This may be a regular feature, I’m not sure yet. I have a few ‘Pet Hates’ and I’ll not post them in any particular order, but just as I fancy. So this is not my No1, it’s just the first one that springs to mind today.

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Direct mail. Now I don’t mean the rubbish that drops into my email inbox. That is easily dealt with. No the type of direct mail I hate is the stuff that get posted through the letter-box.

One of the worst offenders are the ones that try and get you to purchase something by Direct Debit. They’re the one that complete the DD forms for you and just leave you to fill in the bank details. I must have spent a good hour shredding page after page of junk that I have no interest in, just because it has some personal details on. And it’s not as if it’s just on one page! More than 20% of the documents I shredded had my details on at least two pages. In fact one of the documents was a mini catalogue, with a total of nine sheets. Each one had personal details on them.

Financial providers are another offender. Many of todays shredding came from providers want me to take out a loan with them. One I had received actually had all my details completed with the exception of my account number and sort code.

I know you can try and prevent most by hunting down that obscure little box, buried deep in the small print. But have you ever tried to understand what you ticking here? Sometimes you have to tick the box if you do want this rubbish (who does?) and sometimes if you don’t want it. I’ve often seen occasions where there are two boxes. One you tick if you do want mail from that particular company and another box to tick if you do not want mail from ‘carefully selected’ third parties, or vice versa.

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On another track, this is my 555 post on this blog, and to think I nearly gave up after the first week. Next target 1000 posts.