Just occasionally I feel like researching something to the Nth degree, gathering some stats, working it all out. Sometimes it’s useful; sometimes it’s really not. This probably falls into the latter camp.
Some may recall one day in December 2005 when I got 28 pieces of junk mail in my mailbox on a single day. (As it happens that post was noticed by a Sunday Herald-Sun journalist, who ended up doing an article — including a photo — though it never got printed.)
Last month I decided to do a survey of junk mail in the Christmas period. I tracked everything that came in during December.
The result? A grand total of 100 for the month.
Unlike last year, the peak was 12 on the 2nd of December.
Last of the Christmas brochures arrived on the 19th of December. Boxing Day sales ones started appearing on 23rd of December.
A number of vendors sent multiple brochures over the month:
Coles: 6
Safeway: 5
IGA, Big W, Target, Target Country: 4
K-Mart, Officeworks and Triple8 Cleaning: 3
The most notable? A brochure that externally looked like something for a local charity (with text referring to “sleeping rough” and the like), but which turned out to be for bedding retailer (Captain) Snooze. I know it got mentioned on talkback radio; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were complaints about it.
So there we go — that was junk mail in December. Fascinating, huh?
My next conundrum is: given I only read a fraction of it, should I get a No Junk Mail sticker? (If only one could nominate those one wanted to receive…)
8 replies on “Junk mail in December”
Here in the US I got on the no-junk-mail list so that my name is not sold to catalogs. That doesn’t stop the ones I already got from coming though. So I had to go to the trouble to call each and every one of them and tell them to take my name off the catalog mailing list. I managed to do that but it took at least a month. Every night I’d sit down and call them all. It really cut down on my junk mail (and helped the trees). The good thing is that I only called the ones I DIDN’T want to get. So I still get the ones I want. Too bad you can’t do that too.
Nancy – In Virginia USA
Yeah, mailed catalogues are a different kettle of fish. I don’t get so many of them.
my mum has a no junk mail sign on hers but when she visits me she loves looking through the big W, kmart, Target etc junk mail. she doesn’t drive and so it gives her a chance to see if there’s anything worth the journey to teh shops to look at. I would love to have a sign that says sod off realestate junk and private junk mail just give me the shopping catalogues. I actually enjoy looking at them. Even more so these last 7 months when i’ve been confined mostly to home due to recovery from surgery where for a month twice i almost coulnd’t walk more than a few metres and apart from 4 wks between surgeries I couldn’t drive. grr hanging out to drive again. another month to go before i can escape the house alone. for house bound people maybe its something to look forward to. my husband has certainly learnt that the first place the new junk mail goes is to me.
i made my own ‘no junk mail’ sign & on it mentioned that i want no junk mail but ikea. lol!!
see it here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferrous/315240683/
the ‘no junk mail’ bit works:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferrous/315579076/
.. but as far as i know there hasn’t been a new ikea mail out done, so i’m not sure if they have paid or will pay attention to that.
not sure about html in these comments, so i’ve just pasted in the urls as is. sorry if you have to copy & paste to see them. if they don’t automatically turn into links, maybe daniel can turn them into links if he feels the urge.
well, there you go. they turned into links automatically. cool. :-)
Ya, we’ve got a “No Junk Mail” sign on our mailbox, and it works about 75% of the time… but the neighbours mailboxes are usually overflowing with the stuff… I know they dont mind if I ‘borrow’ something I see that looks interesting tho! heh heh
Cyalayta
Mal :)
Did you know that the people who deliver the local papers are not supposed to put advertising material inside. They do it to save time.
I got so sick of unrolling my local paper only to find a stack of catalogues that I put a ‘addressed mail only, ie: no advertising material or newspapers etc’ sticker on my letterbox.
I now collect the local paper from the front of the real estate office next to the supermarket.
Arh if only we could just fill out something and nominate which business that we want junk mail from. There’s a start of a business idea there if only you could implement it.