Customer beside themself with company's 'infuriatingly' wasteful practice: 'Just got one today and shook my head'

If you've ever had the experience of questioning whether you actually agreed to go paperless with a company, it turns out an "infuriating" mailing practice may be to blame. 

In the subreddit r/CorporateFacepalm, one Redditor detailed how Spectrum, which offers television, internet, telephone, and wireless services, sent them paper advertisements "week after week" in hopes of selling them an upgrade they were "never going to buy."

The most maddening part? Each advertisement thanked the customer for "going paperless."

"Just got one today and shook my head," another user commented. 

The post is from five years ago, so it's unclear if Spectrum has continued the practice. 

However, as the company pointed out in its own ad shared by the OP, citing data from PayItGreen.org, going paperless saves about 23 pounds of wood per household each year.

In addition to being good for our mental and physical health, even helping to reduce blood pressure, trees absorb heat-trapping gases that contribute to the overheating of our planet and severe weather events such as droughts, floods, and wildfires. 

According to the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation, data from the European Environment Agency shows that "a mature tree will absorb more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere" annually, while a 2013 Lancaster University study found that "roadside trees reduce nearby indoor air pollution by more than 50%." 

If that's not reason enough to be irked by the practice in question, trees provide essential shelter and food to a variety of animals. 

A number of other commenters on Reddit offered their experiences with junk mail, also expressing frustration with the system.

"I literally got a letter from them asking me to go paperless. They wasted paper asking me to stop wasting paper," one person said. 

"It took me about 8 tries filling out that form before the junk mail finally stopped. I would fill it out but the mail never stopped … What I eventually had to do was submit the form a bunch of times with every variation of my name possible," another shared. 

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