You can opt out of these, if you want to. :)

I go to Catalog Choice and opt out of the ones I don’t want. It is a free service and yes, they will eventually send you an email asking for a donation to keep the service going. I sent them $5 or something a several years back and then again another time as I felt it was worth it as the catalogs did stop rather quickly.

I will opt out. I’ve never done business with 4 of them before; seeing them for the first time.

I used Catalog Choice years ago. It was a wonderful service that stopped most of the catalogs. I still get a few from companies that I patronize regularly. It's almost impossible to stop those.

jrb, i got you beat, I got 11 in yesterday's mail. I have in the past opted out of several of them, but after 6 months or so they start up again.

One of yesterday's catalogs had a vast mix of offerings, from bath towels, lamps, cooking helps, small tools, toys etc. But it really ticked me off when I found near the last few pages an array of sex toys! They were described in great detail. C'mon now, many (older) kids today are at home for schooling and unsupervised. Maybe bringing in the mail is one of the highlights of their day! This is totally wrong!

I think catalog mass mailings are treated in a way that's like flying standby, space available. First Class mail has priority over such items for dispatch and delivery. The envelope I was provided to return my mail-in ballot was of the Business Reply type, which is First Class mail.

It's not that hard to get removed from mailing lists. Sometimes a quick phone call works. If not, you can cut off your mailing label and mail it to the return address with a request to remove your name from their records. Both ways have worked for me. I've cut our volume down to almost nothing.

Christmas catalogues. It is part of the normal mail cycle.

People seen to envision post offices with warehouses attached where someone walks in and thinks what shall we send out today. The mail comes in on trucks daily and is distributed to the carriers to be final sorted and taken out. The customer in the case of the catalogue is the company who pays the Postal Service to deliver their catalogue. You on the receiving end are not the customer. If they didn't move the mail on through they would be up over their ears in a day. The amount is amazing. Only very occasionally do they hold mail back. The PO has some sort of schedule with catalogue companies and they dry up a couple of weeks before Christmas as they are too bulky and compete with packages and cards.

I got onto the Catalog Choice bandwagon several years ago. Makes a big difference.

My bellyache is about the regular mail, I got a monthly magazine delivered yesterday. The next issue of that magazine is on the stands already!

From now until Thanksgiving day you can expect to be inundated with Christmas catalogs.

The slow down is entirely the result of loss of equipment and staffing. The USPS is always chronically short on staff and they rely on overtime as a normal practice and when overtime is cut your mail is going to get slow. If they dont replace personnel there is no one to take on mail routes with no carrier that day.

Do remember that the USPS does not get your tax dollars.

While modern technology has taken a lot of the volume away from the postal service, it remains an essential public service that needs to be efficient and reliable. I would be very happy to see a big time effort of revitalization and modernization to help it do its job. The postal service needs to right-size its workforce (euphemism for the major downsizing that's needed) and perhaps offer retirement incentives as part of the effort. It needs to concentrate its locations to eliminate the far-too numerous and close together post office locations which inflate staffing needs. And streamline its operations. And perhaps make other major changes too.

Yes, this will cost a lot of money. The federal government should pay for it. It would be an investment for the future that benefits everyone.

Elmer, Post offices are not just a place to drop off a letter or buy a stamp, behinds the scene at the front desk they are also likely to be the place where mail is sorted to the routes, where the people who do that work out of and come back to. A big part of the day of a carrier is not putting mail in your box. Depending on population density and the footprint of where they work more places to do that are needed than you would see the need for. The management I saw seem to work flat out most of the time and they do not get over time. I dont know about district offices or any of that level. We have post offices that are not also mail distribution but they are usually in small towns. How far do you think someone should go to access a post office? Opinions on that point vary but people have fits when someone suggests closing their PO. I used to live upvalley as they say here and they constantly threatened to close our PO. An hour to town.

I often call the company, and customer service is helpful in removing mailings as requested.

I have no more or less familiarity with what's done at a post office than anyone else.

