Following on from last week's RTS saga, I received a call this morning (waking me up) from a Roam representative who told me that they did not handle the change of address function.
Now, I'm starting to think that no one reads what I actually write (which, as a writer, is a career killing trait) because not only did I indicate that I preferred to be contacted via email, the following conversation took place:
Me: "What can I do?"
She: "I suggest you send the mail back return to sender."
Me: "I already did. Seventy-eight times. That's why I've contacted you."
Anyway, it turns out that Roam deals in numberplates and the RTA is the one who gives them the address. So I have to go through the RTA system to try and get them to disengage my address from Peter's numberplates.
My email to the RTA:
My suggestion is that you should keep your contact database up to date. I have received 83 letters this year addressed to Peter [surname], who has not lived at [address] since March 2010. I have sent ALL these back (and several in 2010) returned to sender but they keep coming.
I contacted Roam about it and they said they received address info from the RTA. So... find out where he lives now and update your database. I'm so tired of this.
And so it goes.
Showing posts with label rts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rts. Show all posts
06 June, 2011
01 June, 2011
RTS rant
I have been diligent all my life. It has taken me to the age of 30 to realise that this does not mean everything results in success. Case in point: RTS mail.
I bought my house in March 2009 and let the existing tenants stay. I then moved in last year. Of course I realised I would be returning a whole bunch of mail. I did the right thing and wrote 'RTS no longer at this address' on everything that wasn't mine. Most senders took the hint, but there was one persistent correspondent, only known by its return address (Locked Bag 5004, Parramatta NSW 2124).
At the beginning of this year I began to record when I received these letters and the number. Today I reached 78 for the year and something in me snapped. For some reason it hadn't previously occurred to me to Google the address to see who the sender was. This evening I discovered it was Roam, the people who manage the road toll accounts.
FFS, I don't even own a car.
Here is my email to them:
Hello, my name is Adeline Teoh. You won't have a record of me because I don't own a car. I do, however, own a house at [address given].
One of its previous tenants was a guy called Peter W. He has not lived at this address for more than 14 months. I'm guessing he had a car and didn't pay the toll because letters and letters and letters from you keep turning up at my house.
I have done the right thing. I have returned every one of them notifying you that he no longer lives here. This year, I started numbering and dating the returns. I can tell you when each and every one of the 78 letters you've sent in 2011 arrived.
Please, for the love of god, find another way to contact him because he doesn't live here any more and I'm just tired, so very tired, of sending back his mail. Why don't you update your records? WHY?
http://twitpic.com/55e9um
I will keep you posted on what happens.
I bought my house in March 2009 and let the existing tenants stay. I then moved in last year. Of course I realised I would be returning a whole bunch of mail. I did the right thing and wrote 'RTS no longer at this address' on everything that wasn't mine. Most senders took the hint, but there was one persistent correspondent, only known by its return address (Locked Bag 5004, Parramatta NSW 2124).
At the beginning of this year I began to record when I received these letters and the number. Today I reached 78 for the year and something in me snapped. For some reason it hadn't previously occurred to me to Google the address to see who the sender was. This evening I discovered it was Roam, the people who manage the road toll accounts.
FFS, I don't even own a car.
Here is my email to them:
Hello, my name is Adeline Teoh. You won't have a record of me because I don't own a car. I do, however, own a house at [address given].
One of its previous tenants was a guy called Peter W. He has not lived at this address for more than 14 months. I'm guessing he had a car and didn't pay the toll because letters and letters and letters from you keep turning up at my house.
I have done the right thing. I have returned every one of them notifying you that he no longer lives here. This year, I started numbering and dating the returns. I can tell you when each and every one of the 78 letters you've sent in 2011 arrived.
Please, for the love of god, find another way to contact him because he doesn't live here any more and I'm just tired, so very tired, of sending back his mail. Why don't you update your records? WHY?
http://twitpic.com/55e9um
I will keep you posted on what happens.
