Ancestors

Toot

Written by Eric Matthes on 2025-01-08 at 14:00

We closed on a new house just before Christmas. Since then we've received about 20 pieces of mail with the name of our bank, saying we have to respond to about "an important matter regarding your loan with <your_bank>".

We know enough to tell which pieces of mail are from our bank, but there is so much predatory advertising in the US.

Is it like this everywhere, or is this a US-specific thing? I sure feel for all the people who struggle to tell which mail is legitimate and which is not.

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Descendants

Written by Dread Fear Daryl on 2025-01-08 at 14:05

@ehmatthes Mortgage and home purchase information is easily available or public. Those cards, if you return them, are sold to life insurance agents (among others, I'm sure) to market to you. Just toss them all. You'll get dozens of them over the next couple of years after least.

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Written by Eric Matthes on 2025-01-08 at 14:10

@djwfyi I understand how they get the information to do such targeted advertising. It's the clear effort at making it sound like something you have to respond to that always makes me angry, and makes me feel for people who are less aware of what these really are.

I'm wondering if it's like this everywhere, or if this is a US-specific thing.

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Written by Dan Sloan on 2025-01-08 at 21:55

@ehmatthes @djwfyi I think in Australia the consumer laws around misleading advertising blunt the worst of the predatory practices, although it does happen.

I definitely got a bunch of spam mail when I bought, but it was more vague, and focused on encouraging me to consider other financial institutions, etc. They certainly didn’t seem to know which bank I was actually banking with.

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Written by Eric Matthes on 2025-01-09 at 12:03

@LucidDan @djwfyi Thanks for the non-US perspective. I wish we were heading toward more regulation about misleading advertising, but we'll be heading further in the opposite direction. :/

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Written by Jeff Triplett on 2025-01-08 at 14:37

@ehmatthes We bought ours almost six years ago, and I still get those every few weeks or at least once a month. I also get SPAM calls from people wanting to buy our house too. 🤷

This is only going to get worse over the next four years as the few restrictions get rolled back.

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Written by Russell Keith-Magee on 2025-01-08 at 22:10

@ehmatthes It's US specific. We closed on our current house just over 4 years ago, and we barely even got mail from our actual bank. Everything was in-person, or an email with instructions that came directly from our mortgage broker (that we chose).

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