A peek into the mailbox

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Debra usually opens the mail, so I get a sanitized view of what actually gets delivered.  I checked the mailbox when I took Charlie out for his morning walk today, and thought I’d see what was there.  It’s hard to believe, but the percentage of spam in my snail mail box is almost as high as the percentage of spam in my email.  Let’s see what today brought:

  • A special invitation from Fisher Investments.  Where they got the idea that I’d be interested in high-priced investment services, I’ll never know.  The interesting thing about that company is their web site address:  www.fi.com.  Somebody was on the ball.
  • A business gold card offer from American Express.  I can get up to 100,000 bonus points if I spend $50,000 per year, renew my membership, and maintain a $5,000 monthly average spending.  They’ll even waive the $125 fee for the first year.  Why anybody would pay money for the “privilege” of having an American Express card is beyond me.  I used to have one.  It wasn’t worth the $60 it cost me every year.
  • A credit card offer from Delta SkyMiles.  Does everybody have a friggin credit card?  The AOPA and the ARRL want me to get credit cards with their imprints.  Delta SkyMiles really ticks me off, by the way.  I flew Delta one time back in 2002, and now they keep sending me stuff.  “You have 6,432 miles on your SkyMiles account.  Wouldn’t you like to add just 3,568 more miles so that you can qualify for a round-trip ticket to anywhere that Delta flies?”  Well, no, not really.  Stop bothering me!
  • Oh, hey!  Look at that.  The company I opened an investment account with sent me some information.
  • How do these people get my name?  What made the people at Antares Corporation think that I’d be interested in attending a seminar explaining how to make money in a vending machine business?  And people wonder why our landfills are overflowing.
  • Debra and I switched to CapitalOne for our credit cards a couple of years ago because they had some great miles or points deal or something.  I don’t know.  I let Debra make those decisions, although it was tough for me to let go of that credit card that I’d had for 15 years.  When I find a company that treats me right, I like to stick with them.  In any case, today I got a “1.99% APR” offer on transferred balances.  Until May of 2007!  Man, that’s some great interest rate.  If my limit were just a bit higher, I’d pay off my mortgage with the credit card.  Except the fine print says, “The transaction fee is only 3% of each transaction amount.”  I knew there had to be a catch.
  • Oh, and the Round Rock Leader came today.  I like this newspaper because it reports mostly good news, and doesn’t carry most of the national news.  Just your local hometown paper, which is the only way it can survive around here.  I doubt it could compete with the Austin American Statesman.  Which is too bad, too, because if ever a daily needed some competition it’s the Austin American Statesman.

I’ll call it five pieces of junk out of seven pieces of mail, or a trash percentage of about 72%.  So it’s still better than my email, but not by a whole bunch.