Archive for the ‘Member Story’ Category

Tracking Catalog Choice Over The Years: A Member Testimonial

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

We received an email from one of our members, Tiffany Simonsen, who has been tracking the success of Catalog Choice  for her and her family every year since 2007. With Tiffany’s permission, we’d like to share her story with you.

Happy New Year!

This email is to thank you for your great service and share a little bit of the difference you have made for my family.

As part of an education program I was running, I registered my first choice for stopping catalogs on 10/26/2007. I kept track of all the catalogs our house received in November and December. I’ve since transitioned to a different job, but I’ve continued to use your service to help stop the catalog clutter. (I’ve also continued to keep track because I was curious about our progress.)

When going through the catalogs in our mail we separate out the catalogs that need to be entered into Catalog Choice, tear off the necessary information and recycle the catalog. Every few weeks, sometimes once I month, I then login to our account and update our choices.

Each year we’ve been pleasantly surprised to see the number decrease and this year the ‘wow-factor’ was so fantastic, we needed to tell you about it.

Catalogs received during peak holiday mailing season:

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           ’07   ’08  ’09  ’10  ’11
 Nov    97    83   66   55   29
 Dec    42    42   32    26  16

We would have never accomplished this on our own. It takes a little effort and persistence, but it is most definitely paying off. Thank you so much!

Have you been tracking the progress you’ve made with Catalog Choice? We’d love to hear your story as well.

Posted in Blogs, Member Story, Reducing | No Comments »

Member Testimonial

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Our member, Mark Merritt, posted the following testimonial about his experience with Catalog Choice on his Google+ account. With Mark’s permission, I am reposting the testimonial here.

My experience with Catalog Choice over the past 3-4 years:

Four years ago, our mailbox overflowed with catalogs. It was unbelievable. Four years ago, there were more than one hundred different companies sending us catalogs*. Some companies would send multiple catalogs each and every week to more than one of us. One November, we went away for a week and the diameter of the pile of catalogs waiting for us on the floor when we returned was easily five feet across.

Every catalog went straight from the mailbox to the garbage. We couldn’t even recycle that paper. It was (is) a really tragic situation.

About that time, I heard about Catalog Choice which is a non-profit organization with the following stated mission:

“Catalog Choice’s mission is to help people reduce unwanted mail, save natural resources,and protect their privacy.”

I’ve been using their free service now for three or four years and these days we only occasionally get a catalog in the mail.

The process is simple, but takes a bit of rigor. Some of these companies really drag their feet on getting you off their lists so you may have to redo a request a few times, but this seems to be getting better. Every time I get a catalog or piece of junk mail, I make a little investment of two minutes of my time to help reduce waste and make it so future-Mark doesn’t have to deal with lots of unwanted garbage.

If I think of the amount of waste that our household has saved over the past few years and multiply that by their one million users, this little organization has helped save a lot of trees, energy, etc. I thought I’d pass my experience on as a way of doing my little part to help get that number to 10 million.

You can find them at: https://www.catalogchoice.org

I also recommend donating money to help their cause (https://www.catalogchoice.org/donate).

In case you were wondering, I have no affiliation with Catalog Choice other than being a user of their service (under my wife’s name) and a donor to their organization.

*To date, I have removed someone from our family (sometimes more than one person) from the mailing lists of 149 companies.

Posted in Member Story | 1 Comment »

Proof is in the Member Comments

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

The other day we saw a blog post about Catalog Choice on the Parenthacks.com website.  In this post, Asha Dornfest was soliciting input from her readers on our service.  Like millions, she is “on a quest to rid our house of clutter. (I always seem to be on this quest, but no matter.) And the constant inflow of junk mail and the waste it produces aggravates me every day.”

The comments that followed were so cool to read, we had to post them here too:

Comments

I have been using Catalog Choice for several years, and have been so impressed that I chose to donate to them earlier this year. If you order from companies who sell their mailing lists (ahem, Garnet Hill), Catalog Choice is truly outstanding. They make it simple to use and, based on the status of my mailbox, they’re effective.

POSTED BY: KRISTI | 20 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 11:19 AM

Between their efforts and mine I often go days with NOTHING in my mailbox. I’ve donated also. I think they do a great job.

POSTED BY: BETSY | 20 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 12:58 PM

Yes yes yes! Catalog Choice is excellent! I’ve used it for several years as well, but haven’t ponied up for the donation level.

Our mailbox is very small (one big community set of boxes on the next street over), and with small kids I don’t always get to empty it each day. I found out the hard way that our Post Office will send our mail back to the sender if the box gets too full. So I started using Catalog Choice to reduce the extra stuff that was just getting thrown into the recycling bin anyway. It has been fabulous! Last year I signed my dad up as well, since he was having trouble getting to his mailbox and didn’t need all the catalogs that my late mother had signed up for over the years.

POSTED BY: LISSA | 20 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 02:29 PM

I’ve been using Catalog Choice for years and also recently donated. Fantastic service that I really enjoy using. I actually look forward to the errant catalog that ends up in my mailbox…so I can enter it in the CC website and kiss it goodbye!

POSTED BY: RICH | 20 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 05:07 PM

The gripe I have about this is that some “junk mail” is really junk, and other pieces of mail have great coupons. If your name gets removed, you lose the good “junk” too!

POSTED BY: MICHELLE | 20 SEPTEMBER 2011 AT 08:42 PM

There is nothing more rewarding for our team than getting unsolicited feedback about our service.  Our Customer Service and Merchant Outreach leads, April and Jen, are on the phone and emailing merchants every day to make sure they get your suppression request and honor them.  This is tough work since it sometimes falls to the bottom of the merchants priority list.  It is always on the top of our list.  The kudos fuel our tank.

Looking for more tips to simplify your family life, check out Parent Hacks.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Member Story | 1 Comment »

Member Story: Spreading the Word

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

This note came to us today.  It is great when our youth point to our service as a school project.  What are you doing to help spread the word?

I am 9 years old and attend Polk Street school in Franklin Square. I would like to do my recycling poster for our school contest on your website. Can I use your logo and information from website on my poster? (especially numbers regarding savings of gas,water and trees) Do you have any printouts I can use for my poster or to handout to students at school?

Thanks, XXXX

Ps My mom absolutely loves your website and is trying help me to spread the word.

Posted in Member Story | 1 Comment »