How to stop credit card solicitations

Posted at 0:55 on Wednesday May 25, 2005 | Filed Under Miscellaneous

This is good:

By calling 1-888-5-OPTOUT (567-8688) or logging onto www.OptOutPreScreen.com you can "opt-out" of receiving pre-approved credit card offers for five years OR forever. "Opting-Out" prevents consumer credit reporting companies from using your credit file information for pre-approved offers of credit or insurance.

That's from Sound Money Tips, one of the other personal-finance blogs I read.

Oh yeah, over the next few weeks, I'm going to be posting some of my favorite personal-finance blogs. Stay tuned.

Update: Will H. wrote in asking if this site was legit: "1) I've never heard of it and I've opted out of everything on Earth and 2) They want your SSN? This is like an application to be the victim of indentity theft." But in fact, even though it's ugly, this site is legit. You can find a link off the TransUnion contact page and EPIC's Top Ten Privacy Resolutions for 2005.

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Comments (5)

1.: Thanks for the tip, Ramit. It's funny that my gut reaction is to still not call that number to opt-out just because it feels like clicking the "unsubscribe" hyperlink at the bottom of spam e-mail messages, which usually leads to more spam.

Posted by Ian Ybarra at May 26, 2005 07:42 AM

2.: It's funny that Innovis is included.

There's a few other reasons people should consider too. One major reason to opt-out will be to do it 6 months before you're going to shop for mortgage loans. The minute a mortgage inquiry hits on your credit report, those mortgage marketing calls will start coming in. argh.

Another not too pretty reason would be if collection agencies are after you. Although you certainly don't disappear if you opt-out, it does bring the harrasement level down from less than reputable collection agencies.

I suppose other reasons to NOT opt-out would be those credit card offers that we hate. Some pre-approval offers sent are for specific people with specific usage and history, so not all rates are offered to the general public.

I wish I knew about it years ago. We get about 3+ calls everyday telling us about great mortgage refinancing rates. yay.

Posted by Cap at May 27, 2005 03:38 PM

3.: I did this several months ago. I can't remember where I heard about it. It may have been via the WSJ. However, it works. The only junk mail that shows up at my apartment now is for my roommates. I literally stopped receiving all that crap about 2 weeks after submitting.

There is another site that you should register with, the DMA, to get off their member solicitations lists.

http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist

I registered for the longest possible removal from both. So far, so good (again, I did this in March, IIRC).

Posted by Khyron at June 6, 2005 12:02 AM

4.: i was able to get rid of them by opting out on a web site, the offers stopped within a week. see this. http://dwightrau.blogspot.com/2005/11/credit-card-offers-opt-out.html

Posted by mj at December 12, 2005 01:16 PM

5.: i get tons of credit apps for previous residents of my house. any way to make those stop arriving. i mark a lot of them "return to sender, no such addressee" but they keep coming. also some spam mail company got my name wrong and even though i opted out, i get lots of apps for the mis-spelled version of my name.

Posted by joe at May 12, 2006 12:11 PM

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