Reply cards

We came back from Dallas last week and picked up our mail from the post office.

It's amazing when a week's worth of mail has accumulated. Lots of "junk" mail from credit card offers to car dealerships to free vacations.

Most disturbing were the magazines we received. I subscribe to Wired and still get renewal notices to keep my subscription going. My subscription ends in 2011. Yet, now is the time to renew so I don't have a disruption of service.

Hello. I think I have plenty of time to renew. The same thing happens with TV Guide, who not only sends constant renewal forms but also took the time to "wrap" my issue with a warning that my subscription will end in the next month. I know it will.

Did you ever try to read a magazine while eating a sandwich? Notice how the pages fall gracefully to the side only to have a postcard sticking straight into the air? Try turning the page and it goes back to the prior page with that damn card sticking up.

And what is the card for? Just a reminder that I can renew my subscription or give the magazine as a gift. But that's just the start. Located in the magazine are up to 4 or 5 more cards doing the exact same thing. So if you want to flip through the pages, these keep showing up.

Here's how we can make a difference. Take all of those cards out, leave them blank and send them back to the magazine. They pay for each one. Somewhere, somehow, someone will see a stack of 5000 cards being returned to them blank and say, "maybe we shouldn't put so many into our magazine". I don't think the marketing people at the magazine are sharp enough to understand what's happening but maybe the person who gets all the cards might catch on.

This also has a positive effect on the economy. Each returned card has to be paid for so the Post Office will start collecting more money. If they collect enough, we might be able to keep the price of postage down to 99¢ per envelope by 2011.

Time to start fighting back.