The previous owners of my home had a Chorus box and never cancelled their account properly, or told them they were moving so for the past three years they have been sending me brochures every few weeks or months. At least I presume they didn’t, but all the brochures are addressed to “The Resident”. This blog post is a reminder to myself that I finally rang them on 1890 940 940, pressed 1 for sales, pressed 1 because I really wanted to buy lots of channels and told Sarah that I didn’t want to be contacted again.
Within moments it was sorted and hopefully I’ll get no more junk mail from Chorus.
If you’re getting unsolicited email this document from the Data Protection Commissioner might come in handy but here’s what it warns about those anonymous “The Resident” mail that so frequently litters our doorsteps.
This is the traditional and oldest form of direct marketing. For mail received through your letter box to be considered to be direct marketing it must be addressed to a named person and must be promoting a product or service. Unaddressed mail put into your letter box or mail addressed to “the occupant”, “the resident” or “the householder” does not necessarily involve the use of personal data and consequently data protection legislation does not apply.
You can also opt to be removed from company mailing lists by contacting the IDMA.
Apart from contacting organisations individually, you may also wish to avail of a service run by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA). Under the Mail Preference Service, if you supply your contact details to the IDMA, it will circulate these details amongst its members. This will result in most of the main direct marketing companies removing your details from their mailing lists.
If only those fake charities respected the law too, we might stamp out all the rubbish flyers that drop through the letter box. Reminder: I really must set up clothingcollection.org soon!
I love this story from boards.ie:
Apparently the postman in my hometown was removing all the spam and advertising from people’s post, putting it in a bag and dumping it in a bog outside the town. Had been successfully un-spamming people for years before he was found out and fired.
I hate junk mail. I signed up to have it stopped some months ago. Great!
My Royal Mail Postman, when not on strike, delivers 3 items of advertising per week. That is all they are allowed to do. They do of course get paid 5p-10p for the delivery of each item.
I still get some rubbish: free advertisers, religious tracts and invitations to Missions and Tent Meetings.
Do you have Tent meetings in the South of Ireland?
Tent meetings? Never heard of them! From a quick search they sound like church gatherings?
We get the occasional letter from South Africa looking for money for a convent but I have my doubts that they’re real. Can’t remember if I went looking for them online. I’ll do it next time I see one of their envelopes!
Funny you mention that. We got one from Chorus as well this morning as well. Like yours it was addressed to ‘The Resident’. Straight into the bin it went. Sylwia’s only been in the house 3 weeks and it’s the second one she got.
That Postman dumping all the spam should have been given a medal, not fired. Much better than one of ours at home that was caught dipping in to the birthday cards.
I’m getting the same junk from chorus. So is everyone else in my building. “The resident, Apt 1″,”The resident, Apt 2” etc. I’m saving them up until I have 4-500 or so, then mark all as return to sender……
Just for the record.. get those from chorus too. Pain in the arris!
I received a few of them as well last year. Rang them and they promised not to send any more. Got another one.Rang again , more promises.
Eventually wrote them a strongly worded letter (yes I put pen to paper) pointing out that I shouldn’t have to go to that length to stop junkmail. I got a written apology and haven’t had anything since…
Des – if I do get another one in a few weeks time I’ll ring and ask to speak to their supervisor, tell him/her to go to Google.ie and search Irish websites for “chorus”. I’m sure this blog post will show up somewhere.
They really should get rid of whoever is coming up with their marketing. TwentyMajor is having problems with NTL who of course are owned by the same company as Chorus:
http://twentymajor.net/2007/10/17/cunt-the-fuck-off-ntl/
Apologies for the profanities in the the link!
Twenty is having problems with NTL then? They’ll never hear the end of it then!
I just checked, this blog is the fifth result in a search for chorus on Irish sites! Second page on a world wide search!
Excellent – and I’m right up there for NTL technical support
Twenty – seeing that headline on Google just made my day, thank you 🙂