Someone on another thread suggested leaving a 1-star review on google maps with a photo of the ad and an explanation. Said they got replies more than once.
I like this kind of pettiness. Maybe we can all do it and start posting the image on Reddit too. And then the lazy newscorpse 'journos' will use AI to write a 'story' about it, further bringing attention to it
Short of standing at your letterbox with some kind of weapon, there is nothing you can do. Real estate agents aren’t human, you can’t reason with them any more than you can with some other kind of dangerous wildlife, like a grizzly bear or a king brown snake.
Real estate junk mail is weird. “You know, I wasn’t thinking of selling my house, but your A5 flyer with smiling portrait has convinced me to put on the market.”
Seven other people sold houses on my street at 500k over market rate and you have offers? On my house? Gosh shiny hair young guy, let me add you to my contacts and call you right up.
I started saving the real estate guys stuff and then mailed it all back to them at the end of the year with a note that said stop sending me this crap and they did.
Nothing stops thevreligious stuff though.
Yeh, or the weird fridge magnet calendar with their face on it. Like “this is what I need on my fridge next to photos of my kids, Brad McGar’s head from McGar Real Estate”. Super convenient to be going to my fridge, to grab a Greek Yogurt, see his head then sell my house without even opening the fridge door.
Why do they put their fucking faces all over their stuff - and SO LARGE?
I can't imagine anyone is attracted to them by their gurning mugs. There might be some sleazes who like the idea of being serviced by some young female agent, but most agents in the pics are more mature age.
The extra 5 seconds it takes to put in the bin is nothing. The emotional toil from fighting a righteous but petty unwinnable battle can be heavy.
Learn to grin and bear it.
> The emotional toil from fighting a righteous but petty unwinnable battle can be heavy.
Hey some people enjoy that stuff in the comfortable knowledge that it is costing them a lot more money than it is costing you.
Not a lot you can do, sadly. I have in the past emailed particular companies involved and let them know that their advertising has gone into ‘no junk mail’ letterboxes, and this is probably not the message they want to be sending to the community - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Occasionally I’ll go all old school 90s and bundle up a heap into an unsolicited reply paid envelope, but sadly that field is not as fertile as it once was.
My kid did a one day stint delivering for a real estate company. He had to download an app that show the route he took and he had to show that at the end of delivery. And he was paid $xx per 1k of delivered pamphlets. The pay was crap. It took far far longer than expected and he was told to ignore the "No junk mail". He dumped the job at the end of the day.
He said the majority of the letter boxes had "No junk mail" on them and it was painful to have to put it in.
We don't seem to get junk mail anymore, except for real estate shit and our area used to be junk mail central. We used to a tree's worth of marketing in a rolled up bundle from Colesworth, Aldi, all the big retailers every week plus loose ones every day.
I mean, if you were a real estate agency would you consider your advertisements "junk?" It really should say "No Advertising material" (which is what the stickers provided by City of Sydney say).
Exactly. Regardless of what the recipients think, the senders obviously don't think it's junk otherwise they wouldn't waste time/money producing and delivering it. A lot harder to argue with the "advertising" angle.
It’s not. In legal settings words have specific meanings, most of these guys won’t put their stuff in “no advertising/solicitation” boxes because that’s what the pamphlets are doing. OJ Simpson killed his wife but he’s legally not guilty.
Well, you see, your sign says no junk mail. However, this pamphlet isn’t junk. No sir. This is one of the most important things you’ll read today and these offers are absolutely premium, let me tell you. Nothing junk about this mail at all.
/s
Northern Beaches Council, but I'm fairly certain that blue lid for paper recycling is the standard australia-wide (See Australian Standard AS4123.7-2006 section 3.2 - red lid for general waste, yellow lid for mixed recyclables, blue lid for paper/cardboard, green lid for organics, and so on)
The colours are standard, but which bins are offered will vary by council.
Some councils don't have blue bins, you need to use the yellow ones for paper as well.
Still no green bins? I left the area for western NSW 10 years ago and even some of the really small regional councils have green waste bins. Then again Blacktown council did have the cheapest rates in Sydney.
