering database. It is shameful how companies today give no regard to the private lives of the people who seek their services. No matter what is happening in our personal lives, we consumers are expected to go out of our way to OPT-OUT of being USED by your company. Shame, shame, shame on you.


Regrettably,


{signature & postal address}



CC: Herbert Baum, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Meredith Corporation