Guide to Credit Cards: How to Stop Credit Card Solicitations
How many credit card "pre-approvals" and "offers" do you recieve each week in the mail? The amount of unsolicited credit card related mail has rocketed during the last few years. About 4.9 billion credit card solitications are now sent each year; that's about 40 per household. Like many other people, you may feel that (a) opening junk mail wastes your time, (b) unwanted credit card mail wastes paper and trees, and (c) it's simply annoying to be spammed, whether by email or by physical mail.
To make matters worse, unsolicited credit card offers tend not to be very attractive. You can often find better deals advertised on the Web.
But there's an easy way out. Here's a toll-free number, operated by the credit bureaus, that enables you to "opt-out" of having pre-approved credit card offers sent to you for two years: 1-888-5-OPTOUT (567-8688).
When you call the number, you'll be asked to leave your name and address. You should then receive a form in the mail. Once you fill in the form and send it back, you should be free of credit card solicitations.
You can eliminate more unsolicited mail by notifying the three major credit bureaus that you don't want personal information about you shared for promotional purposes. To do that, you need to send a letter to each of them:
- Equifax, Inc. Options, PO Box 740123, Atlanta, GA 30374-0123
- Experian Consumer Opt-Out, 701 Experian Parkway, Allen, TX 75013
- Trans Union Marketing List Opt Out, PO Box 97328, Jackson, MS 39288-7328
There - you're done. You've finished the Guide to Credit Cards. Hopefully you've found this Guide to be honest, unbiased and genuinely helpful. Perhaps this last page alone will have made the whole Guide worthwhile to you.
If you have comments, feedback or suggestions, please leave a comment!
Comments
I just wanted to say thank you. I am in credit card debt and have had no answer to how I was going to deal with it. After reading the entire article I am shocked as to how ignorant I have bin! I know it still takes time to clear the debt.
So overall I just wanted to say thank you and tell you how much you just helped somebody.
V/R Chandler Nuttal
We get at least 2 "Capital One" solicitations per week. Any company that has that much money to spend on marketing and postage, must be ripping many consumers off! Even "opt out" does not seem to stop them. Now they are after my 18 year old.
This must stop.
C.L.
I have been putting a piece of toilet paper in the return envelopes to annoying companies and sending it back to them so they have to pay postage on it. Hopefully they will go broke.
Pete/Ohio
This guide was very well put. I belived it touched on every important aspect of credit cards very clearly. The only article I might sugest be added is what to do when you are new to credit all together.
Derek/IN