TalkTalk, Virgin, Sky - the various broadband (TV, etc) providers are fairly bad for junk mail IME, although not really that much of a nuisance that getting off their lists is hard work. I personally groan when I get catalogues from companies I would never buy from: these people send me a lot of junk mail and I have no idea how I got on their list, although I confess I do read the catalogues before I throw them away, as they are pretty if way out of my budget. Oh, and Hotter Shoes.
I can't think of a cultural equivalent to Publishers Clearing House, to be honest. Someone more unlucky with junk mail might be along in a bit with one, though. :)
Well, that's a start, anyway! :) I don't think I can use an outright catalogue, because this is from the post being sorted at the Yard...it's something in an envelope, definitely. And the speaker already knows it isn't really one of those junk mail things, as soon as he takes the envelope - he's just joking around a bit. :)
Thanks for the direction! Maybe someone else will weigh in later with another option that works...
I can't think of an equivalent, either but wanted to say that I've never heard it called 'mail room' in the UK; everywhere I've worked as referred to it as the post room. This is probably because we don't refer to 'the mail' but rather to 'the post'. Although when we refer to junk mail we call it just that (never let it be said that the British are consistent...).
There may be places in the UK that use 'mail room' but I think 'post room' is more likely.
When I shared a flat at university, our living room somehow got registered to the TV Licensing people as a separate residence, and we would get almost weekly letters from them to The Occupier of our living room saying if anyone was watching TV then we'd face a massive fine and we need to buy a licence and they'd send an inspector round, etc., and eventually we were able to contact them and after lots of going around in circles we explained to them that we had a TV licence for the flat and that the living room wasn't separate, so they took us off the list and stopped sending letters. Until 6 months later when the letters started again, this time addressed specifically to my flatmate who had been the one to contact them before
( ... )
Oh, God, them. When my parents died (they died 30 days apart) and their house was empty with all the electric turned off etc I kept going up to clear the junk mail periodically, while I dealt with probate and inquests and so forth, so I could get round to selling it. And every single sodding time there would be yet another letter from the TV Licensing authority, despite the fact that the house was empty and the electrics were turned off and the owners dead. So I rang them up and they refused to stop sending them even though I told them that if anyone was watching TV in that house it was a matter for the Psychical Research Society and not their department.
That's a good thought, actually. My office building, one of several hundred in a large university, used to get TV Licensing demands every few months - possibly because the name of the building made it sound a bit more like a house than an office, possibly because they thought we had students living there. Convincing them of a lack of TV is always a lot harder than it ought to be and I could see that going on for years.
I don't know what Publishers Clearing House Fliers are - if you're going to use an example we might not have, or might call something else, you need to explain it ;-)
I agree with above posters that broadband providers seem to produce a lot of junk mail (there is a Virgin dish on the back of my house they keep hoping I'll use...), but I don't know that there's a particularly cliched company. I get junk mail, but a lot of it is non-specific. You could try double-glazing.
At work we get a lot of 'junk', but it's always obvious about what it is - logos everywhere on the envelopes.
The only thing recently we've had that looked like genuine correspondence was a small envelope, with a hand-written address... and it turned out to be some sort of very Christian propaganda! It was weird, as the handwritten envelope was clearly addressed to our company name, but inside there were just two small booklets of weird semi-biblical-but-modern stories in the form of cartoons.
So perhaps some sort of religious group? They don't - without meaning to be rude to anyone - seem like the type to give up easily.
Comments 16
I can't think of a cultural equivalent to Publishers Clearing House, to be honest. Someone more unlucky with junk mail might be along in a bit with one, though. :)
Reply
I don't think I can use an outright catalogue, because this is from the post being sorted at the Yard...it's something in an envelope, definitely. And the speaker already knows it isn't really one of those junk mail things, as soon as he takes the envelope - he's just joking around a bit. :)
Thanks for the direction! Maybe someone else will weigh in later with another option that works...
Reply
There may be places in the UK that use 'mail room' but I think 'post room' is more likely.
Reply
I've fixed it, thanks!
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
I agree with above posters that broadband providers seem to produce a lot of junk mail (there is a Virgin dish on the back of my house they keep hoping I'll use...), but I don't know that there's a particularly cliched company. I get junk mail, but a lot of it is non-specific. You could try double-glazing.
Reply
The only thing recently we've had that looked like genuine correspondence was a small envelope, with a hand-written address... and it turned out to be some sort of very Christian propaganda! It was weird, as the handwritten envelope was clearly addressed to our company name, but inside there were just two small booklets of weird semi-biblical-but-modern stories in the form of cartoons.
So perhaps some sort of religious group? They don't - without meaning to be rude to anyone - seem like the type to give up easily.
Reply
Leave a comment