When driving through an urban/suburban area, is it really essential to encounter another post office retail location every 1-2 miles? I say NO. That's how it is right now in too many places. Don't believe me? Go to the USPS website, enter an appropriate populous place name or zip code to find post office locations, and then look at the map and weep.

People who choose to live in rural areas have chosen to not have services of various kinds conveniently available that those in more populous areas have. Is it really necessary for post offices to be more numerous and closer to any particular rural region than is a a doctor's office, a full service hospital, or a normally sized supermarket? Or a selection of major car dealerships to buy cars and have them serviced? Or this or that or anything else? To this too, I say NO.

Postal customers shouldn't have to subsidize the cost of service to these locations. The way to handle the problem isn't to increase postal rates, it's to reduce costs.

Let people get upset. Would residents of a small village be willing to pay a surcharge for postal services to keep excessive and unneeded local service locations? You know the answer is No. Similarly, I'm unwilling to pay for it too. USPS has higher priority needs for spending money.

As far as the work rate of postal employees, don't get me started.
There's nowhere more frustrating to wait for service than a post
office. The employees always seem to be sedated. Slow moving, slow
talking, slow thinking.

Stamps can be purchased at ATMs or by mail. Postal materials are similarly easily available. We don't need so many post offices. I don't doubt there's a lot more low hanging fruit in the USPS's current operations to wring out needless costs to better prioritize spending to improve speed and reliability.

My mail is typically delivered between 1 - 3. Yesterday I made 3 trips up and back to retrieve my mail until giving up around 5:30. I knew we had mail coming because I subscribe to “Informed Delivery”. I was greeted with the 9 catalogs when checking the box this morning.

I was reacting to the volume and weight of that “mail”, the fact that the postal worker was having to work an extra long day to get it delivered and the additional tasks in delivering the absentee ballots when I made my post.

Well Elmer would have them paying more. I dont see how frankly. The mail stream is a complex thing. Making changes is very expensive. One thing for sure people who thought we didnt need a PO are rethinking that.

Just a disclaimer but my mailman and I used to work in the same area so he is more likely to tell me the truth. Gone are the days when he would get into a fully loaded truck then switch vehicles when that part of his route was finished. Now he has to stop and reload his vehicle. Which while it slows him, he is fine with it. He tells me that the main problem is the regional sorting center in Des Moines. There is no guarantee that what is sent to his station because of the electronic tagging of trays that it even belongs in the city much less that station. He said that even when the sorting center was in this city there would be problems but they are increasing. I do not know how many regional sorting centers there are left. Even stranger there is a regional center next door in Kansas City, KS.

That junk mail is what keeps the USPS afloat.

Before you toss those catalogs, checkout Koeze! They are local to me and have great cashews and the best peanut butter ever.

I have no more or less familiarity with what's done at a post office than anyone else.

less familiar unless you've worked in one.

"I have no more or less familiarity with what's done at a post office than anyone else.

less familiar unless you've worked in one."

500K USPS employees so 99.85+% of the population or an even higher percentage know the same as I do about what's done at a post office. I'm not convinced that all of the people that work at a post office know what they're doing, it doesn't appear so.

There is no regional sorting center in Des Moines, it is in West Des Moines. Different city.

bragu thanks for the correction. Des Moines is somewhat like Kansas City to those that are not familiar with it. Anywhere in the immediate region is considered part of the largest city.

@Bluebell66, Koeze is one of the companies that I have done business with before. I have 2, 6 jar cases of their crunchy peanut butter in my den! It is really good.

I used to get a lot of seed catalogues but they eventually quit coming after I quit ordering.

I still sometimes get a uLine or something like that addressed to some guy that lived here over ten years ago. (I won't stop it because it's interesting)

Maybe an occasional REI or Railriders catalogue.

I think if USPS is depending on revenue from catalogues sent to me personally, they're out of luck.

I think, if a person gets a lot of junk catalogues, it must be because they have your address because you've ordered from them before. Or someone you have ordered from shared it with them.

I too receive the uLine and although I have no need for most of the stuff I love looking at the stuff and how much the stuff has advanced or for some things a return of old things whose use was thought ended.