: I agree, advertising may get initial sales

No, no no !!! Junk mail does NOT EVER result in a net increase in
sales. For every one person that you see and feel positive about
because they responded in some way to junk mail, there are many
more that you don't hear from who might have bought stuff from
you who will not now under any circumstances do business with you.

I make a point of boycotting a company for five years for the first
piece of junk mail they send me, an additional ten years for the
next and twenty for the third - after that it gets academic.

One company was so persistent with sending me junk mail that I
started to boycott companies that admitted to any sort of association
with that comapny, and I wrote to those companies in no uncertain
terms saying why I was ceasing to do business with them. As this
meant that I closed a credit card account and closed a building
society account, withdrawing 33,000 pounds sterling (about $50k),
I think I made my point. The company that suffered that loss did
in fact succeed in stopping me getting junk mail from the original
offender :-)

The only way to stop SPAM is to make it clear to senders that it will
result in a net loss of business, and, hopefully, bankruptcy and the
owners spending the remaining years of their life in the gutter as
down-as-outs shunned by all society for their fall from grace as a result
of this HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE !!!

I _really_ don't like junk mail :-)

Andy