US dopers: telemarketing and junk mail

Hello.

I’m curious.

There are regular Pit threads here about telemarketing calls, and junk mail, and I’m reading threads at the moment about election-related automated messages several times a day.

This amazes me. I live in a country with a similar political system, a similar legal system and no real reason I can think of why such trends should really differ. And yet … I can only remember receiving one telemarketing call in about five years. Junk mail is about one piece a week.

So how many telemarketing calls do you get? How much junk mail? And why do you think that it’s such a huge amount?

(I specified US just because that’s where the majority of these complaints seem to arise; if your country has an equal problem, please post!)

We don’t get much in the way of telemarketing calls (it helps that we have an unlisted number), and the ones I have gotten, I’ve asked to be put on their “do not call” lists.

As for junk mail, well, that’s a different story. We get a LOT of it from different sectors of the local business community. We don’t have cable, so we get a lot from the cable company, we just moved into the neighborhood, so we get a lot from local churches and businesses welcoming us, and we get the random charity solicitation. We also get a lot of credit-card solicitations, since Airman is in the military and therefore a good credit risk. All of this gets thrown out.

I think the real beef most of us have with unsolicited mail and phone calls (especially those with a commercial purpose) is that they’re basically coming into our homes uninvited. If I want to do business with someone, I go seek them out and I go to them.

That said, however, there are some things I want to get in the mail. Local grocery stores send out their weekly advertisements; I can decide if they have what I need that week and if I should go shopping there. Also, political candidates send campaign material out, and I want to see that so I can make a choice on who to vote for. Local agencies also send flyers out and it’s nice to see what my city has to offer in the way of fun things to do.

So, I don’t mind the junk mail, I just wish I could pick and choose which junk mail I get.

Robin

A lot of it is market area, too. I recently moved from a fairly large, growing metropolitan area to basically the middle of nowhere. We used to get 5-8 telemarketing calls a day - so many that I paid a monthly fee for a service that blocked them. Now that I live in the middle of nowhere, I get maybe 1 telemarketing call a week.

Junk mail, on the other hand, knows no boundaries.

We get about 5 - 10 telemarketing calls a day and 50 - 100 pieces of junk mail a week. Combine that with 20 or so Spam e-mails a day and you have got one big waste of time.

My number is unlisted and I just paid to be on the Do Not Call list for Texas, so I don’t get many calls at all, but before that, I would get several a week. Maybe phone calls are more expensive in the UK, and therefore not a cost-effective means of contacting potential customers.

Junk mail doesn’t bother me much, but I get a ton of it, which all gets thrown away. No clue why this is. Different laws governing solicitation perhaps?

Phone calls, maybe once or twice a week. It only bothers me if they’re rude or they mispronounce my name (which is not a difficult one, I don’t know why it gives people so much trouble.) Junk mail, several pieces a day. I get at least one pre-approved credit card offer a week, which is kind of funny, because I’m currently unemployed. I usually throw junk mail away unopened and don’t think about it again. I don’t feel much need to rant about either the phone calls or the junk mail, though I probably would if I was getting the volume that Shagnasty is.

Lest our cousins get the wrong idea, I suspect you’re in an unusual position there, Crusoe. I live in the same city as you and I get on average three or four junk mails and two or three junk phone calls every day (typically when I’m cooking). I suspect I get more calls than that during the day because there are lots of “empty” messages on the machine from numbers that are withheld. It depends on how many mailing lists you’re on, and being on a list is a contagious ailment.

The subjects typically range from charities to home improvement companies, although I get a lot of credit card applications too. These frequently come from companies whose cards I already have, and when I phoned one to complain about that they said they got the details from the electoral register, which is not cross-referenced against their existing customer list to save them time.

Junk e-mails, I get about half a dozen of those a day. I assume I’d get more if I browsed more dubious sites than I do, or if I didn’t know not to reply to them.

Local calls are not free, and never have been, but they are cheap these days. My line rental costs much more than the total for the calls I make.

I believe it’s basically a cultural difference in buying patterns. Direct Marketing has been well established in the US for approximately 20 years, and has become well respected in the past 5 or so. It used to be that the only people doing Direct Marketing were either shady, fly-by-night organizations, or companies with marginally shady practices like Columbia House (with their “send back the card or we’ll send you the club CD” psuedo-scam). Now, DM has become a legitimate way of marketing products. Everyone from Bose (my employer), to Disney, to Sharper Image, to Sears is heavily involved in direct marketing.

