Yesterday I opened my mailbox and was very aggravated once again. I continue to receive a magazine that I did not subscribe to and it is one that is somewhat risque. I am a strong Christian and do not want it in my home. This happens every few months and I’m not sure why. Right after receiving it, I found a phone number for the magazine and called them up. They looked at my account (which I shouldn’t have had in the first place) and said I was paid through April 2010. I had never even heard of this magazine until it showed up. The customer service representative was very nice and canceled the subscription, but couldn’t tell me why it was sent to me.

I decided to do some research hoping I could find out how to avoid this from happening again. I found a few words of advice and thought I’d share them with you. The Consumerist has a website and bloggers offered up some words of wisdom. There are a bunch of similar stories on the site of people having the same problem that I am having.

Here are a few ideas that readers shared and seemed to have worked:

When someone continued to receive mail for the previous owners of the house, they printed off “return to sender” labels and put them right back in the mailbox. This also seemed to work for returning magazines.

If you have a good relationship with your mail carrier, try asking them to throw things in the trash instead of delivering it. Some of them will be willing to help you out.

Go ahead and call the magazine. One reader had to call InStyle magazine. They gave out an e-mail for a marketing company. He wrote them a nice note asking for the subscription to be canceled and it worked.

Call the magazine again and put a “mail stop” on your subscription. This will suspend it and then you just never call back. Not sure about this one but someone also suggests calling the magazine and changing your address to the postal office.

Also consider just handing the magazine off to a friend. Maybe there is someone that would really enjoy getting it. You can call in and change the address and name to a family member or friend. One of my neighbors did that for me.

I continue to receive a magazine that I did have a subscription to more than three years ago. I didn’t renew and it still arrives once a month. But I like this one, so it doesn’t bother me. As for the other one we’ll see if it disappears.