A critical tenet of the Alcoholic Anonymous program is learning to live life on life’s terms. We’d all like the world to function in certain ways, but life is unpredictable and accepting and embracing the cards we are dealt is AA’s not-so-secret formula for avoiding alcohol. The sobriety prayer recited at every AA meeting decidedly ranks among the best wisdom ever dispensed.
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
This post is a cautionary tale of what happens when a U.S. consumer refuses to live life on life’s terms. For most of 2024, I refused to accept the pathetic state of U.S. customer care and opted out of receiving mail from the U.S. Postal Service. Yes, I know one can’t opt out of USPS’ mail delivery but refusing to retrieve one’s mail for weeks at a time and then storing the delivered and unopened contents in bags temporarily creates the euphoric illusion of having effectively cancelled the service.
Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, to paraphrase another saying, the mail gets delivered, therefore it is. The satisfaction of avoiding my mail was mistaken, ultimately causing me more pain than what caused me to despise opening my mail to begin with.
A mental disorder
I’m not alone in my fear of opening mail. The condition is known as epistolophobia and people like me who suffer from ADHD are particularly vulnerable to the affliction. Jacqueline Sinfield, a former nurse who writes a column on managing ADHD, has provided an excellent explanation on why ADHD sufferers are especially predisposed to avoid opening their mail. Those inflicted with ADHD are repelled by dull and mundane tasks and are often triggered when forced to deal with activities they find especially unpleasant.
Many epistolophobia sufferers are heavily in debt, so avoiding mail rife with threatening letters and notices is understandable. I’m fortunate to have an aversion to debt, so I’ve always been diligent about paying my credit card bills and making my mortgage payments. For me, epistolophobia is an extension of my email phobia, which is another condition I suspect is inflicting a growing number of victims. I estimate that I spend at least 15 minutes a day sorting and deleting dozens of unwanted emails and scavenging my spam folder to retrieve wanted and sometimes critical messages.
Berit Brogaard, who holds a medical degree in neuroscience and a doctorate in philosophy, suffers from email phobia and published an article about the condition in Psychology Today. If someone with Brogaard’s impressive credentials can’t combat email phobia, how are mere mortals expected to cope?
Needle in a haystack
Sorting through my mail is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, the vast majority being unwanted duplicitously labeled junk, often in duplicate. Seemingly every week or so, Barron’s sends me two offers marked from the “Office of Investor Relations” addressed to the bogus names I previously used to qualify for introductory subscription offers.
Barron’s doesn’t have an office of investor relations, but some marketing moron likely advised the publication the false representation would entice recipients to open the envelopes. Admittedly, I deserve receiving duplicate mailings from Barron’s since I deceived the publication when signing up for introductory offers I didn’t qualify for. You reap what you sow.
My mail is also polluted with ubiquitous supermarket flyers, teaser credit card offers dishonestly claiming that I’ve already been pre-approved, and $300 deals from Chase to open an account for which I don’t qualify because I already bank at Chase. I’m also bombarded with mailings from legions of providers specializing in financial planning, patio designs, roofing, and closet remodeling. Even companies specializing in funeral and cremation services are hounding me, urging me to take care of one final detail before I pass on.
November is always a particularly bountiful month for junk mail because it is open enrollment season for Medicare Advantage plans, and seemingly every health insurance company, including some I’ve never heard of, knows how old I am and where to find me. Entire forests likely have been destroyed because of the duplicate mailings AARP sent me over the years touting its dubious relationship with UnitedHealthcare and its other “partners.”
For the record: Starkman Approved strongly disapproves of the AARP and UnitedHealthcare and recommends avoiding any products these companies are peddling.
Important stuff
The problem with not opening one’s mail is that occasionally there’s some stuff that is extremely important and must be dealt with in a timely manner.
As an example, The Superior Court of California relies on snail mail to alert you that you’ve been selected for jury duty and the time and place when and where you must appear. Failing to respond to a jury summons can result in imprisonment, so whenever my doorbell rings these days, I fear it’s the police with a warrant to cart me away. I didn’t notice the jury summons buried in a pile of junk email.
Unlike Spectrum that sends me menacing emails and text messages warning me my cable and internet service is about to be “disrupted” if my monthly payment is one day late, the U.S. government merely sends a letter enclosed in the same envelope as its regular billing correspondence advising you that your Medicare policy has been discontinued because of nonpayment.
One has 30 days to make their delinquent payments and have their policy restored, but if you open the cancellation letter three months after it was sent, you discover that you are among the 25 million Americans without health insurance.
To be clear, I thought I was current on my Medicare premiums, but I suspect I didn’t notice the “confirm payment” or some other detail that prevented my transactions from being processed. That’s another hazard of ADHD, sufferers often don’t stay focused long enough to complete their tasks.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power uses snail mail for its monthly bills. I’m blessed the LADWP is a most trusting and patient utility and never made good on its threats to consign me to prehistoric conditions when there was no electricity and running water. Then there were the weddings and Bar Mitzvahs that relatives I haven’t spoken to in years graciously invited me to and I rudely didn’t RSVP, further enhancing my reputation as the black sheep of my family.
Heavy call volume
The upshot of my mail avoidance was having to spend weeks dealing with my biggest phobia of all: Listening to automated messages that begin, “Due to unusually heavy call volume.” That message triggers me, particularly when it is followed with, “Did you know the answers to our most frequently asked questions can be found on our website at …” and if that doesn’t work then, “Please listen carefully because our menu options have changed.”
It’s pathetic if consumers have called a customer support line so many times they’ve memorized the prompts. I’m angered that most Americans have become so docile they willingly accept allowing corporations to jerk them around and waste their time with abandon.
That docility begets more abuse.
According to this March 2024 McKinsey paper titled, Where is customer care in 2024, only 11 percent of customer care industry respondents to a survey said reducing call volumes is important to them, a 20-PERCENTAGE-POINT DROP OVER 12 MONTHS. Indeed, 57 percent of customer care leaders expect call volumes TO INCREASE BY AS MUCH AS ONE-FIFTH OVER THE NEXT ONE OR TWO YEARS!
I thought perhaps my desire to engage with humans rather than chat bots was a generational thing, but that’s not the case. In a McKinsey survey of 3,500 consumers, respondents of all ages said that live phone conversations were among their most preferred methods of contacting companies for help and support. That finding held true even among 18- to 28-year-old Gen Z consumers, who typically prefer text and social messaging for interpersonal communications.
These past few weeks I’ve spent countless hours on hold trying to reach elusive people at companies to fix the gargantuan mess mostly of my own doing. I say mostly because it’s increasingly common for me to check my credit card statements and find unauthorized charges, typically resulting from automatic renewals I never agreed to.
Under the terms of Visa and MasterCard, contracting even once with a merchant is like herpes – the relationship lasts forever.
I’ve learned my lesson and in 2025 I’m going to channel my inner cousin Rob and heed his example of never letting mail go unattended. Hopefully, other epistolophobia sufferers will learn from my mistakes and open their mail as well.
Another lesson of AA is to make a gratitude list for what one is grateful for. In that spirit, I want to give a shoutout to Fidelity, Costco, Apple, and Spectrum whose U.S.-based customer service reps are easily accessible and allow me to live life on my terms.
And to subscribers of this blog, thanks for reading. Wishing you the best in 2025. I truly appreciate your support.