Not content with contaminating your mailbox or using your windshield wiper as coupon clip, Domino’s has found a new hi-tech method of distributing coupons using the concept of inertial mass combined with a transparent weatherproof barrier. Ok, it’s actually just a Ziploc filled with coupons and rocks. Reader Will arrived home to discover the baggies littering his driveway and those of his neighbors’. We assume that the rocks allow the lazy Domino’s employees to easily fling the bundles out of their car windows and help keep the baggie weighted down. Will’s letter, inside…
(sent to dominos via website)
I arrived home yesterday to find a zip top plastic bag in my driveway that contained several Domino’s coupons, a magnet, and several rocks. I thought it was just some trash but realized everyone on the street had a similar bag at the end of their driveway. I find this kind of advertising to be tacky at best and it may border on the illegal (littering). I deduced that the rocks provided some weight so that whoever was tossing them on driveways (and the sidewalk and some lawns) did not have to get out of the car.Why can’t you send a flier through the mail like Papa John’s or Pizza Hut? Why did you choose to litter my street and sidewalks? Do I need to put a NO DUMPING sign on the front lawn? This has to stop. I want your assurance that this will not happen again and I think that it might be nice if the people responsible make a donation to the Sierra Club or Leave No Trace. Until that happens you have lost a customer.
Wow Domino’s, we are impressed. Utilizing the technology of rocks to distribute your coupons is genius. We suppose it beats having to pay to send them through the mail like virtually every other pizza joint in the country. Why not try good old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising? Oh yeah, you would actually have to make good pizza for that to work, never mind.
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@Elvisisdead: Putting anything in or on your mailbox is a federal offense – try threatening them with the police to make it stop.
@failurate:
Thank you I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. This is a total non issue yet some people think it warrants letter writing and complaining to anyone who listens.
The mailman dropped a gum wrapper on my lawn, a couple times now. Should I write USPS and schedule a meeting with the postmaster. Will my letter be published on consumerist? Or should i just say wheres the trash can and deal with things that really matter?
I worked at Pizza Hut and “door hanging” is a great way to increase sales not complaints. Quit being so damn queer. There is no reason to even write into the consumerist go find a real issue.
@nffcnnr:
Exactly – I would have found it quite satisfying to see a second picture of a big pile of these blocking the door of the Domino’s store that sent them. If this ever happened in my neighborhood I’d be more than happy to spend 30 minutes collecting the bags and dumping them in front of the business.
Some say it is a trivial problem… but it is getting progressively worse. Now all kinds of people are doing it and it has gone beyond trivial.
Example.. this very morning some prick on a loud scooter was gunning it from mailbox to mailbox to put in some crap advertisements for cleaning and roofing.
At 6AM. Gunning this loud little beast over and over again from mailbox to mailbox at 6AM. Woke me up.
When I go out to throw it away, I step over THREE of those free/trash newspapers. I have two driveways and I usually get double the trash because carpet bombing doesn’t allow for efficiency.
I’m getting annoyed daily because more and more people are advertising in this way. It has gone beyond trivial. It has become invasive and inconvenient. It is also a shame that it is unrecyclable plastic. After a while, I stop recycling the paper too – that wasted plastic does nothing to stop rain-soaking.
I call the advertised companies and bitch at them. I contacted a front page advertiser of one of those junk newspapers (that would not F&%king stop) and personally expressed how I’m in the market for his business yet do not want to indirectly support that newspaper.
At some point, I’m going to escalate and waste their time. I’ll call them for estimates and send them on wild goose chases to nonexistent addresses. Let them call back and I’ll tell them how I feel about their advertising. If “Heather from Account Services” can obscure address information, so can I.
@Tmoney02: Look, what they’re doing is illegal. It’s littering. Is it as bad as ethnic cleansing or honor killings? Of course not, but it’s a pain in the ass, and cleaning up their litter is NOT MY JOB, encouraging people to commit fraud in the Consumerist comments section is my job.
If I want people to NOT litter my yard/car with their solicitations, what do you propose I do about it? It’s not like they have an opt-out list or something I can sign up for so that they’ll just LEAVE MY SHIT ALONE. I don’t litter the property of Domino’s employees (or anybody else), and I DEMAND the same from them. If it takes extra-legal means to accomplish this, so be it. If there was a quick, easy, legal method to get these professional litterers to LEAVE MY SHIT ALONE, I’d be the first to recommend it.
To you and failurate, businesses littering your property is a non-issue. To me, it matters. I take pride in the condition of my yard, and people don’t get a free pass to junk it up with their unsolicited garbage just because of their “company policy”. My property rights trump their company policy. Is that so difficult to understand? I guess from your perspective I’m some kind of crackpot for wanting businesses in my neighborhood to actually OBEY THE LAW and not toss their trash on my lawn.
FYI, the suggestion about bringing along a broken lawnmower blade was made in jest, but if somebody actually does it, more power to them. Just as it’s technically illegal for them to toss trash on my lawn but there’s no way in Hell that anybody will ever get a ticket for it, there’s also no way in Hell that Domino’s could ever prove that you didn’t actually hit one of their rock-bag-flyer packages with your busted lawnmower blade, so I’m not terribly worried about jail.
Last Halloween, I trick or treated my local dominoes and all I got was a rock.
Maybe they see all the newspapers, phonebooks and drunks (that can’t get out of the cab by themselves) that also get tossed onto driveways.
Or, they are inventing a new game: Rock, Paper, Baggie.
@logicslayer:
You obviously have never felt the frustration of spending nearly a half million bucks for a house just to have some A-hole come by and throw trash all over it. Dude, it’s like spam, but worse because it’s tangible. My doorknob is not your marketing opportunity.
If your pizza, carpentry, etc were any good, you would keep busy by word of mouth. A door hanger is a sign of crappy food and workmanship.