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Why do they keep sending this crap?

BarnyardEngineering

BarnyardEngineering

Well-known Member
Location
Rochester, NY
Since both my folks passed, I've been fielding their mail. Every week a package shows up from "Disabled Veterans National Foundation" with the most absolutely useless crap in it, asking for money.

This time it is a day planner, some generic birthday cards, two cheap pens, and two pairs of cheap "gripper" gloves. The whole thing has a wholesale value of about a dollar, but it is bulky package that pretty much filled the mailbox.

I guess they figure old people feel obligated to send money when they receive "gifts" in the mail.

At least the envelope it came in makes a great receptacle for the rest of the junk mail that showed up with it.
 
Maybe they donated to them at one time. You do that once and you're on their list forever. I have enough free address labels I could wallpaper my bathroom with them!
I sometimes think some of those places spend more on the stuff they send me than I've ever given back to them in donations.

This post was edited by Rich'sToys on 10/26/2021 at 06:52 am.
 
My wife's Dad who was a veteran got a lot of that. For me now it's stuff as a result of Medicare signup time. My late wife has been dead 7 years but she gets a dozen or so letters wanting her to sign up with
their Medicare Advantage plan not to mention all the Capitol One credit card application she gets. For the first few years if there was a return envelope I'd stuff it all in there and send it back. Now, right
to the recycle bin. But it is less annoying then Dealers Services calling about my expired vehicle warranty. How do they kn
ow I'm in the truck driving somewhere?
 


Review of and purging of mailing lists is prohibitively expensive compared to simply continuing the mailings.
 
Use the worthless crap that they send you, or throw it away,
its your choice. Just dont send them money like your
parents did. Not sure why it bothers you because their junk
mail costs you nothing.
 
(quoted from post at 15:12:32 10/26/21) Just don't send them money like your
parents did. Not sure why it bothers you because their junk
mail costs you nothing.
Click to expand...

Chances are, they never sent any money....only a small percentage actually do. However, a small percentage of a million can be significant so it's worth their effort. We're both 80 and my wife and I get plenty of that sheet as well. It's a minor nuisance but still enough to "bother" us just a little.
 
I get junk mail all the time for my dad at this address. Some is, however, from legitimate sources.

He died June 16, 1985. Apparently his name is on an address list that was sold all over the country by a company that compiles and sells address lists. You really can't blame the senders, all they did was buy an address list in good faith without realizing how many phony and inactive names were on it.

Same thing probably happened with your dad.
 
I think you just end up being on a
permanite mailing list if you've ever
had any dealings with these places.
You need to call/send letter and
notify these places that your parents
are deceased. They don't sit around
and read the obits in the news paper
to see if anyone on thier mailing list
has died. Maybe not opening and have
postal worker stamp Return To Sender a
few times might do the trick.
Local old gent is always giving me
free or cheap stuff he got through the
mail, or from internet. In his mind,
he thinks he is helping me out. Probly
makes him feel like he is doing some
good in this world. I never say
anything. Just try to dodge taking any
of it. Purposely forget it at his
house, or tell him I'll never use
that. But sometimes I have to take
something just out of being nice and
not rude. In my mind, I know its all
cheapy stuff not worth using. But, I
just bite my tongue and don't hurt his
feelings.
 
If there is a prepaid envelope in with it, I send them as much of their stuff back to them in the envelope. A little game I play. Lost mom in June, so getting plenty of mail.
 
People get old, and lose brain power. They basically run on autopilot. Most have money, and get taken
advantage of, or talked into things. QVC and HSN are very good at this too....
 
(quoted from post at 09:41:12 10/26/21) Since both my folks passed, I've been fielding their mail. Every week a package shows up from "Disabled Veterans National Foundation" with the most absolutely useless crap in it, asking for money.

This time it is a day planner, some generic birthday cards, two cheap pens, and two pairs of cheap "gripper" gloves. The whole thing has a wholesale value of about a dollar, but it is bulky package that pretty much filled the mailbox.

I guess they figure old people feel obligated to send money when they receive "gifts" in the mail.

At least the envelope it came in makes a great receptacle for the rest of the junk mail that showed up with it.
Click to expand...
still get junk mail addressed to my son, deceased for 20 years, on a regular basis. Not mail, but also get Facebook "want to be friends" request from someone I knew that died 2 years ago. Some crook fishing for my email, I would guess.
 
Most likely your parents donated to them at one time. A year and a half ago, I
made a generous donation to a politician (think MAGA). I get email and letters
in the regular mail every week begging for money. Most are from candidates
from several states away that I have never heard from.
 
I can't figure this either. I once sent a check for ten bucks to PBS because I really liked the animal documentaries they ran. I got a
zillion $ worth of junk mail, forever, begging for more. Same way with a catholic school I donated to on request from a deceased family
member. They could have graduated an entire class for what they spent trying to get us to cut loose with another hundred bucks. It's been
years and we still get a couple of pleas/yr from them. I suppose actuarial studies show it pays in the long run. Not here tho. gm
 
I guess your folks donated more money to them than my folks did. All we've gotten from DAV is address labels and a notepad. Used to get the day planner also, but no more.