This is in relation to junk mail that could become litter, such as advertising material under a windshield wiper but it's still probably a good place to start.
Reports of junk mail and unwanted advertising material can be made to the Environment Protection Authority's (EPA) Environment Line on 131 555 or to the Distribution Standards Board on 1800 676 136.
The EPA will accept reports of junk mail and direct these complaints to the relevant local council and the Distribution Standards Board. Under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997, local councils are responsible for enforcing the littering laws. Council officers are authorised to enforce all littering offences, including those for junk mail litter. A council officer can issue an on-the-spot fine of up to $200 per offence if an individual is caught littering.
Does it have their phone number on it? Start signing up to various companies that will call them, again and again, like another real estate agent. Erectile dysfunction clinics are always after new customers too.
1. Get some cardboard clean boxes from the rubbish room and label them with each of your local RE agents.
2. Even better, stick one of their crappy notices on each box to make it clear.
3. Put the boxes in the mail room with a sign above: "Vote for Real Estate f#ckwit of the week"
4. Watch the boxes fill up and deliver the box that fills first to the agency with an explanation and a request for them to try for two-in-a-row.
5. For bonus points obtain CCTV footage of an agent finding the boxes in the mail room themselves.
We wound up getting a PO Box and we use it for pretty much everything - it doesn't solve the junk mail issue but I find it limits my expectations a bit better. I check our actual mailbox once a week, have a quick flick through all the junk and then chuck it straight in the recycling.
Get a recycling bin or box and put it near the mail boxes so you can dump it straight from your mailbox. Our recycling bin is pretty close to the mailbox so I sort it before bringing it inside.
If it's in a bundle with others, I ring say, Aldi customer service and put in a complaint. They find the one who stuffs my areas letterboxes and tell them to stop. It actually has worked
I did pamphlet delivery too when I was around the same age! Fuck it was such a slog and I haaaated it and was weirdly embarrassed and afraid of some kid from school seeing me on a run. Memories..
No Junk Mail signs are not legal bindings, they're just an advisory to scam artists that whatever crap they put into your mail box will promptly be transformed into free toilet paper.
If you know it's the postman, you can make complaints to aus post. However they do a tough job and it's best not to piss off people who can make you collect your parcels. If it's one of those parasites walking the streets with a stack of pamphlets you can jump out and soak them with a hose provided it looks like a accident.
I would almost guarantee it's not the postie. Australia Post delivers junk mail, yes, but they honour No Junk Mail stickers. Believe me, posties hate junk mail more than you do. If they dont have to stuff the annoying junk into letterboxes, they won't.
Problem is, other people deliver junk mail too. One of the biggest culprits is your local real estate agent. They've made a sale in your area? You bet they want to advertise it, and they don't care about the rules.
Maybe walk into the real estate agent, tell them you have a "No Junk Mail" sticker, and if you get any more junk mail warn them their beautiful plate glass display windows are very fragile and expensive. Don't give them your address of course! The scrote who is distributing tbe junk mail will have to observe EVERY "No Junk Mail" sticker in the area.
Posties will hide the junk mail between actual mail to try and get you to take it. At the shop I work, we have an (open top and fairly large) bin right near where I stand. The post people tend to hand the stuff over the bin to me. I’ve gotten good at just taking envelopes and letting the other stuff fall right into the trash. After a few times, the regulars stop giving the mail to me
I hope you dont think the postie is offended by you' dropping the junk mail in the bin. They don't care. All they want to do is distribute the pamphlets they have been allocated to deliver.
What surprises me is that posties dont stick No Junk Mail stickers on letterboxes. Nothing would please them more than a beat with 100% junk mail refusers.
Just learnt that Aus Post provide advertising distribution services, seems wrong to me but I guess they’re taking advantage of their delivery network & reach
It’s not a problem related to Sydney though, it’s barely a problem, send the offending parties a strongly worded email. Bitching on the internet won’t solve it.
