You likely have pre-approved credit card offers showing up in your mailbox regularly if you have a good credit rating. Banks and other lenders can pre-screen you by buying certain information from Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion. Those consumer reporting companies are allowed to sell the information unless you explicitly tell them you want them to stop. Your current financial institutions might also be mailing you credit card offers, and they can be stopped too.
Step 1
Mail in the form provided by the optoutprescreen.com website to permanently stop credit card mail offers triggered by the sale of your information by the consumer credit reporting agencies. Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion run this website to give consumers a simple way to stop prescreened credit offers. A request can also be made online, but then it will only last for five years. A mail opt-out is permanent.
Step 2
Call each financial institution you do business with and ask how to opt out of credit card mail offers. This includes your current banks, credit unions, lenders and credit card issuers. They can send you offers even if you fill out the optoutprescreen.com form because you have an existing business relationship. However, they will stop if you ask them directly.
Step 3
Fill out the form on the dmachoice.org website, which will stop credit card offers and other mail solicitations from cooperating members of the Direct Marketing Association. The Federal Trade Commission warns that your DMA opt-out will only last for five years, but you can renew it once it expires.
Tips and Warnings
- You can send a letter to each credit bureau asking to be excluded from credit card mail offers as an alternative to using the optoutprescreen.com service, according to Creditorweb.com. You must include your name, address and Social Security number in each letter. Specify that you want your opt-out to be permanent.
- It will take a few weeks for credit card mail offers to stop arriving once you have opted out of receiving them. The U.S. Department of Justice warns any that arrive in the meantime can open you up to identity theft if you don't dispose of them carefully. Shred them and spread the pieces among several different garbage bags.
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