Don't make the mistake I made. We were getting tired of the overwhelming amount of junk mail, especially since we got so little that was addressed for us. I returned 1 piece of mail saying that Dad was deceased. Somewhere in the USPS chain, someone went in and listed Dad as deceased, which stopped ALL mail of his from coming here. Took a long time to get that straightened out.

Best thing to do is just throw it away as it comes.
 
I sent one dollar twenty plus years ago to a group that I disagree with there agenda, they send me mail couple times a month. I
smile and file in the round file by the desk. They have less funds to promote their cause, but support the postal service.
 
My Mom passed in 2018 but she always donated to the DAV so we
still get the junk mail from them even though I requested they stop.
Oh well, at least she didnt donate to the televangelists. I can deal
with the DAV.
 
I've been getting stuff for my mom for two
years. Requested they stop and it really
slowed down. THEN all of a sudden recently
it all started again. Someone must have
sold a mailing list.
 
My grandfather passed away in '89 and my grandmother in 2019. I moved into their house and they still get mail. My grandfather passed away decades before we went through
a E911 address change. Obviously that didn't stop the junk mail. My father passed away in 2000 before the E911 address change as well as me moving yet somehow his mail
followed me.
 
I get a lot of emails from classmates.com.I get one regularly saying Anita is looking to reconnect with me.Everything about her is correct,her last name,year she graduated,her married name,etc.The one thing they aren't getting right is the fact that she passed away about 15 years ago.I made the mistake of contacting classmates to try and explain this,I mentioned her name in the email I sent them.Now their computers must have picked up on her name connected with me,and I get more of her trying to contact me more than ever.
 
My MIL passed away over 6 years ago. Just 2 weeks ago my SIL got a letter (in my MIL's name but to my SIL's different address) from a collection agency over a non-paid traffic
ticket from about 9 years ago. I told her to forward it to her grave site but I think they're going to have problems collecting.
 
The obvious answer to your question is that they make money with all this
garbage mail. Somebody thinks it's a good deal?? If there was no money in it
for them, they wouldn't be doing it.
 
(quoted from post at 09:08:01 10/26/21)

Review of and purging of mailing lists is prohibitively expensive compared to simply continuing the mailings.
Click to expand...

They need a competent programmer who knows how to load up the giant files the USPS makes available of all address and recipients, by various areas. Then you just write a comparator to run your mailing file against the USPS and eliminate those in your file where the names do not match. Not rocket surgery. I used to make good money doing that but it takes large servers and lots of drive space and considerable time if your files are large. Fortunately I worked for a government entity that had a dozen large Sun Solaris servers and a couple of terabytes of extra drive plus a large Oracle database instance with huge memory allocation.
 
Pete ..... there are always stories here on YT that I wonder if they really happened. Your story today, I would bet my entire wealth that it DID happen. Sounds about right ....
 
A mistake i made was ordering a item from Stauer, Burnsville, Minn.I recommend you don't do it, it's junk and you will get something ever week from them !!!
 
I got one of those calls form Rachel your warranty is due for renewal. What is year is your vehicle how many miles do you have on it? How do you know what my vehicle is why you are you asking so many questions?
I told Rachel my truck is a 2002 Dodge pickup with 250.000 needs a new engine and tranny what will warranty cost me? She hung on me!
 
Junk mail is an old gripe of mine.
I spend money - in the form if envelopes
and stamps - to get off junk mail senders
lists. When I get junk mail I clip my
address off the stuff they sent and add a
note. My note usually says:

'The pox on you junk mailers. Remove this
address from all future marketing schemes!'

Then write the sender's address on the
envelope with attn: junk mail dept. and
send it back.
Sometimes there is no sender's address on a
piece of junk mail. So I do an internet
search for the company Pres/CEO and their
home office and address it to the CEO.
I get very little junk mail.
 

AARP keeps sending me stuff. I refuse to support such an anti gun outfit, so I write "REFUSED" on the envelope and stick it back in my mail box. I understand they have to pay the return postage.

The thing that really gets me is the credit card offers that get sent to my kids. One was getting them at 15 years old! I bet a lot of kids fill them out, get a card and max it out but never pay. And we wonder why interest rates are high!
 
(quoted from post at 14:17:13 10/26/21)
(quoted from post at 09:08:01 10/26/21)

Review of and purging of mailing lists is prohibitively expensive compared to simply continuing the mailings.
Click to expand...

They need a competent programmer who knows how to load up the giant files the USPS makes available of all address and recipients, by various areas. Then you just write a comparator to run your mailing file against the USPS and eliminate those in your file where the names do not match. Not rocket surgery. I used to make good money doing that but it takes large servers and lots of drive space and considerable time if your files are large. Fortunately I worked for a government entity that had a dozen large Sun Solaris servers and a couple of terabytes of extra drive plus a large Oracle database instance with huge memory allocation.
Click to expand...


1948 Case, apparently purging is an even bigger deal than I thought!
 
Marking REFUSED on mail does not work. I've had the best results from contacting the sender and asking them to take my name off their mailing list.
 
It's been over 12 years since I was with the Post Office, but it used to be that if the piece said "return service requested" on it, then you could mark "refused" on it and it would get sent back. If it didn't say that, then it just got pitched. Not sure if it's still that way or not.
 
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