Brute Force Advertising

In Singapore, many people stay in high rise buildings, so all the letterboxes are grouped together at one convenient location for the post man. Unfortunately, this also means it’s convenient for the spammers to put advertising leaflets into the letterboxes.

Perhaps over numerous iterations, it was decided that if a resident didn’t want such spam, they could effectively “lock” their mailbox (so that only the post man, who has a key to all mailboxes, can open it). Although that reduces such leaflets to those who pay SingPost a ransom, sometimes mechanisms fail.

Such as mine:

Let me explain how this works. Instead of a more straight forward mechanism (like a latch or something that’s affixed to the swinging door of the letter box), the one I happen to have is a simple screw head. If screwed in from the bottom in, then the door isn’t obstructed, and anyone can drop a note into my letter box. On the other hand, if screwed from top down (as presented in the picture), it will then sit exactly where the door is supposed to open and obstruct the opening of the door.

However, even when I did that, numerous attempts by the spammers to put leaflets into my mailbox has resulted in the holder (which is made of reasonably solid metal) to bend, resulting in the scenario above. This results in the following picture when the letterbox is closed:

A crevice remains, and more often than not that’s what the spammer needs. To think that the letter box was 100% sealed just a few months back and now seeing this is appalling. I mean, I read none of the leaflets, and like many residents, the bin next to the letter box is where it all goes the moment it leaves the letter box.

Should I tell the Town Council or HDB about it?