Direct Marketing Incompetence – A Vexing Problem

[CaptTom]

No return address is a good indicator it's junk. As is anything marked "Important!" or "Open Immediately!" or "Response Required!" Now that I think about it, anything with an exclamation point. Phony, printed handwriting-like fonts are another give-away. And, of course, the larger, heavier, glossier or thicker the brochure, the smaller the amount of your money would go toward products, services and/or charity.

 

[Walt34]

Just today we received a big fat stuffed envelope addressed to DW's father, who has never lived here and died ten years ago. When he was in full nursing care DW was POA and had his mail sent here. That's the only connection. So it goes straight to the trash can.

 

[brett]

I believe that direct marketing is only 'vexing' if you allow it to be 'vexing'. You have a choice. Answer that unknown caller, open that junk mail, whatever.

Lots of ways to shut it out of your life if you are so inclined....as we have been for a long time.

 

[FlaGator]

I believe that direct marketing is only 'vexing' if you allow it to be 'vexing'. You have a choice. Answer that unknown caller, open that junk mail, whatever.

Lots of ways to shut it out of your life if you are so inclined....as we have been for a long time.

And with that, I will say when you watch your wife of 30 years slowly die and you get reminders of that 10 years later, you might have a different point of view.

I know a lot more about direct marketing than the average bear, read my OP. I don't need any reminders of her slow, painful demise and want them to stop.

 

[brett]

For at least the last ten-fifteen years neither of us answers phone calls from unknown callers. Call display is a great tool. Two calls from UK numbers just this week that we did not bother picking up. No message of course.

For even longer, neither of us bothers with mail from unknown persons, firms, etc. It goes straight to the bin. We cannot be bothered opening unknown mail adressed to resident, addressed to us, or addressed to previous home owners. Since moving most of our personal mail to the web ten years ago it is surprising how little relevent mail we actually get. Nor do we open email from sources/adressees that we are not familiar with.

If we answered those phone calls or opened/read that unknown sender (to us) junk mail it might be a problem.

I really do not know nor do I want to find out by changing our practice.

 

[athena53]

For even longer, neither of us bothers with mail from unknown persons, firms, etc. It goes straight to the bin.

I got a PO Box years ago because of mailbox theft issues. Most of my mail doesn't even get into the house- I throw it into the trash before I leave the PO unless it's something like a credit card solicitation that might have sensitive info on it.

 

[brett]

I got a PO Box years ago because of mailbox theft issues. Most of my mail doesn't even get into the house- I throw it into the trash before I leave the PO unless it's something like a credit card solicitation that might have sensitive info on it.

Our goal has been to have as little hard mail as possible go through the postal system that contains any reference whatsover to our personal, financial or tax data.

Especially important now since we get our mail from a community box at the bottom of cul de sac.

We still have the occasional piece come along. It makes it way to the re-cycle bin via our shredder.

It makes me wonder about the value of direct mail and phone solicitiation. We know lots of people who do exactly as we do. No call answer or straight to the bin.

 

[Koolau]

It makes me wonder about the value of direct mail and phone solicitiation. We know lots of people who do exactly as we do. No call answer or straight to the bin.

I have wondered the same thing, and yet, the fact that we still get such unsolicited mail and calls makes me think unsolicited calls and mail MUST be worth it - otherwise, I guess they wouldn't do it.

Mailing permits for bulk mail are cheap and USPS could raise those rates. The fact that they don't charge more suggests it's cheap for USPS to deliver all this garbage to us.

I recall when my mom was starting into Alz., she was sending $5 checks to perhaps 35 "charities" every couple of months. The inbred nature of these charities meant that they all sold their mailing lists so she would sometimes get solicitations in slightly different names from the same charity. She could afford it then. I tried to get it all stopped and finally got her to put my name on her checking account and require both signatures. That helped a lot AND the volume of junk/bulk did slow down a bit once she quit sending to every Tom, Dick and Harry charity.

It's pretty disgusting that charities take advantage like this. YMMV

 

[SecondAttempt]

For at least the last ten-fifteen years neither of us answers phone calls from unknown callers. Call display is a great tool. Two calls from UK numbers just this week that we did not bother picking up. No message of course.

For even longer, neither of us bothers with mail from unknown persons, firms, etc. It goes straight to the bin. We cannot be bothered opening unknown mail adressed to resident, addressed to us, or addressed to previous home owners. Since moving most of our personal mail to the web ten years ago it is surprising how little relevent mail we actually get. Nor do we open email from sources/adressees that we are not familiar with.

If we answered those phone calls or opened/read that unknown sender (to us) junk mail it might be a problem.

I really do not know nor do I want to find out by changing our practice.

I got a new Google Pixel phone a couple of years ago and it comes with a feature to screen calls. I love it! I almost never get spam calls now and the odd caller that is legitimately contacting me leaves a message and I can call them right back. It's awesome and free.

 

[CaptTom]

Now that I think about it, I can't remember the last time I got a spam/scam phone call. It's been weeks, at least. Maybe months.

I don't screen my calls. Never have. I answer if I can, let it go to voice mail if I can't. If it's a scam, I might hang up, or maybe listen for a bit. It's interesting to know what's going on in the scam world. I never found it a huge inconvenience. Maybe because I simply refuse to let it irritate me.

 

[athena53]

Mailing permits for bulk mail are cheap and USPS could raise those rates. The fact that they don't charge more suggests it's cheap for USPS to deliver all this garbage to us.

I recall when my mom was starting into Alz., she was sending $5 checks to perhaps 35 "charities" every couple of months. <snip>
It's pretty disgusting that charities take advantage like this. YMMV

Yeah, that happened to my Dad, too, and he didn't have Alzheimer's. He got all kinds of plastic "gifts" from penny-ante charities. I donate mostly to major organizations, sometimes anonymously through my DAF and I've still accumulated a supply of return-address labels that may outlive me given how little I mail things.

Many years ago I started receiving a magazine aimed at advertisers for no reason I could fathom. What was interesting was their ads from mailing list brokers. They'd name the organization selling the list of donors as well as the average donation size. Most of the times the average donation was pitifully small but that makes sense- no organization is going to sell a mailing list of $1,000+ donors and jeopardize their own revenues.