This post is an open letter to whatever cretin is responsible for marketing at Virgin Media.
Today I received a “to the householder” envelope through my letterbox. This little trick gets you round the opt-outs that those of us who do not want your junk mail use to opt out of the very thing you are bombarding us with. You might think that not directly addressing the marketing crap you send out is clever, but it is not.
As no one called “the householder” lives here, I am unable to open the mail. I do not open other people’s mail and I am not “the householder” I have a name. If you cannot be arsed to address mail to me by name, I cannot be bothered to waste my precious time reading your marketing crap. So, like its predecessors, this piece of mail went into the bin unopened. This will continue while you persist in sending me stuff I didn’t ask for and do not want. Everyone else that used to send unsolicited mail has had the common decency to stop. Yours is the only unsolicited mail I now receive.
If you think this is a useful marketing ploy, let me disabuse you. Ever since your predecessors at Telewest laid the cables that come to the edge of our property, I have been repeatedly pestered to take out cable TV, telephone and Internet. For nearly thirty years I have declined to do so. Have you not yet got the message or have you the intellectual capacity of the biscuit weevil?
And, even if I was slightly tempted (and I am not) let me remind you of a few basic principles of winning over potential clients – or not, as the case may be. My likelihood of taking out your product is inversely proportional to the amount of crap you shove through my letterbox. Although I have never used your service and never will use your service so long as there is oxygen in the atmosphere and apples fall downwards, it is worth bearing in mind that even a non-customer who is suitably pissed-off by your behaviour sooner or later tells others about it.
So, here I am, telling the world (and my Google rankings are pretty good, so you will come up in searches for all the wrong reasons). Go stick your service where the sun doesn’t shine, along with your marketing letters addressed to some anonymous person who does not exist.
I got one of those this morning as well. And I did exactly the same as you did with yours. Helps the recycling rate, at least. I did use their service once but it got very expensive, and the lies they told when I told them to shove it where the sun don’t shine were unbelievable. And they kept my phone number, the one I had taken to them, so I had to get a new one and tell everyone about it – a real pain. Needless to say, I won’t be going back.
How true. I’ve been getting this crap for quite a while now, I notice that there are two types – a large A4 envelope with Virgin written on it, so I know what that is immediately. The other is a bit more difficult. Its a brown envelope and is purposely made to look official. So it seems to me that they are also applying pshychological tactics to ensure that their junk gets opened.
I’m thinking of sending it back, containing some of the contents of the kitchen bin, with a note that says “You send me your rubbish, so here, have some of mine”.
Everything you’ve said with gold plated knobs on! I must get at least one item per week, all year round, and have done for several years. When I can be arsed, they get posted back (at their expense), but this doesn’t seem to have got through their thick skulls. I have to wonder how much cheaper their services would be if this avalanche of crap was stopped – even at bulk posting rates it must still amount to several £millions p/a – and think of the carbon footprint! I think I read about someone getting revenge (possibly on another firm) by taking them up on an offer, and when the engineer called to install it, saying they had changed their mind and shutting the door. That might be unfair on the poor sod concerned, but if enough of them pass it back to management it just might make a difference. In any case, with block paving laid on a concrete base they’ve got fuck all chance of laying a cable to our house…
Everything received at our household marked ‘To the Householder’ or ‘Theo C Cupier’ goes straight into recycle without examination. We used to use these mailers for solid fuel stove firelighters. Even if the glossy stuff doesn’t burn too well.
The Postie doesn’t care, he / she has to deliver them, it’s part of his / her job. Virgin Media doesn’t care, they’re not breaking any laws by sending out ‘blind mailers’ to addresses, even if you’re on an exclusion list. Even if the rates of response are often as low as 0.1% per mailing. Send out a million, that gives you a thousand new suckers, easy. The 0.001% who return the mailer with an insulting message or ‘do not send’ turn up in some managers desk as souvenirs of a campaign. Been there, seen that.
Better simply to recycle / burn / trash and save your blood pressure. The only way to get rid of bulk mailing is not to respond.
Worse than that; they somehow have hold of my mother’s name so keep sending her ‘offers’. My mom died last year, so I phoned them up (having finally located a phone number; took some doing as it’s deliberately difficult to find). Explained my mom was dead and that getting mail addressed to her is quite upsetting for us. So they took her off the database. But the mail keeps coming.
I’m one of that rare breed: a Virgin Media customer who is actually happy with their service (and have been a customer since the Bell Cable Media days). Therefore I fail to understand why they send me “to the householder” junk mail exhorting me to sign up for services that I already pay for. Seems a waste of money to me. Their customer services team couldn’t quite understand this however.
Oh do get a tad more creative
Write addressee not known on it and the return address stick it to something big and heavy like an Argos catalogue or a phone book and send it back to the beardy weirdy crew…very satisfying.
The RETURN ADDRESS is on the back
Send it back prominently lablelled “Unwanted JUNK MAIL
RETURN TO SENDER [with obscenities written all over the inside ]…
Sooner or later, they will get the message