What constitutes cold-calling?
Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, 26th June 2008, 10:10
With Northwood being a No Cold-Calling zone, what actually constitutes cold-calling?
Pretty much every day I return home from work to find a selection of advertising leaflets delivered by Royal Mail along with my post (or on occassions when I have no post, just leaflets).
Is having advertising leaflets put through your door any different from someone knocking on your door trying to sell you products?
Discuss
4 Responses to “What constitutes cold-calling?”
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Village
- - Cowes Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society
- - Cowes Amateur Winemakers
- - Cowes Heritage
- - Cowes Radar Ex-Employees Association
- - Cowes-Deauville Twinning Association
- - Friends of Northwood Cemetery
- - Friends of Northwood House and Park
- - Medham W.I.
- - Newport Rowing Club
- - Northwood Floral Art Group
- - Northwood Village Produce Association
- - Northwood W.I.
Parish Council
Thanks for your positive replies
If anyone wishes to register with the Mailing Preference Service, the address is:
http://www.mpsonline.org.uk
and the Telephone Preference Service address is:
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk
The Direct Marketing Association also gathers all these services together on their website:
http://www.dma.org.uk/content/Prf-introduction.asp
It should be noted however that you will need to re-register your details regularly as each registration only lasts five years. But I have found it very effective – except in the case of the piles of advertising material forced on you by the postman which he delivers with your ordinary mail.
Addressed mail – register with MPS
Unaddressed mail – request Royal Mail not to deliver it.
(This came up recently when a postman was disciplined for pro-actively telling his residents how to stop the mail (and therefore the revenue stream for his employer) IIRC)
I agree it is a most annoying and apparently growing trend that advertisers have adopted to get around the number of people who have registered with the Mail Preference Service, which should prevent junk-mail from being delivered to the registered persons. But all this rubbish is not addressed to any particular person, somtimes to “The Occupier”, mainly from such insurance companies as Churchill and More Than. The leaflets of course have no addressee at all. It seems that the Post Office can turn a blind eye to your requests if there is a profit in it for them.
It may not be cold-calling in the true sense, but it is just as annoying if you have registered with MPS.
My reaction has for a long time been to simply write “Not Wanted – return to sender” on the envelope and pop it back in the nearest Royal Mail mail box, and let the Royal Mail deal with it. The same goes for glossy leaflets from Plumbs and Hillarys – they all get re-posted. If you receive unsolicited mail from a company do the same and they will have to pay for it to be returned to themselves – they soon stop sending then. I am sure if everyone sent back unwanted mail the practice would seem less attractive to both the sender and the deliverer.