New (to me) advertising

[atgcpaul]

I received an envelope in the mail today. It was hand addressed to me but there was no return address--that always makes me suspicious. Inside was a folded newspaper "clipping"--actually a full newspaper page--with a Post It stuck to it that just read, "Paul, check this out. J" My Dad likes to send me clippings from his Wall Street Journal in the mail but at least he'll put a return address on it and it won't have a local postmark on it. This clipping was for some used car trade-in deal. Maybe they'll get some people to bite, but just gives me the creeps for some reason. I immediately checked for white powder and washed my hands after throwing it in the recycling.

[Black walnut]

Yeah, some of the direct mail ads are over the top.

[tfischer]

"J" has been sending these notes out for awhile. I remember getting one maybe 5 years ago. And I don't think it was for a car thing, but the same basic get-up

[capncarl]

The lows some of these advertisers will stoop to is amazing. I bet they have a room full of old ladies hand writing these letters.
yesterday I recieved a phone call yesterday from a local number ( I usually won't answer it if I don't recognize the ID ). The caller new my name, said Carl, what would you say if I told you that you just won 2.5 million dollars? I could hear a lot of chatter in the background, and he definately had that not from around here accent. I said, man that would be nice, I'd put me some new tires on the trailer, get momma a new recliner and buy a Yetti full of silver bullets, and maybe even a new bass boat. Pause............ caller said, all you have to do is go imedately to Walmart or WesternUnion. I stopped him, then, and said it would take me several hours to walk there because the repo man come got the truck. He said it shouldn't take that long because I see you are only 2 miles from Walmart. My reply, well, since it's that much money I'll just call an see if my buddy who is the Sherrif will pick it up for me, will that be ok? Click.
I checked redial and the phone number is inoperative, so they are using some kind of phone system that showed my area code.
Do these scammers really do that much research to know your location to Walmart or Western Union? And your name?

[capncarl]

When I when I get junk mail like that, if it's has a return postage paid envelope, I'll tear off my name and address, put a few squirts of Elmo's glue on the junk mail, fold it back up and send it back to then.

[cwsmith]

I get something similar to that up here in NY. I don't recall the newspaper though, just usually a printed Ad or flyer with a printed post-it and the "J" or other initials printed in red on it.

We keep a recycle bag next to the kitchen bin for this kind of mail.

CWS

[tfischer]

When I when I get junk mail like that, if it's has a return postage paid envelope, I'll tear off my name and address, put a few squirts of Elmo's glue on the junk mail, fold it back up and send it back to then.

I remember a decade or more ago there was a campaign on the internet to mail dead D-cell batteries back to the perpetrator using those postage paid envelopes. The idea being that D-cell batteries weigh a lot, and they would have to pay for it. Plus dispose of the batteries.

[capncarl]

My thoughts on stuffing the junk mail back in the pre paid envelope along with a nice squirt of glue was the advertiser would think it was an order form and a check and have to spend labor to try to open it.

I had had an old friend that used a different approach to junk mail. At that time JC Whitney was the equavelent to HF, and sent 1/2" thick catalogs weekly. This was before Gore invented the Internet, He would circle the item he wanted in the magazine, fill out the order form, still in the catalog,and tape the return address on the front of the magazine and send the whole thing back to them. He said he got great service that way and never got the wrong items, and they took him ok their daily mailing list as well.

[tfischer]

Call me crazy but I kind of miss the weekly HF mailings.

[cwsmith]

Unfortunately perhaps, but the only mailings I ever received from HF were back in the 80's or 90's (IIRC), I'd receive on rare occasions a fairly decent-sized catalog similar to the JCWhitney auto accessory mailing. Living in Painted Post, NY at the time I wasn't sure if we even had an HF in NY state. I do remember looking at the many product offerings and just thinking what junk all this stuff must be at those prices. When my local HF opened in 2011, I became a believer!

Mailings are sort of nuts in many ways and we get stuff that I simply have no idea as to how we ever got on whatever company's mailing list as it rarely has any relationship whatsoever to our shopping habits. We're not at all what anyone could call modern consumers, in that, other than groceries, our shopping is pretty modest and when we do buy something it's usually kept forever. (Like I have stuff that goes back to when we first married, almost 50 years ago. Yet we are constantly on the receiving end of furniture, fashion, cars, restaurant, cruises, and, what I call, trinket catalogs and advertising flyers and pamphlets.

CWS

[tfischer]

Historically mailing lists came from magazines.I discovered this accidentally one time when I sloppily wrote my name on an order form, the magazine misspelled it, and then I started getting tons of junk mail with the same misspelling. After that I did a little research and found that selling mailing lists was a primary source of income for magazines.

This is why your junk mail is often themed to your hobbies. I get a lot of woodworking junk mail (I actually find much of it interesting to read, even if I don't bite) and we used to get a lot of "little kid" themed junk mail when our kids were smaller.

But direct mail campaigns seem to be going the way of the dinosaurs.