What's the worst thing you ever received in the mail?

You’ll always find worse :P

I’ve never received anything dangerous in the mail. The worst thing I ever received in the mail was bad news.

You should be careful for scams tho….ive received in the past, fake emails asking for passwords and stuff….watch out!

I don’t know if it counts, because I loved it at the time. But when I was in middle school, I had several pen pals because my family moved around a lot. We used to glitter bomb each other all the time. This was back in the 80s, before anyone suggested this as the ultimate form of hate mail.

Back then, I’d open up the mail and squeal in delight as glitter sprayed all over the floor and on all the furniture. I’d send a letter back stuffed with even fancier glitter. My mom would be furious at me over this. She stopped buying me glitter and made me open all my mail in the garage. Finally, she started calling my friends’ parents and told them that the whole thing needed to stop. I didn’t send or receive much mail after that. It just wasn’t fun if glitter wasn’t involved. And I didn’t see what the big deal was. It was just glitter. You could just vacuum it up, right?

After several decades, I have a daughter of my own. When she was 18 months, I bought her a tutu covered with glitter. I quickly threw it away when I found out that it was leaking glitter all over the house. No matter how much I vacuum it never seems to go away completely. My daughter is almost five and I still find little stashes of glitter from that damned tutu now and then.

I should call my mother up and apologize.

Letters from the IRS saying that there was a problem with my return!

@keobooks

Speaking of glitter: nowadays they have this really superfine glitter which is more like baby powder in terms of particle size. At least the stuff in the 70s and 80s wasn’t so impossible to vacuum up.

I know firsthand because I use it for face painting and come home covered in the stuff. Particularly on humid days it’s stuck all over my skin and the only solution is several showers and a thorough cycle in the washing machine for the clothes. And even with that it just keeps popping up I’m all sorts of nooks and crannies.

But it just looks so terrific over the face paint and the kids just absolutely love it; even the boys (as long as it’s gold). So I would just resign myself to spending the summer looking unusually sparkly :)

However, if someone glitter bombed me with a letter full of that superfine stuff in the mail, I’d likely take them to court :D

The AARP sent me an invitation to join. The bastards.

Until I got my finances in order, it was bills, bills, bills… more than I could pay each month. The stress of it was horrible. I’ve been debt-free for years, but even now when I go to the mailbox I can feel my BP rise.

A certified letter from a doctor saying don’t come to him anymore. That fuckhead billed me wrong, I called the office wanting to straighten it out, the person who worked in the billing was not cooperating, she didn’t let me talk to anyone else, and then I was sent a collection notice and that certified letter when the bill was still less than two months old. I had called them so I could pay them! I just was being over billed. I wasn’t silent and just not paying.

It’s the first time I’ve ever written the Better Business Bureau. I wrote the BBB and the medical board and my insurance. I have never complained about a doctor formally to any entity, even though they more than one has done some awful things to me. I sent in my accounting of our phone calls and conversations, and a full copy of my credit report with my almost 800 score showing I always pay everything EVERYTHING I owe. To accuse me of being a deadbeat when they screwed up the coding was more than I could take at the time. By the way, the bill was for just over $200 and it should have been $30.

In the end I paid them almost $200 to shut the whole thing down, because I couldn’t take it anymore, and they had a collection agency harassing me. I really wish I hadn’t paid and done something more. Now talking about it the whole thing disgusts me. I had had the same procedure at two other doctors in the area and one charged around $30 and the other zero. I had seen a doctor in another state also—zero. This office was gouging me and had not told me up front, and they actually had coded it wrong making it worse.

The response from the doctor’s office was from the office manager apologizing and saying she wished I had brought the problem to her. I didn’t even know she existed! I don’t know all the people in the office. If the billing person couldn’t handle it she should have brought it to the office manager.

By the way, there was another complaint about the office registered with the BBB and it was about billing.

Attention,

We have deposited the check of your fund (10.500,000,00USD) through Western Union after our finally meeting regarding your fund, All you will do is to contact Western Union director Dr.David Patrick via E-mail:(uwestern045atgmaildotcom) He will give you more direction on how you will be receiving the funds daily.Remember to send your Full information to avoid wrong transfer such as,

Receiver’s Name_______________
Address: ________________
Country: ____________
Phone Number: _____________

Maria Obi has sent $5000 today MTCN= (1959–8277-86) So contact western union Director Dr.David Patrick as soon as you receive this email or call him +22962189222 and tell him to give you the Question and Answer to pick the $5000 and You are not expected to pay for the tansfer charge, The only fee you will send to western union before pick up your first payment $5,000 today is 165 USD onlyto re-new and re-confirm your payment file.

A “Dear John” letter from a woman I thought was my girlfriend. I was something like 19–20 years old.

