Advertising sucks: Billy Jones never existed here

Somewhere along the line, my local newspaper started selling advertising (to the fools who do business with them) for a false name. Someone invented a name and put it on their mailing list, of a person who has never lived at my street address.

I am the second owner of my house. The original owner lived there for 45 years. I do know every name of every person who has lived at my address, ever.

Billy Jones was never one of them. For all I know such a person has never existed.

Half of the crapmail I get is addressed to Billy Jones.

I have even telephoned the credit card advertising company telephone number where you can opt-out of credit card offers. OK, for me that worked; but what about Billy Jones?

Yeah, they aren’t going to allow me to opt-out until I cough up Billy Jones’ social security number. This infuriates me – for all I know, Billy Jones is my neighbor’s hamster.

There are some good things about Billy Jones:

  • I can instantly throw anything addressed to Billy in the trash.
  • The companies that are paying for advertisements sent to Billy are 100% losing their money.

Hopefully, the people buying advertising will figure that out. Advertising is all loss and no gain; you deserve to lose your money on it for spending it with a company that will falsify the names on the mailing list.

Ha! Ha! Sucks to be you.

But really, I would prefer you advertisers just stop it.

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