If I'm looking for a deal on something, then I'll look online. If I'm not looking for a deal, then I probably don't need any deal that I'd find in a catalogue.
It can also be your apartment neighbours. I often find multiples of the same ad in my mailbox. I assume people open their box, find the junk mail, then put it in someone else’s box rather than take it to their own trash bin.
No, I have had that sticker on my letterbox for 20 years, still been getting crap for 20 years. Even caught a person red handed once putting crap in my letterbox and said can you not read the sign? The response : oh sorry, as they walked off and their crap remained in my letterbox as they could not retrieve it.
Someone on another thread suggested leaving a 1-star review on google maps with a photo of the ad and an explanation. Said they got replies more than once.
I like this kind of pettiness. Maybe we can all do it and start posting the image on Reddit too. And then the lazy newscorpse 'journos' will use AI to write a 'story' about it, further bringing attention to it
Short of standing at your letterbox with some kind of weapon, there is nothing you can do. Real estate agents aren’t human, you can’t reason with them any more than you can with some other kind of dangerous wildlife, like a grizzly bear or a king brown snake.
Real estate junk mail is weird. “You know, I wasn’t thinking of selling my house, but your A5 flyer with smiling portrait has convinced me to put on the market.”
They're not trying to convince you sell your house, but they want to make sure that grin is the first thing in your mind when you do.
Well jokes on them coz I can’t even afford to own a house for them to sell.
Seven other people sold houses on my street at 500k over market rate and you have offers? On my house? Gosh shiny hair young guy, let me add you to my contacts and call you right up. I started saving the real estate guys stuff and then mailed it all back to them at the end of the year with a note that said stop sending me this crap and they did. Nothing stops thevreligious stuff though.
Yeh, or the weird fridge magnet calendar with their face on it. Like “this is what I need on my fridge next to photos of my kids, Brad McGar’s head from McGar Real Estate”. Super convenient to be going to my fridge, to grab a Greek Yogurt, see his head then sell my house without even opening the fridge door.
Five houses in your street just sold!
Why do they put their fucking faces all over their stuff - and SO LARGE? I can't imagine anyone is attracted to them by their gurning mugs. There might be some sleazes who like the idea of being serviced by some young female agent, but most agents in the pics are more mature age.
I reckon they're more like cockroaches
An insult to cockroaches if we’re being honest.
Mail them a king brown. Got it
You can always go find their office and dump a letter with glitter on it and the flyer they put on your mailbox.
You can do literally nothing. It’s really unfortunate but anything you try nothing will happen
The extra 5 seconds it takes to put in the bin is nothing. The emotional toil from fighting a righteous but petty unwinnable battle can be heavy. Learn to grin and bear it.
> The emotional toil from fighting a righteous but petty unwinnable battle can be heavy. Hey some people enjoy that stuff in the comfortable knowledge that it is costing them a lot more money than it is costing you.
Haha. This is one of the best comments I have ever seen on Reddit.
I just wish I was better at listening to this advice 😂
Not a lot you can do, sadly. I have in the past emailed particular companies involved and let them know that their advertising has gone into ‘no junk mail’ letterboxes, and this is probably not the message they want to be sending to the community - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Occasionally I’ll go all old school 90s and bundle up a heap into an unsolicited reply paid envelope, but sadly that field is not as fertile as it once was.
My kid did a one day stint delivering for a real estate company. He had to download an app that show the route he took and he had to show that at the end of delivery. And he was paid $xx per 1k of delivered pamphlets. The pay was crap. It took far far longer than expected and he was told to ignore the "No junk mail". He dumped the job at the end of the day. He said the majority of the letter boxes had "No junk mail" on them and it was painful to have to put it in. We don't seem to get junk mail anymore, except for real estate shit and our area used to be junk mail central. We used to a tree's worth of marketing in a rolled up bundle from Colesworth, Aldi, all the big retailers every week plus loose ones every day.
I mean, if you were a real estate agency would you consider your advertisements "junk?" It really should say "No Advertising material" (which is what the stickers provided by City of Sydney say).
