Every year we have a few customers who are caught completely unaware when they learn that the cost of getting their mail can be very expensive, especially when outside the US. If you get a lot of mail, it can be quite a shock when you call us from Bimini, only 50 miles away in the Bahamas, and learn that it is going to cost you about $40 for international air mail, and that you will probably have to wait up to 3 weeks for it to arrive. 

Need it to arrive quicker, and be confident that your mail will really get there? FedEx, UPS & DHL might be closer to $100. Ouch! What happened to sipping rum drinks and living on the cheap in tropical paradise? We recall a recent 62 pound FedEx shipment to Grenada that was over $300. Double ouch! That shipment was 5 weeks worth of mail, including several boxes of goodies. Yes, cruising can be fun, but taking your present lifestyle with you can be expensive.

While our free toss the junk plan might cut those prices in half, we have a few customers that have well over 20 pounds of mail every month after we have tossed the junk. Our toss the junk plan is only effective to a certain point. We do not throw away magazines, trade journals, newspapers, and the large boating catalogs for example. Most of our customers still want these items. A lot of junk mail comes disguised as important looking first class mail that we might be hesitant to toss.

Monitor your mail closely for the next few months and identify every piece of mail that you don’t want to receive. Call the senders and tell them to take you off of their mailing list. Everyone will be happier as a result of the time & effort you put into doing this. Reducing the amount of junk means that the senders save on the cost of printing & mailing, our postal carriers don’t have to lug it around, our workload sorting the mail is reduced, our local landfill is happier, and you save money on the cost of postage to forward your mail.

If the thought of making all of those phone calls has sent you into a state of deep depression, here’s another, perhaps better option. Consider not doing a permanent (12 month) change of address with your old post office. Instead, do a temporary (6 month) change (or better yet, none at all) and inform only those that you want to have your new address. If you do a permanent change of address, the junk will follow you. Ever wonder why the junkmail seems to follow you after you move? When your post office gets junkmail that says "address correction requested" on the envelope, they tell the sender what your new address is. They don't do that when you do a temporary change of address. If you are worried that you may forget to notify someone who sends you a bill once a year, like your insurance company, take a look through your check register for the last year and make sure you've caught those odd payments. Need a more compelling reason not to do a permanent change of address? When you do a permanent change of address, your new address information is now being sold to mailing list companies by the Postal Service! That's right. They've started doing that just within the last year. They are in it for the money!

Here are a few more general tips:

Every time you order from a catalog, enter a sweepstakes, subscribe to a magazine, get a new credit card, or join an organization of some sort (except ours!), it’s quite likely that your name and address are on the way to being sold or rented to someone else’s mailing list unless you tell them otherwise. Tell everybody not to sell, or rent, your information. Remember, YOU are going to pay the forwarding postage now.

American Express cardholders have the opportunity, once a year, to respond to a questionnaire on whether you want to receive their extra solicitation mailings or not. Keep your eyes open for that, or just give them a call and ask to be removed from their mailing list.

Important: Tell your friends and family not to send you packages of Christmas goodies. The cost of duty can be more than the value of the presents. Anything dutiable (basically anything that is not paper) included with your shipment also increases the chances for delay or loss. This is especially true with international shipments sent via the US postal service. They wash their hands of any responsibility (and so do we) once they tender the package to another country.