Are they really that dumb?.....OR....How to stop the deluge of junk flyers.

[SofiaAmes]

So 2 days ago, I come home to find that my dh has taped a large note halfway over the mail slot at our house. It says "If you are delivering anything other than mail, please put it in the bin below." And he had placed a bin with a few menus and other junk flyers in it on the step right under the mail slot. Now, 2 days later the bin is half full and not a single person (except the post man) has put anything through our mail slot.

Do these people not realize that they are throwing their leaflets in a bin!!! I really didn't think anyone would be that dumb when my husband first put up the sign. Not to mention that most of the leaflet deliverers are foreign and rarely speak english. Now I am planning to recommend his method to everyone I meet.

hahaha are you joking?! priceless i am gonna try it (even if you are kidding)
most flyers/leaflet distributers get paid for delivering flyers. most are not related with the buisness advertising so they prob dont care. sometimes i see a load of flyers dumped somewhere. or even in my wheelie bin. aslo when i used to live in flats most distributers incl paper ones used to just leve them on ground floor in the concierge are.

i dont think that its them being dumb but more rather clever realy after all if someone employed you to deliver leaflets and you saw that note you would just throw it straight into the bin to make your job as quick as possible after all they know that most of them end up in the bin anyway there just saving you the job of throwing them in there

I am not joking! I really didn't think these deliverers (who I'm sure can't read english) would follow his instructions, because I've often seen signs saying "no leaflets." I guess the clincher is providing the bin. Luckily we have a sort of mini porch thing so that the bin really can't be seen from the street and therefore isn't an eyesore. Champs, let me know if it works for you too. I'm dying to know if my dh has really stumbled on something here.

wonder if i can get a bin for electricitygas supply people and all the other knockers who wake me up after being up all night and just catching some sleep inbetween feeds.

What a brilliant idea! Now if we can only find a solution to cold callers who won't read our no cold calling notice on the door...

SofiaAmes - What a fantastic idea! I just chuck all ours straight into the re-cycling bin. Although, we have registered with TPS and MPS and cut out most of the crap that way.

Once we had one from an estate agent, saying that Mr and Mrs x were interested in buying a home like ours, when we went ahead and signed them up, it took a few weeks for viewers to start filtering through. Now surely, if Mr and Mrs X had been so desperate, they would have been banging on our door to view that same afternoon.

We have a corner plot with a brick wall around the garden, one cold caller asked if we would like our fence painted. He couldn't quite grasp the fact that I was telling him we didn't have a fence only a brick wall! He kept telling me that he could do this colour and that and I thought it highly amusing that he was completely deaf to the fact I kept telling him WE HAVEN'T GOT A FENCE. Prat, as if you'd want HIM to paint your fence, even if you did have one.

Another good way to get rid of junk mail is to store it up and then return it to one of the junk mailers using one of their prepaid envelopes. Make it nice and heavy and then the company has to pay the excess.

I do that on a regular basis hmb. It is very effective. Or if it's really obvious junk mail and there is a return address on the envelope, I don't even open. I just write on it, DEAD, RETURN TO SENDER. That's gotten rid of most of the junk mail.
I don't get many cold callers as my husband (and me) have chewed the heads off of so many I think they must have put a secret sign on our path to warn each other off.

Nice One! I must try that one!

I have a friend who has a very mean trick with cold callers. He gets them to repeat everything they say, over and over again, wasting their time. I've never been angry enough to do that myself, as I think cold callers have a crappy job.

Furball - lol - I used to live on the first floor and somoeone phoned me to ask if I wanted a conservatory. I was really tempted to lead them on and get them to come round and measure up and all sorts (but I only think of those things later )
Like the junk mail idea though - we already have our junk mail basket just inside the front door anyway - perhaps I'll just move it outside!

I got that too Tommy- we were in a third floor flat in an area that was completely made up of tenements, no houses at all, and the tenements were listed buildings. Someone cold called to say that their research had shown that most people in our area had conservatories and would we like one too? It was such a lovely image, all these conservatories sticking out of the back of the stone at every level

There's also the mail preference service and the telephone preference service online where you can register to stop getting any more of this crap!!

ooh I didn't know about the telephone one! Have gone on and registered. I won't tempt fate, our junk mail situation isn't as bad as I hear some get. But the telephone...up to and sometimes over 10 calls a day.

We get a lot of the silent calls, where the computer dials your number and if there isn't a operator available when you answer then it is your tough luck. So bloody annoying. DH gets driven barmy by them. I am terribly rude and as soon as they start I hang up immediately, I am fed up saying sorry, what am I sorry for? For being totally uninterested in the product, I would never buy something over the phone.

telephone preference service

For the junk telephone calls I sometimes pretend that I'm interested, but need to turn down the stove or answer the door and then just leave them hanging on. If I can be bothered for junk mail I post the return envelopes, usually empty, so that they get junk mail too.

DH always asks the caller for their home phone number so he can ring them up and offer them things they don't want, in their own time. They usually go away