We began Direct Marketing efforts in the UK and other countries in Europe about five years ago. Sales have continually increased, but it was really rocky at first. The basic infrastructure needed to perform DM was just not there (we had shipping problems, phone problems, mail problems, advertising issues, you name it!), and customers weren’t used to doing business through the mail.

It will be a slow road, but the UK will catch up to the US pretty soon. Then you too will have the joys of getting called at 7pm while you’re trying to get your child bathed and in their jammies, and at 9am on the morning after a long night out.

Oh good, I shall look forward to it!

Just to reiterate, I’m sure Crusoe’s situation is unusual. We’ve had direct marketing by mail for at least 20 years here too. I’m sorry you had difficulties setting up in Europe, Morgainelf (I’ve had plenty of stuff from Bose btw). Maybe people are just reluctant to buy hi-fi equipment through the mail? I’ve always visited electronics/hi-fi specialist shops to buy mine.

Unusual? Not really; I do get junk mail, but not in great quantities, and I don’t recall seeing much in the last two houses I’ve lived in and four shared flats before that (i.e. where there was post for the other people too). I know that’s only anecdotal, but I don’t recall anyone really complaining about the volumes here.

Or have I just been lucky?

Maybe it’s just me then? No, I have heard other people complaining about it, just not enough to merit a Pit thread. The phone calls are a nuisance though - I bought double glazing for a previous house but didn’t want a uPVC door. The company evidently marked me down as “partial complete” and plagued me for months afterwards. Bstids.

I don’t get a lot of junk mail. Mostly credit card offers and stuff from charities and that all goes into the shredder. The phone calls were so bad though that I just quit answering the phone a couple of years ago. When I’m home I leave my computer dialed in all the time. Anyone who has a valid reason to call me knows they have to e-mail me first or leave a message on my voice mail at work. My state will have a do-not-call list at the beginning of the new year but I’ll probably stick with my tried and true method since it prevents my mother from calling and trapping me for an hour.

Athena, what was the blocking service that you used to prevent junk phone calls? I live in New England and have never heard of such a thing.

I’ll just chime in to agree with everton that crusoe is in an unusual situation: I’m also in London, and I think I get at least one telemarketing call a week (probably more, but I try to expunge them from my memory) and I get more junk mail than real mail - at least one piece a day on average.

Just to support Crusoe’s “usualness”, I never receive any telemarketing calls and only get around three credit card offers in the post each week.

I suspect it is all related to how much you buy online, via post, or over the phone, and consequently how many lists you could be on that are sold to the telemarketers.

When I lived with my parents we used to get a few telemarketing calls, but a polite “Thanks for the offer but we don’t buy over the phone. Please put us on your do not call list” seemed quite effective in stamping them out. In fact, I don’t remember getting any calls after one initial burst a few years back. I dunno, maybe we just got lucky and got the only telemarketers with morals.

Spam email is a different story. Since I started my web site the amount I get per day has gone up from zero to about fifteen.

Hey, so am I usual or unusual? Ha.

I suspect maybe I have been quite lucky. I try to be careful about who I give my details to, and I haven’t (yet) hit the property ladder or otherwise been involved in lots of financial transactions where my address is being supplied to various companies. Or maybe the MPS is working after all?

It was a service called Privacy Plus, and worked in conjunction with Caller ID. Basically, every time an anonymous or unknown call came through, it played a message that said “This number does not accept anonymous calls. Please record your name if you wish this call to go through.” Legitimate calls would, and the phone would ring and I’d get a message saying “so-and-so is calling, would you like to take the call?”

I never once had a telemarketer leave his or her name. In that case, the phone didn’t even ring.

You can read more about it here.

More annoying than phone or mail marketing is door-to-door. Round here we get about one a week, generally selling either windows, cable hookup, or electricity! The elec ones really bug me… won’t take a ‘no thank you’ for an answer, and I was brought up too polite to slam the door in their faces…

our cell service automatically provides anonymous call blocking as part of a larger package. and with cell phones, the number isn’t listed in a directory. for this reason, we gave up our land line, and have never again been bothered by telemarketers. we also do not give our real numbers on forms where it’s required unless we know that we’ll truly need to be reached by phone. we just put our area code and 555-1212. i figure no one owns my time except me. and i find it peculiar that people feel required to answer the phone just because it rings.

i don’t even know how much junk mail we get; if it doesn’t look like a bill or something personal i don’t even look twice, just toss it out.

on rereading this, it occurs to me that i look like a hermit in some ways. but it seems more natural than just allowing oneself to be invaded on someone else’s terms and schedule.

mary