I live in an apartment, but I think this rant is equally pertinent to house dwellers as well.
At least twice per week I come home at the end of the day to find an advertisement or two wedged between the door knob and the frame of my front the door. They are usually from local (non-chain) restaurants. Chinese food and pizza places are the worst offenders. So, all day long this ad basically advertises to the world that I am not home. “Thieves, please rob me!”
As if that isn’t annoying enough, whenever I go out of town, I have to go through the hassle of arranging for a friend of mine to watch my door and remove this vile detritus at periodic intervals while I am away, else someone might take note of it building up at my front door and, after a couple days preparation time, break into my home and steal things.
My own apartment complex management is guilty of this, though they usually manage to shove the “recruit your friends, receive $100 credit against your rent” or some such logorrhea-in-print partially under the door.
When I receive these things, they go straight into the garbage. If I happen to notice the name of the business establishment that chose to advertise in such an inconsiderate manner it in my rush to throw the flyer, I do not patronize it in the future.
I get these stupid things too, hanging from my doorknob about as often, and hate them for the same reasons.
The weird part is that they’re always from the same two competing pizza places. I usually just toss them in the garbage or put them on my neighbors doorhandle, but now that I think about how often they leave them I’m thinking I should start saving them. When I get a couple of handfulls, I’ll leave a bunch of their competitors coupons hanging from their door.
Ugh, I hate those wretched fliers. I not only get the local take-out places, but realtor fliers telling me that they’d pay me cash for my place, if only I’d give them one little phone call. Although my personal favorites would have to be the landscaping fliers written by people who have almost no grip on English. News flash: if you can’t spell ‘lawn’, you’re not getting on my property with anything sharp.
I used to get them, too - except I’m actually home. I don’t know if they wait until I’m in the shower or what, but when I step out to get the mail, or when my husband returns home from work, we find mysterious pizza flyers hanging on the doorknob or jammed into the screen door.
Also, I usually order from them at least once, but we like to try new things. After doing that, I never get a flyer from them again. I’m sure this isn’t the case everywhere, but it they seem pretty good about it here, so far (it’s been two years). We haven’t gotten any flyers in months, except from Jehovah’s Witnesses… but I don’t think I’ll let them in . I’ll deal with the flyers on that one, thanks.
This seems to indicate that the apartment management is allowing random people to roam about the building and stick flyers on doors. Or do whatever else.
I guess I’d be more concerned about that. Doesn’t your building have security locks that keep strangers from wandering the halls? Most apartment buildings have that, nowdays.
I do this with political campaign literature, and getting into apartment buildings is a big problem. We actually have a list of party members who live in each building, so they can let our workers into the building to distribute the literature. And we always try to stick it under the door, into their apartment. Much more effective!
I never quite understand why spam is an issue, one click and it is gone but junk mail drives me up the flipping wall!
Our recycling collection has recently gone to once a fortnight, this has made the me more aware of the volume of junk mail we recieve. We easily fill 2 or 3 supermarket bags a fortnight. That is a shitload of trees that died and nobody ever read the shit they went on to peddle.
Do those things actually work in your neck of the woods? Here in Brooklyn, almost every house on my block has them (some of them have MULTIPLE “no flyers” signs) and they are completely ignored.
I’ve encountered menu planters before when leaving/arriving at my house, and the culprits ALWAYS go running away rather than face me.
Yes, they work in degrees and BY LAW. “No junk mail” means they can’t plonk advertising material in your letter box. “No circulars” means no junk mail and no ‘regular’ advertising glurge
but you still get council stuff and community stuff.
Unfortunately no matter what it says on your letter box you get whatever fluff the council wants to send.
Anything I find stuck on my property with a phone number on it gets a prompt phone call from me. “Hello? Pizza Hell? Just wanted to thank you for littering on my property, and tell you that I will starve to death before I wil order anything from you. Do you happen to have the number for Papa Johns?”
This is ridiculous. Such stickers would be absolutely pointless.
Under US law, the postman must deliver every single piece of mail – he can be fired if he doesn’t. So he’d have to ignore the sticker.
And nobody except the postman can legally put anything in or on your mailbox. Someone already breaking the law isn’t likely to pay any attention to your sticker.
And postal workers do enforce that; they see deliveries by anyone else as unfair competition. I’ve had newby campaign workers who put flyers in mailboxes, and had a call to the campaign that same day from the Post Office, telling us we had until sundown to go back and remove them, or we would get a fine plus be charged full first-class mail rate on each piece left in a mailbox. And they meant it.
But this is off-topic. The OP wasn’t talking about mailed flyers, but ones dropped at his door.
I’ve seen a new twist on this: postcard-sized flyers in a ziplock bag along with a couple of pebbles. The flyer-folk cruise down the street and toss them into driveways. It’s littering as far as I’m concerned.
I wish there was a lock on the main door. But, I’m in a garden style apartment (4 floors, 2-4 units per floor) so I guess management doesn’t think it is worthwhile. Plus, as I said, they are part of the problem with their spammy newsletter every month at my doorstep.
How about if it says, “Lawn’s Mowed. Yard Service’s of all type’s.
Call Jim at 555-1234” ?
Makes me want to call Jim and explain the concept of apostrophes.
Does that only go for addressed mail? I have always been able to stop flyers and unaddressed mail from coming to me.
At my last house I put a “No unsolicited mail” sticker on my mailbox, and kept getting flyers (it’s locked, so I know they came from the mailperson and not from a random flyer-deliverer). So I called up the Canada Post toll-free number to register a complaint. Within half an hour (!!) I got a phone call from the manager of the postal route my house is on, who apologised profusely and gave me his direct number to call if it ever happened again. It never did.
If they would stick to just littering my front door with ads, I’d be okay with it. Well the time a certain tree company festooned my door and railing with a dozen advertisements wasn’t cool. A quick call and I haven’t heard from them since.
However, a few have decided entering the breezeway and putting flyers on my table or on my back door is okay. To me, the breezeway is almost the same as “inside” the house. You do not enter unless you’re actually coming into the house.
I used to deliver 'em myself, so I understand. I hear they’re slowly bringing in bylaws to control junk mail, though. Wait in hope, I guess.