I travel a lot, and I try to make sure that there are no obvious indications that the house is empty - like a stuffed mailbox. So I use a P.O. box, and I have physically removed my mailbox to stop USPS-delivered junk mail. But sometimes local businesses distribute promotional flyers by hand - by which I mean small sheets of paper, handbills, to advertise their business. And they just jam these into my gate so that they are clearly visible to the road.
I want to put up a little sign on my gate to inhibit this. When I lived in the U.K. I think a sign saying “No Flyers” would be understood. Is that the right word in the U.S.?
“Flyers” would be understood here in the Midwest, but to really drive it home you could hedge your bets and add ‘do not leave flyers, coupons, menus, solicitations, or advertisements’.
It really doesn’t matter whether you say “flyers,” “handbills,” “advertising,” or even “do not stuff items in my gate.” The people who distribute those things are paid to distribute them to every door in their area, and nothing short of an angry dog trying to bite their hands off (or you catching them in the act) will stop them.
Your better option is to complain to the businesses who advertise that way. Or you can see if your local community has an ordinance against it.
“No flyers” would be understood, but assuming anyone cared to try to comply with the request, I’m guessing most of them would think something along the lines of “well strictly speaking this isn’t a flyer, so I’ll leave it just in case.”
That’s simply wrong. That means attaching large sheets to a wall or fence semi-permanently. If you put that up, people might think flyers were perfectly fine.
Think about it.
Businesses hire people o distribute those flyers to every house in the area. Their priority is seeing that flyers get delivered to houses. Smart businesses check on this – they have friends living in the delivery area who let them know when the flyers are delivered, or they have money-off coupons included and track when those are used. If they notice areas that didn’t get delivered, they will complain loudly to the delivery people, withhold some payment, or even replace them. Businesses are far less concerned about one resident who complains that they don’t want the flyer.
And the delivery people are given a large area to cover with a bunch of flyers, and a deadline. Their priority is delivering them to every house, as quickly as possible. (That’s why they are stuffed in your gate, rather than walked up and put onto your porch.) Speed is their goal.
Some concerned businesses may keep a list of people who don’t want the flyers, and give that list to the delivery people to skip those houses. But it’s pretty hard to be rushing down 20 or 30 blocks of the street, leaving a flyer at each house, and then remember that you were supposed to skip the 4th house on the 8th block. And if you do remember it later, you can’t take the time to go back and pull it – you won’t finish the rest of the route in time. And you’ll get in much more trouble for not finishing the last 20 houses on the route than for leaving an extra where they didn’t want it.
So even if you’re on the do-not-deliver list, it still happens. (Assuming you are on the list. People often email or call up, ranting & cursing that they don’t want the flyers, but never leav
e their address. So how is a business to add them to the list?)
P.S. If what you really want is to prevent signs that your house is empty, provide a box at your gate, with a slot on top for them to put these in – a box with heavy, non-see-through sides. Then every so often, open the back of the box and dump everything directly into the recycling.
Here in the UK, I’ve seen stickers that have obviously been bought from a shop saying “No junk mail” or “No free newspapers”. Worth looking around where you live to see if there’s a signage business or hardware/DIY store that has something similar?
Though I too doubt their efficacy in the face of human nature.
Yes, “post no bills” was what you would see on those plywood safety walls around construction and sometimes any flat surface especially in downtown where there is pedestrian traffic. It meant don’t put up posters; otherwise people would come along with glue and hang ads for the next rock concert or special event. Nowadays they use staple guns too. The sign was about as effective as a “no flyers” sign is likely to be. The Canadian post office delivers junk mail (it’s getting to be their main business) and they might respect it, and I imagine the USPS too, but private distributors probably don’t care.
This is true.
The minimum-wage drones who distribute those flyers don’t care about anything except finishing their shift quickly.
Yes, this is the best solution. Have a slot big enough for small pamphlets, but not easy to look into and notice that the box is full(and thus the house is unoccupied).
If I leave any kind of box out, USPS dumps oodles of junk mail into it, including newspapers and magazines, and sometimes leaves things jammed in the opening and sticking out even if it’s not full.
But the whole point is that I’m not home to do that. I have a housekeeper, but I don’t want to have her come round just for this.
Thanks for taking the effort to give your thoughts. I don’t expect a sign to eliminate the problem entirely, but it’s easy to do and it won’t make the problem worse. I think some people may respect it. Santa Fe is a small and generally pretty friendly community.
If you get really lucky, you may get someone like I was in high school, who chucked the flyers in the nearest skip and slept for a few hours in her car.
All Texans with second homes in Santa Fe, in residence much less often than me. It’s more often me checking their places to see if anything’s amiss.
I guess I could follow the approach of the guy who turned up for a safari in running shoes. Put up a sign with an arrow pointing next door saying “those guys are never home”.
I guess it’s not quite such a problem here, where we have letterboxes in the front door. Provided that it is a ‘friendly’ one - ie, one that is big enough and doesn’t have a super-strong, finger-trapping spring on the flap, most of the junk ends up on the floor inside. Free newspapers are the exception, but the postie will push those through the next time they deliver.