Ever seen or heard of this advert Spit Braai, Big and Long on Junk Mail? Well chances are… you probably haven’t. What you probably also didn’t know, is that this the most viewed advert on Junk Mail at the moment.
In light of the strange and funny ads we see on the site, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share some interesting facts about Junk Mail and provide each and everyone of our users with the official Junk Mail advertising rules. It is important to know all the why’s and why not’s, to make sure your adverts are not rejected.
For those of you that were not aware – Junk Mail has been around for almost 20 years (can you believe it!). The local South African Classifieds Company was founded way back in 1992. Over the year’s Junk Mail has encountered all kinds of adverts. We could honestly do a video series called, South Africa’s Most Bizarre Ads for the amount of outlandish items we have seen being posted on Junk Mail during the last two decades!
Junk Mail has created a user-friendly and safe trading zone for you all to buy and sell. Some of the ads we encountered were a little too bizarre and it became clear that we needed to formulate some rules and regulations regarding the acceptance of adverts on the Junk Mail website. These rules and regulations have been formulated with the aim of protecting advertisers and users to create a happy trading zone for all. The Junk Mail team has a duty to inform its advertisers and users by giving them the knowledge they need to trade better.
The following advert types are NOT allowed on Junk Mail:
- Adverts seeking or offering children for adoption (this would seem obvious but apparently there are some chancers out there)
- Adverts seeking or offering organs for transplantation (just to clear this up, if you want to offer your organs on the black market that is your business! Please don’t make it ours 🙂
- Adverts seeking or offering surrogate motherhood (please tell me your name is not Phoebe and we just did not sign-up to some warped episode of Friends. You do know this is not a service you can offer to strangers)
- Adverts seeking or offering sperm or ova (We suggest that you go to America and visit a sperm bank, if you think this is possible in South Africa then sadly you have been watching to many teens movies like The New Guy)
- Adverts for prescription medication (Selling prescription drugs is illegal and you can be arrested for impersonating a doctor – just a friendly message to keep you out of jail)
- Adverts for automatic weapons or explosives. Including all firearm silencers (This is not Lord of War so keep your firearms away from our site)
- Adverts for Wolves and Timber Wolves, or any hybrids thereof (Wow – I really thought this one was a joke, but apparently wolves don’t just feature in nursery rhymes)
- Adverts for Dingoes or any hybrids thereof (Double Wow – yes people do really try to sell Dingoes for a living)
- Adverts which contain foul language, defamatory comments, racism, sexism, derogatory labels or racial slurs (In case you thought we weren’t monitoring your typos – think again The Big Junk Mail Brother is watching you! So please try and keep it clean)
- Adverts that contain references to other publications (Like DUH!!!)
- Adverts for copied media / pirate products (i.e. software, games, movies, music) (Why have a fake, when you can have the real deal?)
- Adverts for services offered to “chip” gaming consoles (enabling them to play copied media). This includes the sale of gaming consoles that are being advertised as “chipped / altered to play copied media” (rather be a Simba Chippie not an illegal chip-ster)
- Adverts for vehicle payments to be taken over (Wow – if this does not scream scam then we don’t know)
- Adverts for Abortion services (We believe in the preservation of life so if you are looking at aborting a life then we suggest you find these types of services elsewhere)
Now that you know the rules for what adverts you are not allowed to place on the Junk Mail, it should be fairly easy for you to upload all your legit adverts onto the Junk Mail site from on a daily basis 😉
We really do live in an interesting world, where thanks to classifieds and advancing technology we now have opportunity of meeting and exchanging with people we would have probably not engaged with.
So don’t let us keep you any longer, start placing you’re FREE ads today using Junk Mail!
If you found this post informative chances are you will probably find the below posts a good read too:
- Junk Mail gives you even more Social Integration to share your ads
- Junk Mail has an advert view counter (this means you can see how many people have clicked and viewed your advert since you placed it online)
- Create an easy SMS Alert for that must-have item (SMS alerts means you are the first to know).
Please do not advertise pets on your site. It’s too easy for these animals to fall into the wrong hands and end up in dog fighting syndicates as fighting or bait dogs.
Hi Lorraine – Thanks for getting in touch, we appreciate your feedback. We care about the pet Ads placed in our paper and online. We monitor all these adverts to make sure that scams and puppy mill ads are eliminated. We work very closely with Wet Nose to make sure that puppy/ kitten mill operators are blocked off our system and are not using our platform for ill intention animal trading. We have even assisted to apprehending pet scammers thanks to our vigilant pet lovers. If we were this category off our site or from the paper this would mean these backyard breeders and puppy mills would find yet another channel to sell these animals and continue the cycle of breeding animals irresponsibly. We are actively making sure that we are part of the solution and not the problem.
what about pet adverts?
surely you could help stop unwanted pet population and only allo STERILIZED pets to be advertised or no pets at all, places like this lead to so many animals abused and found by shelters because people gave them to new owners without knowing anything about them.
Hi Claudia – Thanks for getting in touch, we appreciate your feedback. We care about the pet Ads placed in our paper and online. We monitor all these adverts to make sure that scams and puppy mill ads are eliminated. We work very closely with Wet Nose to make sure that puppy/ kitten mill operators are blocked off our system and are not using our platform for ill intention animal trading. We have even assisted to apprehending pet scammers thanks to our vigilant pet lovers. If we were this category off our site or from the paper this would mean these backyard breeders and puppy mills would find yet another channel to sell these animals and continue the cycle of breeding animals irresponsibly. We are actively making sure that we are part of the solution and not the problem.
Hi. Is there a way to report an ad? I’ve come across a few ads that are definitely scams (selling pets from Namibia, Kenya, etc. and requiring money to ship the pet to SA) if we are able to report scam ads it will perhaps help the next person to not become an unsuspecting victim.
Hi Yasmin – Please e-mail links to the adverts or the advert contact details to our Customer Care Department via ccc@junkmail.co.za