Washington, D.C.—The American Catalog Mailers Association is pushing back against statements in a Wall Street Journal column that catalogers' mailings are unwelcome by recipients, take advantage of low “junk mail” postal rates and are contributing to the U.S. Postal Service's financial problems.
In a letter last week to the Journal, distributed via email to ACMA members today, Hamilton Davison, ACMA president-executive director, asserted, “Commercial mail, including catalogs, has not generated billions in losses. ... We estimate the catalog industry paid $3.6 billion in postage, covering more than $1 billion in the costs of running the Postal Service. Catalog mail is neither subsidized nor unwanted.”
In his email, Davison urged members to contribute to ACMA's lobbying efforts against postal rate increases and to its public relations fight against the notion “that consumers will come to view us as unwelcome.”
