Posted on 04/03/2012 6:35:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
My wife just turned 50, so she recently experienced that least favorite American rite of passage: the arrival of the dreaded solicitation letter from AARP.
I'm pleased to say that she took advantage of this opportunity to do precisely as I have done for the past eight years: she immediately and with malice aforethought dropped the solicitation in the trash. Not that she was offended by the reminder of her advanced age; rather, because she holds AARP in contempt.
So do I.
Two quick questions, dear reader:
1) Do you belong to AARP?
2) Which AARP do you belong to?
If you're confused by the second question your confusion is, in AARP's eyes, a marketing triumph.
You are likely thinking, "Which AARP? Why, I belong to the American Association of Retired Persons. I belong to that AARP."
Surprise. There is no such thing as the American Association of Retired Persons. The non-profit organization that was founded in 1956 to help older folks was renamed some years ago. It's now called AARP and it exists as three separate organizations. (Actually four, but for our purposes let's ignore the international branch. This is confusing enough.)
The umbrella organization is a non-profit known simply as AARP.
Then there is the AARP Foundation. It's the AARP of old, a non-profit dedicated to providing for the needs of America's retired folk, or to phrase it more accurately, to anyone 50 or older who's willing to pony up the $16 annual fee. This is the outfit that trains older drivers, provides tax preparation assistance and provides other do-good services.
You belong to that AARP.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
If it is a return envelop, return it empty. Let them pay for the postage.
I returned their postage paid envelope filled with washers ($10.+ postage due!) and told them to quit waging generation warfare.
I tore it all up and sent it back to them in their postage paid envelope.
I tore it all up and sent it back to them in their postage paid envelope.
Please, don’t shred them, they’re valuable! I can’t wait for them to arrive. I take the envelope with the return postage paid and.... retun it to them. If enough people did that do you think we could make them go broke? No, neither do I but my evil twin loves doing it anyway.
I return the pre paid envelope with a note, leave me the hell alone.
My neighbor shows me all the AARP junk mail he receives and it never stops. I suggested they give him the money spent on the stuff they send so he could retire early.
Tear. Insert with some heavy metal scrap. Place in return envelope. Mail.
I do something similar and castigate them for their support of zerocare reminding them they will be ther FIRST to go, being old and all.
They have left me alone for a while now.
Yes, but does the action stop further mailing from AARP?
Maybe in the organization’s mind, (eventually)
“Resistance Is Futile, You Will Be Assimulated”.
I always just drop it in the trash... so I didn’t realize the postage paid return envelope... now my evil twin is grinning. I’m thinking maybe I’ll just stuff it with my other junk mail and return.
I'm hard on the once proud Republican party, but Reps. Wally Herger (R-CA) and Dave Reichert (R-WA) give me reasons to believe in a great American comeback.
I heard about a guy 20 years ago that kept getting solicitations for oil company credit cards. He got even by filling some good sized wooden crates with rocks and attached their postage paid by recipient envelope to the crate and marked them ‘Drilling Samples”. Maybe somebody will send AARP some postage paid by them coffin sized crates filled with rocks labeled “Burial Container Examples”.
I stuff it with papers.
See my post #3. AARP never sent another solicitation to me.
The washer trick usually works. I also wrote on their forms that if they didn’t remove me from their list pronto, the next postage paid envelope they sent me would be returned to them taped to a box of rocks with $1000.+ postage due.
I went to the fridge, found some outdated deli meat. Stuffed it in the return envelope to add weight to it.
Put out in mail.
Years ago when getting junk mail, I used to remove my name and address and then stuff everything they sent in the postage paid envelope and return it to them at their cost.
As for AARP now, I just s-can it, they aren’t worth the effort to send it back to them.
No!
Stuff their envelope with the invitation, torn up.
I had my sister send them a note that said: “Didn’t you hear, 50 is now the new 30 year old. Call me in 20 years and take me off your f*c*g mailing list NOW! We still laugh about it!
I habitually return the empty envelope at their expense. After reading the posts on this thread, I think I’ll start cleaning out some of my shop debris...one letter at a time.
