Ding Ding Ding!! I declare this to be Tuesday’s winner, even though I thought my piano ad was a contender. So:
**chinbender ** is the official “Second-Day-of-the-Junk-Mail-Derby” winner for July 12, 2005, and is hereby awarded the following stars: ************ to signify the stars BoA should be seeing when they get bonked for killing trees with multiple junk mailings!
Now, for my haul today - pfffft, yeah, right. Some haul.
- Pennysaver - doesn’t really count as junk
- Healthy Pet magazine from out vet - it was addressed to the dog, so it doesn’t count either.
- offer for 12,500 American AIrlines AAdvantage bonus miles if I take their credit card.
Just like so many others, I’ve found that just mention of this derby has greatly reduced my junk mail volume. Who’d’a thunk it??
Also in reduced junk mail status - I scored zippola in the Derby today. Cuz here’s what I got:
You know the Bed, Bath and Beyond flyer that Draelin and Lily got yesterday? It’s at my house today. Apparently I’m a neighbor too.
Got a flyer addressed to “Resident.” It’s one of those advertising and coupon flyers (looks like the ads they throw into newspapers) that comes with a postcard with missing child pictures on it. Do people outside Ohio get those too?
My new auto insurance policy
Quarterly 401(K) statement - definitely not junk. Pretty solid, actually. 
GT
I got my quarterly 401(k) statement today too. It’s been doing great as of late. WOOHOO!
Today’s junk mail haul:
*BofA credit card offer. Like I’d ever want it. BofA is one of my sworn enemies even though they aren’t really aware that they are.
*Harriet Carter catalog. Why oh why did I ever feel the need to order that granny bent over in the garden thing that I snuck into a friend’s newly landscaped flower garden ten years ago? They’ll never quit sending me catalogs now. Ok, it was funny so it was worth it. 
*A free Birds and Blooms magazine. With exciting offers on all the other magazines whatever company publishes it offers. I could get Country Woman magazine for a year for the low price of $12.95!
*My personal favorite I saved til last. Fordtown (the local Ford dealer) sent me a post card wanting to know if I was ready to trade in my last purchase from them on a brand new Ford! With discounts even! However, I think I’ll hang on to that Mustang I bought in <gasp>April of 2005<gasp> a little longer. I realize it’s three months old now and the wheels must be about to fall off, but I’ll take my chances. :rolleyes:
Day Three Haul:
One (1) Aspire Visa Card offer
One (1) Platinum eBay MasterCard offer with special rewards, usable on my eBay account (note: I do not now, nor have I ever, had an eBay account)
One (1) offer from Ashton-Drake Galleries to begin my collection of the Thomas Kinkade Old World Santas Ornaments. Yes, even though it’s fricking July, I can still begin my “charter subscription” into the Columbia House-esque world of buying Kinkade’s craptacular art on a monthly basis. Pass, thanks.
Wednesday total: 3 items
Total for the week: 7 items
Today I can’t even blame my neighbor. The mail was all there when I opened the door. And there wasn’t a single piece with my name on it. I’m almost insulted.
You know, it’s really a shame that “Resident” junk mail isn’t being counted, because I got the strangest junk mail of all time today. I’m going to scan it later tonight or tomorrow for you guys, but just as a preview, I’ll tell you that it seems to suggest that God’s Plan of Salvation features burly teenage boys wrestling in mud and 7-foot balls.
Excluding the four(!) “Resident”/“Postal Patron Rural Route 2” flyers, today’s haul was the following:
[ul]
[li]Hanna Andersson Fall 2005 Catalog: Adorable but outrageously priced kids’ clothing.[/li][li]PC Magazine “Second Notice”: Get the hint guys, we only get your mag because it was free with our airline miles.[/li][li]United Mileage Plus Visa solicitation: Sure, I’d get 20,000 bonus miles if I signed up, but who the hell would want to rack up miles in an airline that has filed for bankruptcy? Especially since I haven’t flown on your airline in the last 15 years (if not more)![/li]Bank of America Visa solicitation: Hey chinbender! Seems we’re on the same list.[/ul]
Err…and swampbear too. How’d you sneak in there with that post?
sigh My first piece of addressed junk mail this week, and it’s for my husband. He’s been invited to take part in the GM Employee Pricing Event at Our Local GM Dealer!!!
Two grocery store ads, 4 ads for other stores, and one ad for Domino’s Pizza. All of it addressed to “resident” - you said no “occupant”, but you didn’t say anything about “resident”, right?
I got nuthin’.
