O O Ø O O O O
Spam In The Box
Have you noticed how much crap arrives in your mailbox every day? I’m not talking about your e-mail box, I’m talking about the one hanging on the side of your abode, at the end of your driveway, in the lobby, or Canada Post’s version of a Beowulf mail cluster. Every day I hear my letter carrier dropping stuff in there, but lately there’s not a heck of a lot of mail.
There’s no ads for penis pumps, Viagra, or refinancing that home I don’t yet own. There are, however, all kinds of solicitations for credit cards, magazines, hair removal (I’m not making this up), and pizza from the crappiest pizza chain ever. I have no choice but to deal with them because, if I don’t, my letter carrier won’t have a place to put the new ads, or the hoo-lee-gans will figure I’m away and break into my house.
The Citi Group is my favourite. I receive between one and four pieces of mail from them a week hawking credit cards I don’t want, and am not going to use. I have filled out three forms that they promise will be used to take my name off their mailing lists, but I suspect it’s really used to keep their database up to date so they can send me more crap. I’ve tried calling, as well, and all they ever do is tell me to request the form so I can fill it out, mail it in, and have nothing happen.
I’ve tried a “No fliers, junk, or bulk mail” sign on my mailbox, but this has had zero effect. I’ve explained to both my letter carrier and Canada Post that no one named “Occupant” lives here, and that I’m the only one who lives at my address, all of the previous occupants have moved on, and I don’t want their crap. That didn’t work either. I can’t sabotage the delivery mechanism, as it may completely stop the flow of postal mail or put me in jail for causing grievous bodily harm.
There’s also bill spam, but this is the stuff you have to be really careful of, because they sneak important info in there as well. The idea is that you include all kinds of little fliers for junk from China that no one in their right mind would want, and get them accustomed to throwing it all out without giving it a second look. Then, you sneak things like rate changes, policy changes, fee increases, service claw backs - anything that you have to give your customers notice on that might really tick them off. The customer just tosses the whole thing out. I know this, because when I was a product manager and had to deliver news like this, it was always through the “bill stuffers”. Watch and beware, is all I’m sayin’.
So basically, I have no anti-spam solution for my postal mail, and it irks me. My physical mailbox requires a lot more effort. Because so many pieces of letter spam contain personally identifiable information pre-printed on application or authorization forms, these items must be shredded and disposed of. The non-identifiable mail can be disposed of if its addressed to “Occupant” can usually be recycled, but the mail to former occupants should be dealt with properly, which takes even more time as the letter carrier won’t pick that mail up. It’s a small thing, but over the Christmas holidays the former occupants received forty-two pieces of mail which had to be marked “return to sender” and dropped off at the mailbox.
It’s kind of annoying, because my e-mail box is close to perfect. I receive anywhere from one hundred to four hundred spams a day, and a little over 99% of them are disposed of without any intervention required by my anti-spam solution. It does require a little effort to train the stuff that does get by, but that takes about 15 seconds a day. Contrast hat with anywhere from ten to thirty minutes a week (a loose estimate), and dealing with postal spam is a much bigger issue.
Unlike other problems posed on the pd.o, any potential solutions I have were soundly rejected by my mail carrier and the mother ship. They tell me that the bulk mailings subsidize my “low” mailing costs, and other internal things that cost money. I don’t know about you, but I rarely send letters, and when I do I usually need a signature or tracking to prove Canada Post did its job, so it ends up costing six bucks to send the one envelope. Cheap, indeed.
Apparently it’s also the responsibility of the former occupants or the people sending them mail to change addresses, so Canada Post has no choice but to deliver some else’s mail until I send it back. Makes sense, not.
So, no filters, no spamassassin, no RBLs, no nuthin’ for dealing with the post. Instead I just keep a red sharpie and a bunch of Avery 8160 sheets with “Return to Sender, Forwarding Address Unknown” labels at the ready. I shred my info, recycle the occupant ads, and send as much spam as possible back to the senders in their business reply envelopes, hoping they’ll get the message (although I don’t think Citi ever will). Maybe I’ll send an invoice to Canada Post for handling charges, because that would be fun just to see how it played out, and I bet I could get someone there at least as irritated with me as I am with them.
And they wonder why fewer and fewer people see them as being useful for anything other than sending Christmas Cards.
Kev Needham
January 10, 2006
OOØOOOODCCXXXVIII
January 11th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Hey Kev - you sound like a spoiled little baby. If you don’t like our free market economy thing we’ve got going on you can always move to Afghanistan or Saudi…I bet they’d really appreciate your comments.
January 11th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Possible solution - take your occupant and mass mailing junk, place in the envelope provided by the good folks at Citi, and drop it in the mail.
That way, Canada Post can still do its job, and Citi can help in the recylcing.
Win-Win!
January 11th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
i write on anything i dont want “MOVED” and leave it at the mailbox. i figure if it inconveniences them enough they might come up with a better solution.
January 12th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Yo Pedro,
Of course I am whiny, I’m from the East (but you probably are, too).
Free market economy has nothing to do with subsidizing business models at my expense. If I was paying for the junk, I could stop paying, and it would stop. I’m not paying for it, don’t want it, and have no recourse other than bitching about it (which, in case you were unable to determine, is exactly what the pd.o is for).
Not that I understand your train of thought, butI’m also willing to bet if I asked people in Afghanistan (especially Afghanistan) and/or Saudia Arabia if they’d be pissed if people kept giving them shit they didn’t want, they’d probably point out they’re already there. If you could spend a couple minutes, could you explain the point you were trying to make or the relationship you were trying to outline between my bitching about crap I don’t want, and a couple of nation states half a world away? That’d be peachy.
Also, you may want to enquire with the folks around you how they are liking the free market thingee these days with the lack of competition in Canada, and the speculative inflation that is driving our market-based pricing through the roof. A lot of companies in Canada’s “free market” survive because there is no significant competition or because the larger clients and parents like to keep business “in the family” or country. That usually means you don’t get the full value of what you pay for, and are subsidizing various inefficiencies and someone else’s profit through inflated pricing.
I don’t like that.
But that’s just how I see it, because I’m a whiny, spoiled, little shit (and I’m proud of it).
January 12th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
How about puting a second mail box out beside the one you have, and marking it “SPAM”. Let the mailman/woman know what to do, ie: setup filters with him/her. Problem solved.
January 12th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I hear you on this Canada Post bullshit. I keep getting mail for the two former owners of my house as well, who I was told had both passed away - I called Canada Post and I talked to the carriers and they all told me that the previous owners had to do a change of address…correct me if I’m wrong but this sounds like a Catch-22 situation to me.
January 13th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Government in action: requiring dead people to fill out forms.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I hate spam most of all! I don’t understand why I must spend my time for reading that shit. Probably you will consider me a spoiled little baby but I am really tired of daily spam.
January 1st, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Kev,
I’m a carrier. We HAVE to deliver all mail and are forbidden from censoring it at source. Refusing to deliver it will get me fired. As for admail, just put a ‘No Flyers’ or “No Junk Mail’ sign on your mailbox and you won’t get any. If a new or “casual” carrier is temporarily doing the walk your house is on they might make a mistake but the regular carrier will submit a ‘counsumer’s choice’ list to their supervisor and you will get no unaddressed admail. If you want to get rid of addressed admail just write ‘RTS’ on the front of the item with two slash marks through the address and you will not see it again. Stand the letters up in your mailbox or drop them into a street letterbox anytime. ‘Nuff said…