I have always thrown their mailers away. Part of the reason we will never balance the Federal budget is the ‘old’ lobby: “we paid in”, “we were promised”, etc. I have reconciled myself to the fact that the $350,000+ I’ve paid into social security and medicare is gone - spent. And the culprits who misappropriated my ‘trust fund’ will never be held accountable. And I REFUSE to do to those younger than me what was done to me.
At 53 years of age, I expect to work until I die. I’m not comfortable with receiving social security paid by young workers, and I don’t trust the markets (which are also being looted by government to fund the welfare state) enough to depend on investments. I am the beneficiary of the false ‘hope’ which has established the new aristocracy. They will fly around on government jets while I work. They will live in government mansions while I produce value.
And any major value they will tax, or fine, or confiscate through manipulation of the fiat monetary system, (i.e. quantitative easing, ‘borrowing from the Fed, etc.)
God restore the Republic! PRAY! Its our only hope.
There is a conservative alternative to AARP and of course I cannot remember the name of it off hand.
They started sending me solicitation letters when I was 38.
They all go in the shredder.
The SCOTUS would be doing both liberals Mitt Romney AND Barrack Obama a favor by shooting down the losing issue of Obamacare and taking it off the table—Obama is only threatening the SCOTUS in order to keep the Leftist judges in line so it will be a 5-4 “political decision” cause he knows his second term will nullify in his demented sick and wrong mind his constitutional limitations—as he hot miked Pres Medvedev, he will claim a mandate no matter how he wins reelection and all will see at last if the awesome powers given a United States president by our Founders can enable a spoiled brat bred tyrant to become a full blown fascist dictator...
...personally, I have wondered as much myself for decades and if not for the incredible wisdom and divine foresight of our Founding Fathers in including the Second Amendment to our Bill of Rights, I would be concerned for our nation's survival as a free state.
The first few I crammed full of the entire set of garbage they sent me with a message printed in very large black Sharpie letting them know I didn’t want anything to do with them. That was 50+ pieces of mail ago. I’m happy to let them waste their money sending me cr@p that I promptly shred. We’re planning to acquire a cat soon and when we do, I’ll use their mailings to line the bottom of the litter box.
I sent the application back in the prepaid envelope without payment. We corresponded back and forth about 4 times as AARP sought payment. They finally gave up and stopped being my pen pal. Did this about 4 times in 10 years. This also consumes clerical time and effort.
For years I sent it all back to them in their return envelope, finally I added a note to send my share of their junk mail to Harry Belafonte, their “Man of the Year”...I have not heard from them since
I would recommend stuffing it full of your other junk mail and letting them pay for the extra weight.
Sorry, I shred them.
Any correspondence I receive from them I automatically trash.
Tape pennies to a card. They pay by weight.!
Generation America.
I’m 65. When I turned 50, my mother got me an AARP membership. After 1 year, I did not renew it.
The magazine kept coming until about 2 year ago also I recall a newspaper.
Every year they send me a new membership card despite no dues for 14 years.
Just toss it in the trash.
I’ve been trashing their socialist garbage for over 25 years!
You know anything about them? They certainly are saying all of the correct things.
I’ve just started hearing their ads, so I really don’t know. The website looks pretty decent.
I did read that Chuck Woolery has been a conservative (behind enemy lines) for some time.
For years I have been putting a tea bag in their prepaid envelope and dropping it in the mail. Their most recent mailing, which I just received a couple of days ago, had an envelope with a hole in it. I suspect they’re on to us.
I was fortunate enough to work within a block of the AARP headquarters in Washington, DC, when I began getting their letters. After a half dozen telephone calls and notes inside their own envelopes requesting that I be removed from the mailing list were ignored, I took a letter to the headquarters itself and turned it in. That was the last time I got any mailing from them, nearly 15 years ago.
Hope you don’t mind cleaning up crap then. Some cats are mighty fussy about where they drop their load.
Wonder if you could tape their return postage envelope to a brick and mail it?
junk mail, in the trash.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.