I work hard to keep both junk mail and identity hijacking opportunities (you can't really steal someone's identity so I don't like the term identity theft) out of my mailbox. So you can imagine my surprise, especially after signing up at https://www.optoutprescreen.com/, that I got a credit card offer in the mail.
The mail was from Citi bank but came under cover of American Airlines and my AAdvantage account. From what I can tell it appears that American Airlines sold me out to Citi bank and in the process, by exposing us to identity hijacking, endangered my family's financial well being in order to scrape up some extra cash for themselves.
I immediately called up American Airlines and tried to get my AAdvantage account closed. It turns out they don't have such a concept as 'closed'. The best I could do was have them put a 'note' in my account that says don't ever mail me anything. Anyone want to take a bet on how well that 'note' will stick? In the meantime you can bet I'll be avoiding American Airlines.
The only positive note I can take from this experience is that maybe it means so many people are opting out of getting credit card offers that the credit card companies now have to find front companies to shill their offers for them?
Yuck.
I bet $100 that the note sticks around forever (along with your account, apparently). I also bet $100 more that whatever automated monstrosity does their bulk mailing pays absolutely no attention to the note. :)
So does optoutpresreen work? I mean, at least most of the time?
Yes, outoutprescreen actually works extremely well. This is literally the first credit card application I have received in several years.
What I do is go to Junk Busters and use their system to print out a bunch of letters. Yes, it is a pain. Yes, it took around an hour to do for both Marina and I. But the return is that we get almost no junk mail at all. Mostly we get crap from companies we already do business with or recently did business with.