This might belong in the pit, but I’ll post here first -
Does anyone here receive these massive useless stacks of coupons and fliers in their mailboxes almost every day? I don’t know if this would be considered junk mail - I have always thought of junk mail as credit card offers and other things that at least have the decency to be in an envelope. This crap is like the coupons and circulars in the Sunday paper except that it’s now stuffed in my mailbox.
I never use these things, and I am certain that I have lost important mail in the past because it got lost in all of the extra paper stuffed in my mailbox.
Does anyone else have this problem? Is this a local phenomenon here in Houston? I didn’t get this crap in the mail when I lived in Boston.
Is there any way to stop it? I don’t even have any idea where it comes from - there’s not even a return address. Just a label addressed to “occupant”.
Some of the mail box stuffers are even lower in class than junk mail. Those circulars and envelope stuffers don’t even have return addresses (you’re right, you might find the printer’s name if lucky).
When you get junk mail you can use the pre-paid return envelope with a note of your own making to say no thanks and get my name off your list. Lots of times they don’t have your name (you’ve been rented or exchanged from someone who does have your name) but they can add your name to a suppress file that is to be run against their next mailing and every mailing there after.
In theory the return pre-paid envelope doesn’t go to the main mail making address but they should still forward requests like yours to the right place.
Your question is harder. You could spend a rainy afternoon calling the phone numbers given in the advertisers in that envelope and spend a couple of minutes telling them how much you disliked getting that trash and so on.
Nothing like listening to a few complaints to make a borderline advertiser decide to try something else. Just make sure you talk to the boss or manager or head of something.
If the company is extra big, wait until you get a couple and make u p a form letter on your PC - Put: For the President or CEO of Sears or whatever big company annoyed you on the envelope and greetings. Make a few computer changes and mail a few at one time.
You never know what will happen and you’ll feel better once those letters are in the mail.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Yes, I get them about once per week. In fact, I got one just yesterday. Let’s see, coupons for tire and automotive service, 2 national pizza chains, eyeglasses, monthly specials of a local grocery chain (though you also need one of their loyalty cards), fast-food fish, fried chicken, and a tanning salon, along with circulars for sporting goods and tool stores. Other than the fish, which includes a coupon for a free piece of fish (no purchase required), I’ll probably throw the packet away.
I’ve also got these in Dallas, but don’t recall getting them anywhere else.
I don’t mind them so much as you do, since they don’t target me specifically, and sometimes I actually use them. But all the coupons seem to indicate that the participating businesses are pricing their regular goods/services too high to begin with.
“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see a cross?” – Bill Hicks
We even get them out here in the sticks. Usually grocery stores, Sprawlmart, etc. all adressed to occupant. I’m assuming they just send the flyers and some money for bulk postage to the various local post offices they want to target. Many of them are the same flyers that get stuffed into the local paper.
I believe these are bundled up by local companies (out of advertising materials from various sources – most of the ones I see are local, like auto body places and food stores, but there are some national chains) and given to the local post offices for delivery.
They’re not addressed, because the standard is “Give one of these to every single mailbox on your route.” There’d be no way to get out of that, unless you become friends with your carrier and get him to skip you (which, of course, would leave him with the extra, which he’d have to get rid of).
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
You know those warrentee things you mail in when you get a computer or something for your computer? They take your name from them & then these are sold to comp’s & these comp’s mail you that crap. THat is the main reason they ask people to complete those things.
Those “Send this in for your…” are still junk mail - targeted to you as the acknowledged owner of a certain appliance or camera or whatever. Someone put thought into that.
jonnyharvard is talking about circulars, non-targeted trash. Says “Occupant” your name isn’t even mentioned. True trash.
Regular junk mail may say both your name and “Occupant” - in this case the mailer is telling the postal worker to just drop the mailing piece at your address in case you have move. The mailer doesn’t want to pay return postage. “Occupant” is the signal to the postal worker.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
If you’re talking about the same kind of stuff we get here in the DFW area, this stuff is distributed by a company called ADVO. They usually include a card with all the junk that has Missing Child information on it. You might check that for a way to contact ADVO so that you can request to be removed from their mailing list.
I doubt, however, that it will work.
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Tuesday is “crap-mail day” at my place, too. (outside of Seattle). I used to just toss it directly into the recycle bin, until I realized that my postal-person seems to enjoy tucking some of my mail inside the junk. (enter choice name for the letter carrier here). Now I look through it to make sure no “real” mail is in there, but it sucks; it’s a waste of paper, and this mailbox fulla junk every Tuesday has yet to entice me to buy anything.
My husband’s a mailman (excuse me, “letter carrier”).
That junk mail is called “marriage mail”, at least at the post office here. If you don’t have any real mail that day, the carrier still has to give you the marriage mail. This is called “full coverage”: everybody in town gets mail that day, though most of it is just junk and a waste of everyone’s time.
There is no number you can call to prevent this from happening; the carrier has to give you this crap, and s/he’s not any happier about it than you are. The carrier has to sort all that stuff, load it in the truck, and carry aound several extra pounds of it everywhere he goes. It adds several hours to his working day.
I would suggest putting a little note inside the mailbox saying “Please don’t give me any marriage mail!” I would also suggest writing your postmaster a letter imploring him to lay off the marriage mail, but this would be ineffective due to the fact that the postmaster doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you’re happy with the service or not.
And if you own a vicious dog, it’s really not good form to chain him to the mailbox.
Believe it or not, I deserve some of your flames on this because I worked with a group from the US Postal Service from D.C. as part of a business school project to increase acceptance of junk mail.
Most junk mail has less than a 1% response rate, and believe it or not, it is actually decreasing in volume overall because of this reason, with advertisers turning to other means. Local merchants still use those ‘drop one in every mail box’ idea which has been shown to be ineffective in all but the borderline purchaser.
We recommended a ‘competitive clustering’ strategy with the direct mail. That is, send all junk mail of a similar nature on the same day and let people know it is coming. That way, if you knew ‘car stuff’ came on a Tuesday and you needed an oil change, you’d be more likely to wait for it, read it all, and try to find the coupon, whereas now, advertisers have to spam the hell out of you because they have no idea where you will be when you want their product/ service. Studies have shown the collective volume of business you get is greater this way even though competing business have to advertise next to each other. It’s the same reason major hotels locate next to each other in random cities that have no obvious tourist attraction.
Most of the junk mail that you can’t figure out who to contact to get your name off the list are prepaid return postage. I get a shrink-wrapped package of 50 or so return mail prepaid “send me more info” postcards at least once a week. I tear away the wrapper (removing any traces of my address) and dump them all into the nearest mail box. The way I see it, they’re renting out my mailbox for 22¢ per postcard.
As for the larger supermarket & hardware store ads on newsprint, I do have to carefully sift through those to find the occasional piece of genuine mail burried within.