In the last few days, newsagents all over Australia started reporting a new low. They were receiving an anonymous plain letter with only their address on it. Inside was an advertisement attacking POS Solutions. Obviously someone is concerned about our windows program - posbrowser. It soon became clear the circulation included thousands of newsagents Australia wide.
However that someone clearly was professional.
They had a newsagent address list that was current as one newsagent had recently moved his shop and he received it in his new address. In this case, it was more up-to-date then many of his newsagent suppliers. Whoever it was, has an up-to-date mailing list of thousands of newsagents’ addresses.
They used the services of a graphic artist as you could see a wide ellipse drawn clearly with an expert hand. Across the road from us is an art shop, the artist who runs the shop needed several attempts to make something as good. I could not do such a nice drawing of an ellipse.
You could see when you compared several different letters that they were all folded the same. Clearly they used an expensive letter folding machine for folding, inserting and sealing this mail-out as the cheap ones do not do such a professional job.
Looking at it, I estimate that they would have cost about $1,300 without labour costs. That is because the paper and labels would have cost about $40. Then for each of letters, they used a 50 cent stamp. An envelope would be worth about 5 cents each. Then they photocopied each page and printed a label so add at least another 5 cents each in ink.
When I showed it to the authorities they pointed out that this someone picked an unusual type of paper for the advertisement. This is because it does not handle well so making sure that it will not last. I thought that was quite clever.
Also they used stamps rather then a franking machine, clearly to make it difficult to trace. All we know now is it was posted in the South-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne late on the 17th or on the 18th June.
If anyone has any information to what in the newsagency industry is a new low, please let me know.
PS I am not quite in a position to comment on the contents of this advertisement as I am still waiting for a person’s statement when I receive that, I will comment on the contents.
