In which I vent a bit about [SPAM] and [Marketing]

Today I got home and was greeted by my favorite thing: a letter stating FINAL NOTICE in very official looking print with nothing in the return address field. 90% chance of bullshit, 10% chance a payment didn't happen that needed to and OH SHIT ANXIETY SAYS I HAVE TO OPEN THIS NOW.

Naturally, it was telling me I could totally refinance my mortgage with some dude I've never heard of but already intensely dislike.

What the shit is it with spam mail? I'm only moderately annoyed by my seventh notice of IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED by SiriusXM wherein they don't get the hint that I'm not going to renew my contract and your prior six notices obviously didn't need that immediate an action. But I get a ton of bullshit designed to look like bank notices or overdue payment notices. How is this not fraud? Or more specifically, how is this not prosecuted and we replace every stoner in jail for possession with marketers responsible for this?

And how is this possibly effective as a marketing tactic when your immediate response to such a bullshit fake-bill is to loathe the sender?

Mostly, I just wanted to rant, and you're all like the dysfunctional family I never talk to.

Fucking Sirius XM. I had to blow up at a guy on the phone who would not take no for an answer and stop calling me after two months of fucking twice-weekly calls. Grrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

I called Comcast today to move cable service to my new apartment. No big deal, no drama, the associate was cool, everything went fine. Thanks!

20-ish minutes later I get a call from some strange 800 number. I answered and hear "HI THIS IS COMCAST WE WANTED TO GIVE YOU ANOTHER CHANCE TO RATE YOUR RECENT EXPERIENCE HURG HURG HURG".

Die in a fire Comcast.

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

Stop receiving those pre-approved credit offers. I get vastly less junk mail now.
Like I won't get mail for several days in a row.

I was getting spam on my cell phone last year from some sort of debt consolidation company. Automated calls are bad enough on a land line, but on a cell? Grr.

I don't understand the marketing junk mail either, really, but a large portion of these are scams aimed at people more gullible than you. So in that case it's effective if it tricks someone into giving them their money.

I got a good mortgage scam in the mail the other day. In an effort to convince me that it was from my actual current mortgage lender, the return address on the envelope identified the sender as "YOUR CURRENT LENDER."

I'm getting spam text messages lately. But they aren't corporate, more like "Hey Mark, I'm in New Mexico now, give me a call at 510-xxx-xxxx" or "Heya Mark, this is Jenny let's chat on Yahoo messenger my name is xxxxxx". They know my name! And I keep wondering if it's someone I know who is calling me from a new number not in my contacts.

One tech company has started sending me marketing emails with the subject "RE: *blah blah blah product name*", seemingly in order to convince me it's a conversation we were having previously. Sorry dude, my email client does threading, an actual reply would be in with the rest of the thread. You're just pissing me off by being fake as shit to try and get your foot in the door.

Seems legit.

I don't answer phone calls from numbers I don't know. And what do you know, all the voicemails are "We have a special offer just for you..." fuckers.

I keep getting spam calls from 'Hi, this is Olin at great vacations..' So irritating. Different numbers every time, too.

I did this about 5 years ago, along with another service that doesn't exist anymore that for $20 sent in all the cards/letters/etc needed to get me off of most mailing lists in the US. Most days I don't get any mail at all.