dumping mail in other owners letterboxes

Frustrating and annoying as it is, you could have bigger problems. I suggest the best thing is to not show that it bothers you. Just take in your mail and put the junk mail into the recycling. 

Or, do something that does not look targeted such as providing a recycling bin next to the letter boxes as a convenient service to all residents. Anyone seeing your pair post the junk mail in your box will know they are doing the wrong thing, even if the background is not known. 

Whatever you do, make sure it would be seen by other residents as dignified and not stooping to the childish levels of these irritants. 

Have a look at your by-laws and see if there is something there that you can use – maybe something about disturbing the peaceful enjoyment of the lot or dumping rubbish on common property.  If there isn’t one, draw one up.

Then tell them that the committee has had enough of their behaviour but ask them to come to a mediation – your local Community Justice Centre will organise that – to thrash out their grievances once and for all.

If they refuse, tell them that if they continure their bad behaviour, you are going to start responding in kind.

If they still behave childishly, start hitting them with every breach notice you can think of.  Set up a cheap security camera to catch them in the act.

A few $220 fines should focus their minds a little.

A few years ago I recommended the use of a matchstick and superglue in a repeat offender’s lock.  Of course, now that I am a responsible strata citizen I could never possibly suggest such a thing for the lock on their letterbox … even if it did work.

Jimmy’s advice reminds me of a unit owner who in our set of townhouses always put her bins where she could not see them on the outside of a courtyard wall which happened to be next to a well used footpath on common property rather than inside the wall which was her property and not in everyone else’s face.

The EC wrote a general newsletter item asking people to please store their bins within their unit area. Then the EC wrote to the unit owner and asked her directly. Then the EC asked the managing agent to write. All this was ignored. An irritated neighbour took to occasionally putting her bins back in her unit area but they were returned to outside the wall. 

A few years elapsed. It was occasionally convenient to have a bin on common property to dump stuff in!

Then the OC was reviewing its rules (bylaws/articles, depends where you live). The EC proposed a rule about personal items, bins, rubbish, etc left on common property. In extensive consultation with owners we explained that this proposed rule would apply, for example, to a person who left their bins where they did not have to look at them but everyone else did. We didn’t hear a peep. The bins remained on common property. Our explanation included saying how it would give the EC the necessary teeth to insist. 

Then, just after the AGM at which the new rule was passed, the bins disappeared and have not been seen again, presumably now stored within the unit area.

Sometimes the rules work!