I get them in Indiana, and occasionally notice that the number of “safely recovered children” changes. Usually it goes up, but I once got a card that boasted of 135, followed about a week later by an announcement that a total of 131 kids had been found. Wonder what the story behind that about-face was…
This is ludicrous. After weeks of magazine renewals, actual magazines I didnt ask for , loan re-fi’s I cant use, etc, etc, I get 1 lousy piece of junk mail today:
-**free international cell phone rental **or some such.
Thanks for the stars FCMom!
Boy, crappy santas, a trade in offer for a new car, and swampbear’s pile, this could be a tough decision tomorrow.
Definitely the junkiest of Wednesday’s junk mail! Congratulations!!
Hal Briston is the official “Third-Day-of-the-Junk-Mail-Derby” winner for July 12, 2005, and is hereby awarded the following stars: ************ which will look lovely on the tree where you’ll hang your Thomas Kinkade ornaments.
Today, I got one credit card offer. That’s all. Last week I was getting 3 and 4 a day. I blame the terrorists.
OK…either the postal service or my credit union is a bit messed up. I have one of the most competent credit unions in the universe, so we’ll blame the postal service for the date part below. The credit union needs a new marketing department, though, I think.
Got an offer (adressed to me personally, even with my middle initial) for a home equity line-of-credit thingy, with up to $100 cash back, which I could use for: a Swedish massage, downloading 100 songs, a trip to Orlando ($100???), or to repaint the kitchen (I have a really small kitchen, so $100 might do it). Huh?
The kicker is that the offer is good until: June 30, 2005. I have been quite calendarily confused lately, but I am alert enough at the moment to know that today is July 14, 2005, which falls sometime after June 30, 2005. I double-checked the year in the expiration date, by the way.
But that’s all I got. ::Sigh::
Are there any direct-mail advertising experts who can tell us whether July is a particularly slow direct mail period?
GT
GT maybe all the junk mail spammers go on vacation in July. All I know is this week has been pretty durn disappointing junk mail wise. Today’s haul was a catalog from Oreck. Woohoo!
Look, I can usually count on American Express and Delta teaming up with a weekly offer for an American Express SkyMiles credit offer. This week, not the first one! Also, Dell usually sends me two three exciting offers a week. This week? Well, it’s like they never heard of me.
I am so strangely disappointed.
Amen to that. My downstairs neighbor and I are both somewhat lax in our mail collection. We each leaf through the mail, and discard anything that isn’t ours either in front of the other person’s door, or in the corner of the vestibule. One of us takes it out when it becomes hard to open the door. I cleaned it on Sunday–specifically to have a clean slate for this competition. The only thing down there is a credit card offer for the guy who used to live downstairs.
I feel betrayed by the entire junk mail industry.
I may not be playing but I’ve been following along and have a theory as to the lack of junk mail this week…
It takes time for businesses to put together lists of people to send junk mail to, and to design the flyers and advertising they send out. Last Monday was a holiday. People usually do less work just before and after holidays, being distracted by other things (gossiping before hand about what they plan to do, and then again afterward about what they actually did) This must have led to companies sending out less mass mailings last week, and thus less items arriving this week.
I’m fairly certain that those same individuals who slacked off last week are hard at work this week creating new pieces of trash to be mailed to your door next week. So just wait, the junk mail cometh…
Sure… yeah… get our hopes up! The JunkMail Gods looked upon this thread and decided to smite us. We know the real truth. 
Woohoo!!!
Day Four Haul:
One (1) Gold MasterCard offer from Orchard Bank (who I’d never fricking heard of until they sent me the same offer two days ago).
Two (2) CapitalOne Pre-Approved Preferred Plus Visa Platinum card offers. I guess they figured that I’d chuck the first one, but the second one would sway me.
Two (2) Providian Pre-Approved Preferred Visa Platinum card offers. Oooo, so close. I was going to go for it, but it’s not Preferred Plus like CapitalOne was offering.
One (1) Issue of The Answer, provided by the good folks over at New Beginnings Christian Fellowship. It includes informitive articles like “Staying Sun Smart” and “The Missing Ingredient In Prayer” (hint…it’s not “more swearing”).
One (1) Cyberguys catalog. Woot! Good junk mail! Lookit all this cool crap! A die-cast Gort! Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots! A bazillion different types of cables! Woohoo! If only all junk mail were this cool…
Thursday total: 7 items
Total for the week: 14 items
Wow…got as much today as I did the entire rest of the week…wonder if that’ll keep up tomorrow?