18 February, 2008
BLACKLISTED (Feb, 2008)
The following businesses are hereby BLACKLISTED for hiring people who disobeyed my NO ADVERTISING MATERIAL sticker:
LJ Hooker Crows Nest
Changes Exercise Studio Crows Nest
First National Real Estate Peter Hill
Fitzgerald & Sons Removals
Coles
Franklins (TWO catalogues)
LJ Hooker Crows Nest
Changes Exercise Studio Crows Nest
First National Real Estate Peter Hill
Fitzgerald & Sons Removals
Coles
Franklins (TWO catalogues)
28 November, 2007
Useful anti-junk mail websites
If you live in the United States and want to reduce or eliminate your unwanted mail there are two websites that will do all the legwork:
Catalog Choice is a free service where you enter your details and select the catalogues you no longer want to receive and they will contact the marketer for you and ask them to take your details off their list. It is a project of the Ecology Center in the US.
41 Pounds is named after the amount of junk mail an American apparently recieves in a year (around 20kg for the metrically minded). It does much the same thing as Catalog Choice but I think attacks more marketers and charges a $41 fee for a five year service. They donate a third of the fee to community and environmental projects.
My next post will be advice on how you can stop unsolicited junk mail.
Catalog Choice is a free service where you enter your details and select the catalogues you no longer want to receive and they will contact the marketer for you and ask them to take your details off their list. It is a project of the Ecology Center in the US.
41 Pounds is named after the amount of junk mail an American apparently recieves in a year (around 20kg for the metrically minded). It does much the same thing as Catalog Choice but I think attacks more marketers and charges a $41 fee for a five year service. They donate a third of the fee to community and environmental projects.
My next post will be advice on how you can stop unsolicited junk mail.
27 November, 2007
Manifesto
What is The Return To Sender Movement?
One blogger's crusade to rid the world of unwanted mail.
Who is this for?
Anyone who receives, and becomes irritated by, unwanted mail and wants to know what to do about it.
Why? (short version)
Why? (long version)
Beyond apathy: The problem with a lot of people who are annoyed by unwanted mail is that they don't care enough to do something about it. So every day they pick up their mail and throw half of it away because they can't be bothered attacking the problem at its source. This movement aims to motivate people into solving the unwanted mail problem with a minimum of effort.
No time: If only you could just grab the contents of your mailbox and be assured that it's all for you and your fellow residents and that it's all useful stuff. If you could cut down on the time it takes to sift through mail by reducing the amount of useless and unwanted mail then that time can be better spent thinking of calm blue oceans instead of wringing a direct marketer's neck*.
(* Thoughts resembling reality may occur)
Eco-friendly: The first tenet of environmental guardianship is REDUCE. So although you may recycle your unwanted mail it is, in fact, better to stop them printing this crud in the first place. Think of it as 'prevention better than cure' for the environment. I doubt that most marketers use environmentally friendly practices in their printing (double-sided post-consumer recycled paper with non-toxic ink). If a bunch of people started telling marketers to stop sending stuff, then this would equate to a reduction in demand for resources.
Innovate or die: Let's face it, direct mail marketing has a low yield, about a 2% response rate for untargeted campaigns. That means, for every 100 letters sent, 2 people respond. That doesn't even mean they necessarily buy, they might ring up and enquire. (And I'm not sure if me ringing up to ask them to take me off their list counts...). That means 98 people are wasting the marketer's resources. Surely there's a better way? Of course there's a better way!
But I'm not a marketing genius but I've noticed that when people take things voluntarily, there's a much better response rate. Think samples, or ads in publications or piggybacking off another product. I'm quite happy to flick through my local paper and look at the ads because the primary reason I pick it up is to read the articles. In comparison, unwanted mail just doesn't rate. It's lazy, it's boring. Marketing is supposed to be the new creative frontier and we're still getting snail mail? Go forth and innovate, dammit!
