Revenge of The Shredder
When we moved to the US several people warned us of the real and present danger of identity theft. Yes, that's right, in every dumpster are identity thieves waiting patiently for your carelessly discarded credit card applications.
I took all the hysteria with a grain of salt. Americans are somewhat renowned for their love of it. After a while though, a few truths glimmered through the steaming morass of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Banks and credit agencies here seem to be out to get you. Read the Terms and Conditions on a few of the mountains of 'pre-filled for your convenience' credit card, personal loan and overdraft applications you get on a daily basis.
Charging fees and interest is one thing but increasing the interest rate (or APR as it's known here) when you default on a payment is just....evil. I don't use that lightly either. It's truly evil. If you're in the unfortunate circumstance to not be able to make a payment they make it harder for you to make the next one. Then there's the concept of a 'universal default', where when one credit agency reports you've defaulted a payment they all increase your interest rate. Now the stories of spiralling credit card debt start to come into a new focus.
Throwing that 'pre-filled for your convenience' credit card application in the trash doesn't seem so wise now.
So we bought a shredder and I have to say it's actually kinda fun. When we open our mail now it gets sorted into four piles.
- Recycling - all the envelopes and assorted other bits of paper
- Filing - the boring, adult stuff like bills and what not
- Reply paid envelopes - I'll get to this later
- To be shredded - anything with our names or info on it
Shredding your documents isn't actually truly irreversible but for our purposes it increases the difficulty enough so the guys in the dumpster favour an easier target. Remember you don't have to out run the bear.
It's actually kinda carthartic to destroy the useless crap companies keep sending us. However the thing that fills me with glee out of all of this is the reply paid envelopes.
Initially I would just stuff them with all the contents of the original envelope, minus the pre-filled forms, and post them off. Then, after reading this story, I started stuffing them with whatever junk mail came to hand. I even tried sending a handful of pennies.
We occasionally get a pizza delivered from Goat Hill Pizza (awesome pizza btw) and they always provide a bunch of sachets of parmesan cheese and red chilli flakes. So I started stuffing the envelopes with a sachet each.
One night we're having people over for dinner and I'd made some Italian style pasta dish. One of our guests asked if we had any parmesan cheese and we're actually totally out. Until I remembered the unposted reply paid envelopes on the bench and opened one to produce a sachet of parmesan cheese.
I know this silliness isn't going to cost the companies concerned enough to stop them doing it but I figure I'm making some mail clerk's day a little weirder