3 months of mail

As I mentioned in a blog awhile back I collected all my physically delivered mail from the time of November 15, 2022 to February 15, 2023. This is 3 months or exactly 92 days of collecting mail. For further context - I live alone and would be the only one expected to receive mail at this address.

I've initially grouped them into 4 piles of:

• (top left) - Mail I never wanted or requested.
• (top right) - Mail I didn't want, but from a Company I did business with.
• (bottom left) - A hand written personal letter to me.
• (bottom right) - Mail that was beneficial to obtain that I probably legally was required to receive.

So lets break down each category further and dig into the pure amount of physical delivered weight of mail I obtained.

Mail I never wanted or requested (101)

This category is just the huge collection of these full page coupon pages printed on newspaper like material. The companies for these range between all the local grocery and drug stores around Tampa as well as some odd companies I cannot place locally.

So I broke this pile into further piles of:

• Save (50~)
• Save a lot (20~)
• Bravo (10~)
• Winn Dixie (10~)
• Fast food (5~)
• Other (5~)

I spent a few minutes researching and found a way to unsubscribe from Save via address entry here.

Per your request, your address was removed from the Save delivery list effective today. Advertising programs are prepared several weeks in advance, so please allow up to six weeks for delivery of the Save package to stop. Please be aware that occasional delivery errors could result in delivery of Save packages intended for other households.

After wasting another 30 minutes trying to remove my address from the rest - I gave up. This pile of 101 items could be counted even higher if I counted the individual loose pages inside each folded set.

If I get 101 of these in 92 days - this must be a hugely heavy source of mail for folks around.

Mail I didn't want, but did business with the company (22)

This category bothers me the most, because I did spend time or money with these businesses, but I never knowingly agreed to wanting mail delivered. We have the following:

• 9 letters from One Blood
• 5 letters from Hello Fresh
• 3 letters from my dealership
• 2 letters from my loan company
• a single letter from TurboTax
• a single letter from Publix

For 3 months of collecting - One Blood sends way too many pieces of mail. Not only that, but they call way too often. I can peek my call logs and see:

• Feb 6, 2023 - 11:39am
• Jan 20, 2023 - 2:52pm
• Nov 14, 2022 - 4:18pm
• Oct 31, 2022 - 2:25pm
• Oct 15, 2022 - 2:28pm
• Oct 1, 2022 - 5:18pm

OneBlood has upset me more just learning they are the leading count to phone and letter spam in this category. It must be because I'm the universal donor (O-), but either way I'll probably be done with donating blood with them after collecting all this information.

I used Hello Fresh for a few months and they won't stop sending misleading coupon letters. The letters claim extreme savings that don't really come into play unless you stay subscribed for another 3-4 months. Sorry Hello Fresh - our time is over and no amount of letters to me will change that. Just save that money and work on having consistent quality and deliveries.

My dealership has some pretty scummy behavior in their mail. Letters that claim so many things that aren't accurate in order to get you there in person. Lets be real that anytime anything says "up to" - this means most people fall way below that value. You can barely see the "up to" on this fake check pictured above - the font is so incredibly tiny.

My dealership should stop spending money on letter spam and make the service center a pleasant experience. Since as it stands - getting service on your car is a maddening experience.

Mail between human and human (1)

This category had only one piece of mail for the entire test. This was a single hand written Christmas card from a family friend.

Mail that was from company and beneficial to obtain (12)

This category is mail that I obtained that I think was beneficial to receive, even if I didn't agree that it needed to be sent in a letter. This was:

• 6 letters about benefits from insurance
• 3 letters about my loan on house
• a letter about house tax
• a letter about my stocks at ___ company
• a letter about my 401k

This category might have been quite small, but I believe switching insurance companies at work during this time frame led to easily 7 of these letters in mail. The others fall into a category of something that you just get every year for compliance or taxes.

All in all - this doesn't seem like that large of a quantity of mail when I sum the quantity at 136. However, its tough to count the coupon pages that are full of pages within. If I could count each page that was contained – this count could easily exceed 200.