PennyroyalFrog
Tele-Afflicted
I made a thread awhile ago about how I get more junk snail mail than e-mail now. I get about five spam e-mails a month aggregated from two different accounts.
Unwanted, Unsolicited Mail
- Thread starter Nubs
- Start date
Check the account/address? Usually the utility bills go to the service address, that might be your utility bill.
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11 Gauge
Doctor of Teleocity
Even though I'm Caucasian, I have a Spanish last name. As the years have gone on, I've begun to receive more and more junk mail in Spanish. And since I'm Caucasian, the bulk of this junk mail does not include me as the targeted audience, for all sorts of reasons you might be able to imagine. It doesn't so much annoy me as it makes me laugh, but it is obviously a total waste of materials and effort.
Even though my house is paid off and I have no intentions of moving, I receive numerous junk mail solicitations every week from someone who wants to buy my house for cash.
I could go on and on, but the crux of it is that I'm not the target audience for 95% of the junk mail I receive. What the physical mail system needs is what exists on the web - algorithms and other such tech that can determine those things that you will probably at least be curious about. But we know that will never happen.
Heck, I'd probably be okay just getting the old grocery store circulars, but they've actually gotten to be pretty rare.
Even though my house is paid off and I have no intentions of moving, I receive numerous junk mail solicitations every week from someone who wants to buy my house for cash.
I could go on and on, but the crux of it is that I'm not the target audience for 95% of the junk mail I receive. What the physical mail system needs is what exists on the web - algorithms and other such tech that can determine those things that you will probably at least be curious about. But we know that will never happen.
Heck, I'd probably be okay just getting the old grocery store circulars, but they've actually gotten to be pretty rare.
VonBonfire
Tele-Holic
"Saving the planet"
LOL, where is my cape?
Timber is managed, years ago.
LOL, where is my cape?
Timber is managed, years ago.
Dave Skowron
Tele-Meister
If there's a pre-paid return envelope in the junk mail I always use it to send them back the outer envelope. This way they have to pay for that return postage. If you just toss the return envelope they never have to pay that postage.
Peegoo
Doctor of Teleocity
No he didn't
I did exactly that when I moved in. Most of the mail I received was for the previous 2 owners, junk and I suspect otherwise. "Return to sender-no longer at this address!" in red ink. Almost always the mail would find it's way back to me. Now it just goes in the trash.Buy a rubber stamp, "return to sender" put it back in a mail box!
haha
I always wanted to do th is, but never did. Well... maybe once or twice.
If you want to play it smart use these guidelines. Don't use or inquire about the product if, it is on a bus, in a bus, a billboard, on your TV screen, in your mail, in your e-mail, on your answering machine/voice mail. These are all methods to get you to the lowest common scheister denominator, or, the highest price in the world. Corporations have taken over a lot of the way we do business. And direct assault on the human intelligence seems to work best. It is monuments propaganda slamming you with relentless pies in the face.. It is terrible. It seems to masifeste4d into this in recent years. Stay tuned, more to come.
That works about as well as politely asking a solicitation phone caller to remove your number from their call list. That only prompts them to put your number on the "SPECIAL" number list.....they now know yours is a good, working number, and someone actually answers the phone when it rings. (Target Acquired, Sir.....)
Blrfl
Tele-Afflicted
Having done some work for that same large airplane manufacturer, I used to tease my employed-by-them colleagues that the company was headquartered in Seattle because it was close to the raw materials for making all of the paper they generated.
colchar
Friend of Leo's
And then there are the SPAM email from this forum. I don't need to be told about current threads, if I want to read the boards I'll surf on over.
THX1123
Tele-Afflicted
I am assuming the debt is from one of his prior addresses. All my utilities are fine - now.
It is interesting that you say that though. The last tenant never terminated her gas service at my address when she moved. I have gas heat. Whoever set up the gas spelled the street name wrong. The gas company told me repeatedly the three times I called that there was no gas service at the address - because I was using the correct street name. I'm not sure where the bills were going.
Then they shut off my gas after 5 months there because she wasn't paying the bills. This was the only way I could determine any account information for the house. Even then I had no idea whose name it was formerly in, or the account number. No paper bills ever came.
I took me a week to sort that out, and I ended up owing 5 months of gas bills. They did waive all other deposit/re-connect/connect fees though. Then when they did come to re-connect the gas all the guy did was read the meter. They eventually got my gas back on but they still have the wrong street name on my account. I chose paperless billing, so at least there's that.
burntfrijoles
Poster Extraordinaire
I have a junk mail collector in my garage. All junk mail goes there for proper disposition. I don't get financial solicitation mail (credit card offers, etc) anymore because I froze my credit at Experian, Equifax, etc. I get e-statements for bills, medical records, etc.
I've stopped shredding for the most part. If someone wants to sort through banana peels, coffee grounds, food remnants of all sorts, wipes, tissues to get to the limited amount of information in tossed records, let them have at it.
Regardless, no one cares about the amount this adds to landfills. No one cares about the needless expenditure of USPS resources. It just accepted and it won't change. As someone else mentioned, it takes pennies for the marketers to produce and distribute so it won't stop.
I've stopped shredding for the most part. If someone wants to sort through banana peels, coffee grounds, food remnants of all sorts, wipes, tissues to get to the limited amount of information in tossed records, let them have at it.
Regardless, no one cares about the amount this adds to landfills. No one cares about the needless expenditure of USPS resources. It just accepted and it won't change. As someone else mentioned, it takes pennies for the marketers to produce and distribute so it won't stop.
You are 100% correctamondo!
The shame is that all of this marketing was allowed to be opt out instead of opt in. They are required to give you a way to "opt out" but they are allowed to opt you in without your knowledge or consent, and these days they do so automatically. When you sign up for something they don't care if you uncheck the box that says "send me offers and deals" they just opt you in whether you want it or not and then they hope you don't complain about it. The "unsubscribe" link at the bottom only serves as a way to confirm that it's a valid email address ripe to receive even more junk. If it includes a postage paid return envelope then I tear up everything and shove it all in that pp envelope and send it back to them. Then at least they have to pay the postage for getting it back.
What really irks me is finding the loose flyers under the windshield wiper when I get back to my car. Most of them end up littering the streets and those businesses never have the required permits for doing that, especially for doing it on private property like school and church and big box store parking lots.
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richiek65
Poster Extraordinaire
It used to be that if you wrote Return to Sender on business mail that the Post Office would actually return it, plus charge the sender for the return postage. I took joy in making the idiots pay the return postage. But I'm not so sure it works that way today. I bet the Post Office just trashes it.
Does anyone know for sure what they do with it?
Does anyone know for sure what they do with it?
Right, that "Unsubscribe" link is just another part of the scam.
I hate those flyers on my windshield too. A couple times, I have called the pizza joint, or whatever business was advertised on it, and told them they broke my wiper blade (they didn't). One of them told me to buy a new blade and bring the receipt, but I never did.
Rocky058
Tele-Afflicted
So whatever happened to the "paperless" society we were promised?