Resist temptation: Here's one for the shopaholics, like my mum. My mum loves catalogues. It means she can find out what she wants and know where to get it. The problem with this is she comes back from the shops and regrets buying so much stuff that she doesn't need. When I lived at home I started throwing out the catalogues before she got to them. It meant she couldn't find an excuse to go to the shops other than for groceries (and what happened during that trip was out of my control). It meant she wasn't being manipulated by marketing.
I felt manipulated in a different way. I used to look at catalogues and circle the things I wanted. Being a student, I didn't have much money so most of it remained out of my possession, but the lack of having things made me feel left behind. When I realised that this was part of the marketing psychology, I snapped out of it and have been anti-overconsumption since. Note, not anti-consumption, anti-overconsumption.
Anti-overconsumption also fits in with my earlier point about the 'reduce' tenet. The sooner we reduce unnecessary material consumption, the better for the environment.
Manifesto over. On with the other stuff...
One blogger's crusade to rid the world of unwanted mail.
Who is this for?
Anyone who receives, and becomes irritated by, unwanted mail and wants to know what to do about it.
Why? (short version)
- It's annoying
- Life is too short to sift through unwanted mail
- We can reduce the use of paper by killing off junk mail
- Direct marketers need to innovate
- Less advertising material = less temptation = less material consumption
Why? (long version)
Beyond apathy: The problem with a lot of people who are annoyed by unwanted mail is that they don't care enough to do something about it. So every day they pick up their mail and throw half of it away because they can't be bothered attacking the problem at its source. This movement aims to motivate people into solving the unwanted mail problem with a minimum of effort.
No time: If only you could just grab the contents of your mailbox and be assured that it's all for you and your fellow residents and that it's all useful stuff. If you could cut down on the time it takes to sift through mail by reducing the amount of useless and unwanted mail then that time can be better spent thinking of calm blue oceans instead of wringing a direct marketer's neck*.
(* Thoughts resembling reality may occur)
Eco-friendly: The first tenet of environmental guardianship is REDUCE. So although you may recycle your unwanted mail it is, in fact, better to stop them printing this crud in the first place. Think of it as 'prevention better than cure' for the environment. I doubt that most marketers use environmentally friendly practices in their printing (double-sided post-consumer recycled paper with non-toxic ink). If a bunch of people started telling marketers to stop sending stuff, then this would equate to a reduction in demand for resources.
Innovate or die: Let's face it, direct mail marketing has a low yield, about a 2% response rate for untargeted campaigns. That means, for every 100 letters sent, 2 people respond. That doesn't even mean they necessarily buy, they might ring up and enquire. (And I'm not sure if me ringing up to ask them to take me off their list counts...). That means 98 people are wasting the marketer's resources. Surely there's a better way? Of course there's a better way!
But I'm not a marketing genius but I've noticed that when people take things voluntarily, there's a much better response rate. Think samples, or ads in publications or piggybacking off another product. I'm quite happy to flick through my local paper and look at the ads because the primary reason I pick it up is to read the articles. In comparison, unwanted mail just doesn't rate. It's lazy, it's boring. Marketing is supposed to be the new creative frontier and we're still getting snail mail? Go forth and innovate, dammit!
Resist temptation: Here's one for the shopaholics, like my mum. My mum loves catalogues. It means she can find out what she wants and know where to get it. The problem with this is she comes back from the shops and regrets buying so much stuff that she doesn't need. When I lived at home I started throwing out the catalogues before she got to them. It meant she couldn't find an excuse to go to the shops other than for groceries (and what happened during that trip was out of my control). It meant she wasn't being manipulated by marketing.
I felt manipulated in a different way. I used to look at catalogues and circle the things I wanted. Being a student, I didn't have much money so most of it remained out of my possession, but the lack of having things made me feel left behind. When I realised that this was part of the marketing psychology, I snapped out of it and have been anti-overconsumption since. Note, not anti-consumption, anti-overconsumption.
Anti-overconsumption also fits in with my earlier point about the 'reduce' tenet. The sooner we reduce unnecessary material consumption, the better for the environment.
Manifesto over. On with the other stuff...
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