A sea of junk mail
Solicitors compile 'sucker lists' of frequent donors.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Frances Rebenack is a prisoner to her own mail.
There's mail everywhere around her house. Mail that comes in piles day after day and stacks up.
The 91-year-old woman said it's a full-time job just going through the stacks to try to find the few hidden bills.
"Their house looks like a warehouse mail room because she's afraid to throw mail away until she gets a chance to look at it," said Dianne Demko, Rebenack's daughter. "It's obscene. She's just befuddled and overwhelmed."
The problem has been going on for years, but Demko has been helping her mother more since Rebenac & aelig;k's husband, John, 88, has gotten ill.
How many?
Demko got so frustrated by the mounting piles of mail that she cut out the return addresses of every piece of mail that came to her mom's house in a three-day period, taped them onto pieces of paper and mailed it to a newspaper. There were 137 pieces of mail from what seemed like every nonprofit foundation and political candidate out there.
OK, that's probably an overstatement, but you get the drift.
Yes, most people get junk mail -- or like those in the industry like to refer to it, direct mail.
But probably not as much as the Rebenacks.
Demko said it takes her mom a few trips to the mail box to bring in each day's mail. Then she puts it in an ever growing pile to look through.
After her mother spent a few days at her house recently, the Demkos went to the post office to pick up one week's worth of mail -- two tubs full. Four days later, she hadn't made a dent in that pile.
"If this woman spent every waking minute on the mail every day, she still wouldn't be done with it. Now it's filtering down and I'm doing it and my husband is doing it," said Demko.
The downside of generosity
Frances Rebenack acknowledges that the mail problem is partly because of her husband's actions.
John Rebenack, who retired in 1980, has always been a very generous man. Too generous, said his wife, who is in charge of sifting through the piles of mail solicitations, mostly from nonprofit and political organizations.
"This has been a big controversial issue with us," Frances Rebenack said of the relationship with her husband of 34 years, whom Demko said is incapacitated and recuperating from a broken hip at a nursing home.
Demko said she and her mother tried to persuade him to stop donating so much.
"I told him 'Somebody else at this point is going to have to save the pandas,'" Demko said.
"If someone has a sob story, he'll send money. Usually $25. I've told him time and again, they'll sell the list," said Rebenack.
And that's what has apparently happened.
John Rebenack's generosity has landed the couple on what are known in the industry as "sucker lists."
"The more you give, the more likely those organizations will swap their lists with other organizations," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.
Many senior citizens write checks for even small amounts -- $5 -- because of appealing solicitations, Givens said. And that's not to say that there aren't a lot of worthwhile organizations out there that rely on the donations.
But anytime you donate, you open yourself up to more mail.
"It's like pouring gasoline on open flames," she said.
The problem is that once you're on a "sucker list," it's nearly impossible to get off -- or you have to take some pretty labor-intensive steps to stop the waves of mail.
Stemming the tide
For people who want to reduce the amount of junk mail they receive, there are a few options:
Register your address with the Direct Marketing Association or DMA. Once you're on the list, the trade organization's 4,800 members will take you off of their mailing lists.
If you're willing to spend some money, pay $19.95 to www.stopthejunkmail.com, which will send stop requests directly to the companies for you. But it takes time because you have to input each company into the site's database of 8,500 companies and nonprofits.
Demko already registered her mom with the DMA a few years ago, but it didn't help because her parents have given to some of these organizations in the past and have an existing business relationship, which means those organizations don't have to comply with that list.
The only answer is for the Rebenacks or Demko to individually contact each organization.
Which is why Demko said its worth it to her to spend the nearly 20 bucks and some time to have someone else help her stop her mom's mail.