It is policy of Royal mail to deliver three items of junk mail to each and every house throughout the land. This annoys some, pleases those who send them and irks badly the postie who has to carry 500 or so on top of all the other mail. They do get a few pence for them, not as much as they did once, RM cut the payment to the postie while the useless union agreed. It could be worse however, some time back they wanted the postman to carry 9 of these each week, increasing the weight in his sack three fold and adding about an extra half hour a day sorting the junk. That at least failed.
Here I have some regulars, the pizza advert being the most popular through the door and one of the worst to deliver. Small 'Pizza Hut' pizza's start at around £10 -£15. I buy mine for £1 in Tesco. Who bys these at that price, and how often do they bring them in? Now I like a pizza now and again, though the nurse insists I don't, but I wonder how many folks laziness make use of home delivered pizzas rather than eating food? Remember we also have 'Domino's' down the road and other smaller pizza outlets. Now I like the idea of food delivered to the door, not that I like the price mind, but a cheap Tesco one suits me. Clearly these leaflets work well when selling pizzas as everybody is dropping them weekly through our door.
'Specsavers' is another regular one. Clearly this company is doing well as every three months or so a wee mag drops in cheerfully advertising hugely expensive glasses while the girl is always disappointed when I go as I always plead pensioner poverty and go for the cheapest. The girls are usually too young to know what that means! This one I don't mind as I have to go sometime, I ought to go this year, and while today it features nothing relevant you never know.
'Sky' meanwhile are offering me a saving off £150 if I use their mobile. The mobile on offer is one of those nice Chinese ones, 'Huawei,' you know the people who invest in your technology and pass all your secrets back to Beijing? Well done 'Sky' that's just what I want, well I might if I had some friends to make phone calls to, which I haven't so I will save a great deal more by recycling this one.
The beer club might be more popular however. This one offers a free case off trendy beers, 8 in the case plus magazine and snack, and if you join the club you get the same, with differing beers each month for a mere £24 a go! Hold on, if I buy in Tesco I get 8 beers for about £14 depending on what I buy. Why pay more for 8 different drinks in which 6 might be rubbish? Some might be tempted. This reminds me of a man I once worked with, he belonged to the 'Whisky a Month club.' He was so into this that when a friend looked after his house while he and the wife were on holiday (in far off Scotland visiting distilleries) she reported the place awash with bottles. Each contained some whisky at different levels but they lay about all over the place. I was not surprised to see him recently as he recovered from what looked like a stroke, I suggest I know a reason for this.
From a business point of view these leaflets are worth it. Deliver to 10,000 houses and depending on what you sell you will get enough business to make money. Continue for ever there after and your business will grow or at least it will if you provide a good service. Leaflets, junk mail, work! You and I might dump them but most folks look through them before they are recycled. That way one will eventually catch the eye and money is spent. There after the leaflets continue.
My recycling bag likes them...
My heart knows no joy to equal the arrival of the weekly Free Paper! Week in, week out, in sun rain or snow the free paper drops through the letterbox and spreads itself carelessly all over the floor. As the present delivery operative (e.g. a snotty, uncaring 13 year old forced to deliver such to learn the meaning of life) insists on delivering three, one for each disinterested apartment, we needs gather an ever increasing pile of junk that accompanies this periodical. I say 'we,' but in this place I mean 'me!' I am the one who tidies up, I am the one who changes lightbulbs, I am the one who hoovered the communal stairs this morning. Good job I'm not one to complain I say.
This weeks delightful offerings inform me that I can refreshing deals for summer at a store that exists miles from here. There is a small version of the Co-op somewhere down that way there but in no way can it compete with the major supermarkets. The offer prices almost always remain higher than the cost of 'own store' brand merchandise that is just as good and sometimes better! Still the fattening products on offer are the ones folks buy. Still this glossy leaflet arrives weekly without fail and rushes to join the recycling campaign. Off more interest is the 'BIG Unbeatable Sale' from the electrical dealer offering prices for TV's, radios, fridges, cameras and laptops that I can buy at similar 'unbeatable' prices at Tesco. It surprises me not that is guy went bust a year ago and was taken over for a small fee by a man who I reckon is on a loser. Austerity hits home with items such as these! These delights are bought only when old ones need replacing today, no more rushing out to purchase just because the woman next door has got a new one. The money is just not there to be spent.
My favourite junk today is the nationwide chemist offering to make me young forever if I plaster my face with £14.99 worth of cream. 'Anti-wrinkle- cream it says, yet we all know these make not the slightest difference to wrinkles, just ask Anne Robinson! Women will buy this stuff and the latest con is to advertise this stuff for men, and some men buy it! I bet their boyfriends buy it also! I am reminded of the cartoon comparing the few toiletries a man uses, one tube of toothpaste, one soap, one shampoo against those a woman would require, an entire row from a supermarket! All that to make you attractive and at great cost! Just give him a bottle of beer and it will have the same effect and save hundreds of pounds for you each year.
This junk comes at three items a week from Royal Mail also these days. people complain and grumble about it but for every ten thousand sent out one person buys something, and these leaflets pay! There is no doubt these much maligned leaflets sell goods. When I used to deliver I often had objections from customers concerning the junk mail, yet I noticed they all checked out what had arrived just the same, few just dumped them. They also pay for Royal Mail that is why they wish the postie to deliver eighteen a week! This was then reduced to nine but strong objections from the workforce kept this to three. You can tell the managers today did not start as postmen can't you? On top of these we are lucky enough here to have several Pizza Parlours, Chick-a-Lick takeaways, and chip shops, selling Mediterranean cuisine (That's Kebabs to you). How lucky we are to be such a haven for cuisine! Cuisine that delivers to your door and never appears to have any change, or so I'm told, I would always get it myself and save a few bob if I could ever afford such luxury. Folks offering to cut our grass (which is covered with stones anyway) clean our windows or do our accounts (accounts?) also periodically dumped cards on us. If these people think this building consists of potential customers it indicates the rest of their operation will not have been thought through properly. I would avoid them!
The free paper itself is a wonder of the past forty years. There was a time no self respecting newspaper would ever consider something free. The lure of personal ads however has enticed them. Who has not been attracted to 'Sweet Knight sought for young fifty something. GSOH. Likes Dancing, pubs, snakes and arc welding. No weirdos.' Just who writes these things, and who falls for them? Yet each week the back page is full of people desperate for love. True adverts here are very poignant and some sad desperate people may be seeking an end to a lonely life. Others may not be quite so honest however. No, no-one ever answered mine thanks for asking. In amongst the adverts, Double glazing, Solar heating, weddings and 'Are you deaf?' headlines we find snatches of last weeks news as if it mattered. A week old, long forgotten, but cheap, anything to fill the spaces. Spaces often filled with adverts for adverts by the publisher! These papers arrive week by week without fail, no matter your situation. You may recall the episode of One Foot in the Grave' where they return from a Spanish holiday to find the house burnt down. He pushes open the front door, the only part of the building still standing, and finds a fresh, newly delivered copy of the free paper behind it! That rang a bell throughout the nation.
All this is now in the recycled box as I have not been impressed to buy, not even the reduced price ice cream from the shop or the £89.99 camera that would at least be useful. The papers will either be reused to make fresh newsprint, magazines full of emptiness or, more likely, be dumped somewhere in the Philippines or the backside of Africa as this is cheaper than actually reusing the stuff. It makes you proud that doesn't it?
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