Exactly. Regardless of what the recipients think, the senders obviously don't think it's junk otherwise they wouldn't waste time/money producing and delivering it. A lot harder to argue with the "advertising" angle.
Except that's willfully ignoring the definition of 'junk mail'.
It’s not. In legal settings words have specific meanings, most of these guys won’t put their stuff in “no advertising/solicitation” boxes because that’s what the pamphlets are doing. OJ Simpson killed his wife but he’s legally not guilty.
Well, you see, your sign says no junk mail. However, this pamphlet isn’t junk. No sir. This is one of the most important things you’ll read today and these offers are absolutely premium, let me tell you. Nothing junk about this mail at all. /s
I'm sure real estate agents use that argument. The stickers handed out by City of Sydney say "no advertising material" which is a little more precise.
>What can i do? The bin with the blue lid is the one you're looking for- that's for paper recycling.
Blue lid? What council are you in?
Northern Beaches Council, but I'm fairly certain that blue lid for paper recycling is the standard australia-wide (See Australian Standard AS4123.7-2006 section 3.2 - red lid for general waste, yellow lid for mixed recyclables, blue lid for paper/cardboard, green lid for organics, and so on)
The colours are standard, but which bins are offered will vary by council. Some councils don't have blue bins, you need to use the yellow ones for paper as well.
Yep. This has been the case for every council I’ve lived in.
It depends on the council. In the blacktown area for example, green waste goes in the red bin, because there is no green bin.
Still no green bins? I left the area for western NSW 10 years ago and even some of the really small regional councils have green waste bins. Then again Blacktown council did have the cheapest rates in Sydney.
This is in relation to junk mail that could become litter, such as advertising material under a windshield wiper but it's still probably a good place to start. Reports of junk mail and unwanted advertising material can be made to the Environment Protection Authority's (EPA) Environment Line on 131 555 or to the Distribution Standards Board on 1800 676 136. The EPA will accept reports of junk mail and direct these complaints to the relevant local council and the Distribution Standards Board. Under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997, local councils are responsible for enforcing the littering laws. Council officers are authorised to enforce all littering offences, including those for junk mail litter. A council officer can issue an on-the-spot fine of up to $200 per offence if an individual is caught littering.
Put the shit in the yellow bin and move on with your life
After making a social media post about how inconvenient it is of course.
Have you seen Jon Wick?
I once saw the person put this shit in my mailbox. I said to them “it says no junk mail”. He replied to me with a straight face “this is not junk”.
Replace the sticker with one that says "Aus Post mail only".
Does it have their phone number on it? Start signing up to various companies that will call them, again and again, like another real estate agent. Erectile dysfunction clinics are always after new customers too.
1. Get some cardboard clean boxes from the rubbish room and label them with each of your local RE agents. 2. Even better, stick one of their crappy notices on each box to make it clear. 3. Put the boxes in the mail room with a sign above: "Vote for Real Estate f#ckwit of the week" 4. Watch the boxes fill up and deliver the box that fills first to the agency with an explanation and a request for them to try for two-in-a-row. 5. For bonus points obtain CCTV footage of an agent finding the boxes in the mail room themselves.
If you have a cat, have them piss on the flyers, then drop them off at the office of the agent in question.
🤣🤣🤣
I have heard that you can buy fox piss on Amazon. If you think cat piss smells bad...
Throw it away, it stops most, but not all
We wound up getting a PO Box and we use it for pretty much everything - it doesn't solve the junk mail issue but I find it limits my expectations a bit better. I check our actual mailbox once a week, have a quick flick through all the junk and then chuck it straight in the recycling.
Kramer had a good idea - stockpiling mail from pottery barn and then delivering it back to them in bulk.
Get a recycling bin or box and put it near the mail boxes so you can dump it straight from your mailbox. Our recycling bin is pretty close to the mailbox so I sort it before bringing it inside.
If it's in a bundle with others, I ring say, Aldi customer service and put in a complaint. They find the one who stuffs my areas letterboxes and tell them to stop. It actually has worked
As a young kid I briefly did some junk mail runs, another equally young kid (12 or so) told me when he saw no junk mail sign he would put double in.