Nothing.

Word that a friend had died.

Back in the early eighties, a girl who had been a little sister to my fraternity years before was killed in a car crash. The word was slow to reach our social circle, the girl’s mother called a the wife of one of my friend, who in turn wrote word of what happened, and sent copies to about 20 people.

I want to clarify I called the office as soon as I received the bill. The certified letter was a month later while I was trying to straighten out the billing mistake.

A letter from the irs telling me that I owed 30k.

A anonymous 100+ page militant animal rights manifesto explaining that all other methods to stop animal cruelty and suffering have been exhausted, and that the only next step is to kill all people who cause animal suffering. It suggested targeting executives from meat, pharmaceutical, science and biotechnology companies, as well as any other company that uses animal testing for research. I’m a long time vegetarian, and am all for the end of animal testing a cruelty, but murder…uh, no thanks. It went right into the garbage.

@forestGeek Geez, you didn’t report them for terrorism? I guess if it’s a mail campaign, someone somewhere must have done it.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as the worst thing I’ve ever received by mail, because it was an entertaining conversation piece for months, but here goes: It was an utterly creepy request for money from an obscure American evangelical group. In the envelope was a collection of weird things, including a fabric voodoo doll of sorts, a smaller envelope containing a white powder that was supposed to represent bread or something, and some other small trinkets. And a list of people to pray for. And a stamped, self addressed envelope for money. I mean, how else are they going to be able to send out all this crap to people?

A shut off notice for my gas. It wasn’t winter yet, it was fall, but happened to be pretty cold already.

@dappled_leaves I would now, but I was in my early 20’s and just laughed it off.

About 10 years ago I received a package one day and did not recognize the senders name on the return address but it was clearly addressed to me. When I opened it all that was inside was a giant dirt clod about the size of my head.
I was completely freaked out…who the frack would send me a giant dirt clod? lol
Then, after a few minutes I had an “ah hah!” moment.

It dawned on me that it was from the spouse of a distant family member that I met at a family reunion and he grew hops and was into home brewing. I had expressed an interest in the same and months later he sent the giant dirt clod that was a a bundle of hops rhizomes!
The worst and then best thing I ever received in the mail.

^^Hops for the frog!^^

One that’s been on my mind lately is a pink glass basket that I ordered off eBay. This was the ‘old’ eBay where the sellers had the upper hand.

Anyway, according to the description, it was a unique antique basket that had been in the family for generations, but still in perfect condition. Poor picture. I was high bidder and when the basket arrived, the was the newest, cheapest, “Made in Taiwan” POS possible. I sent her a gentle message of complaint. Either the woman was insane, or she was a pro scammer. Anything I messaged her resulted in a page of insults and recriminations.

Wasn’t a prompt for the question, but I’ve seen a couple of those baskets lately, and it dredged the memory.

When I was 10 or 11 years old I got a chain letter in the mail. I had never seen one before and had no idea what it was. It told me that I had to send copies15 people or all kinds of horrible things would befall me. I was absolutely terrified because I did not know the addresses of 15 people to which I could send this letter much less have a way to make 15 copies. I remember being riddled with anxiety for a long time after receiving that awful chain letter.

The invitation to a friend’s funeral. I knew he had died, but the letter made me very uncomfortable. For the longest time, I didn’t know what to do with it.

A notice that the Sate of California was suing us for about $2.5 million was pretty bad. But my attorney thinks we has a 100% chance of winning the case after I shelled out $12K in legal fees (so far). Oh well, c’est la vie! HA!

A letter from a collection agency informing me I owed $2,000 on a debt I had paid a few months prior to a different agency. My heart dropped into my stomach. A year later and I’m still fighting this. It seems the people I paid took my money but didn’t clear my debt. It’s still on my credit report and still trying to be collected by different agencies. Just thinking about it makes me anxious.

@gondwanalon OMG…whatever for?—You don’t have to answer. Gah, good luck!—

@Coloma Long story. Basically my Brother in law lost a law suite for $20 million (in part to the State of California) this year. 5 years ago his name was on a property deed along with my wife and I. But 5 years ago we bought out my brother in law and took his name off the deed. However it is claimed that my Brother in law is trying to shelter the the value of the property from liability. But we have proof that we paid him for his portion of the property 5 years ago. Crazier yet, the State wants the full value of the property. NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT!!!

@gondwanalon Oh jeez, what a mess. The damn state, I have assets in the state controllers unclaimed property division I have been trying to claim for the last 3 years and because one document I need cannot be found, inspite of multiple proof of ownership, including attorney proof, there they still sit, unclaimed. hah.

@Coloma Looks like you might have to consult with another attorney. Good luck!