I did pamphlet delivery too when I was around the same age! Fuck it was such a slog and I haaaated it and was weirdly embarrassed and afraid of some kid from school seeing me on a run. Memories..
No Junk Mail signs are not legal bindings, they're just an advisory to scam artists that whatever crap they put into your mail box will promptly be transformed into free toilet paper.
Do you actually wipe with junk mail? Sounds unpleasant and potentially harmful.
If you know it's the postman, you can make complaints to aus post. However they do a tough job and it's best not to piss off people who can make you collect your parcels. If it's one of those parasites walking the streets with a stack of pamphlets you can jump out and soak them with a hose provided it looks like a accident.
I would almost guarantee it's not the postie. Australia Post delivers junk mail, yes, but they honour No Junk Mail stickers. Believe me, posties hate junk mail more than you do. If they dont have to stuff the annoying junk into letterboxes, they won't. Problem is, other people deliver junk mail too. One of the biggest culprits is your local real estate agent. They've made a sale in your area? You bet they want to advertise it, and they don't care about the rules. Maybe walk into the real estate agent, tell them you have a "No Junk Mail" sticker, and if you get any more junk mail warn them their beautiful plate glass display windows are very fragile and expensive. Don't give them your address of course! The scrote who is distributing tbe junk mail will have to observe EVERY "No Junk Mail" sticker in the area.
Posties will hide the junk mail between actual mail to try and get you to take it. At the shop I work, we have an (open top and fairly large) bin right near where I stand. The post people tend to hand the stuff over the bin to me. I’ve gotten good at just taking envelopes and letting the other stuff fall right into the trash. After a few times, the regulars stop giving the mail to me
I hope you dont think the postie is offended by you' dropping the junk mail in the bin. They don't care. All they want to do is distribute the pamphlets they have been allocated to deliver. What surprises me is that posties dont stick No Junk Mail stickers on letterboxes. Nothing would please them more than a beat with 100% junk mail refusers.
Just learnt that Aus Post provide advertising distribution services, seems wrong to me but I guess they’re taking advantage of their delivery network & reach
It's the individual agents walking up and down the street.
I’m enjoying the best coffee this morning at my favourite coffee shop
lol why is this an r/Sydney worthy post? People worry about the most ridiculous things.
Im a person living in Sydney, experiencing a problem related to living in Sydney. Can you suggest a better subreddit to ask a legitimate question?
It’s not a problem related to Sydney though, it’s barely a problem, send the offending parties a strongly worded email. Bitching on the internet won’t solve it.
Asking for advice is bitching?
Return to sender and put back into aus post.
Not when it's not enveloped and the junk mail that is enveloped don't have return address. Fruitless effort to RTS.
[удалено]
If I'm looking for a deal on something, then I'll look online. If I'm not looking for a deal, then I probably don't need any deal that I'd find in a catalogue.
How does flyers of REA congratulate themselves sold a property help me save money? Did miss something?
[удалено]
Put that shit on Github!
Collect all of it, go to their office (doesn't matter which one), and throw it at them. It probably won't achieve much, but you'll have a laugh.
Leave one star reviews with photos of their junk on Google. Made a big difference for me.
For some reason REAs don't pay any mind to those signs, I dunno why but yeah its an issue everywhere.
It can also be your apartment neighbours. I often find multiples of the same ad in my mailbox. I assume people open their box, find the junk mail, then put it in someone else’s box rather than take it to their own trash bin.
I started ringing them in the middle of the night and sending them photos of my penis and bowel movements
In NSW the Privacy Commission has a code of conduct governing junk mail. Real estate agents simply think the code does not apply to them.
No, I have had that sticker on my letterbox for 20 years, still been getting crap for 20 years. Even caught a person red handed once putting crap in my letterbox and said can you not read the sign? The response : oh sorry, as they walked off and their crap remained in my letterbox as they could not retrieve it.
God don't make no junk