Telephone numbers and letter-writing addresses

[Witness1970]

When the pandemic first started, witnesses in my congregation started using the telephone books to witness.   Calling the numbers in the book worked OK, but wireless numbers were not included.  (The telephone books were published by telephone companies that used landlines.)  An elder in our congregation who happened to be a surveyor showed me how to use the county GIS system and I started going through territory maps and getting addresses from the GIS, finding residents and phone numbers and making files for each territory.   It was slow process.  The territories in our congregation are mostly rural, very large and one territory would take a long time.  The territory servant at the time sometimes had to assign one page to each publisher until we got more territories.

 

Since I had so recently moved to this area, I was once told that, "Jehovah sent you to us" which made me feel strange.  At first, I didn't like the comment, but I came to accept that Jehovah provides what is needed.  The Witnesses in this congregation do not use technology much and they did need someone who had used computers a lot.  Nothing really special about me in the long run except that I did use computers a lot.

 

I started using USphonebook[dot]com a lot.  Not actually a phone book, but a web site.  I also used True People Search and Search People Free sometimes, but they all agreed.   Us phone book dot com had an easy-to-use format.  Search People Free and True People Search were better at identifying people who were deceased.

 

When our CO (Mark Richards at that time) visited on one occasion, he showed the Field Service Group one Saturday how to use DATA-AXLE through the local library.  That afternoon I filled out the form to get a temporary library card.  I had to wait until Monday for the library to assign me a library card number (which was supposed to be cancelled when the library doors opened after the pandemic, but still works even now)

 

The territory servant told me that Witnesses were begging for letter-writing territories.  I went to DATA-AXLE and formatted several territories and gave those to the Territory Servant for letter-writing territories.  I went back to using the GIS to get addresses and using websites to find names and telephone numbers for those who wanted to do phone witnessing.

 

DATA-AXLE has very few telephone numbers and they all are landlines, and many are no longer in use, but the addresses are great.  DATA-AXLE also seemed very good at leaving out deceased ones.

 

I learned how to use the Voter list for our county to get addresses.  It takes removing the 15-20% of the county that is not in our territory and also useless information.  I don't care about what fire district, school district, or water district they are in.  When I first downloaded the voter list for the county there were about 100 columns of useless information which had to be deleted.  

 

I recently downloaded a file of addresses from the GIS system for our county.  After I removed the 15-20% of the county that is not in our territory, there were over 22,000 addresses.  None of the addresses were assigned to cities.  I had to use a vloookup (in Excel) with another file to assign city names to the over 22,000 addresses.

 

Some of these addresses are vacant, or businesses, or churches, etc.  I also came to realize that not all addresses are in the GIS system.  One address that has a group of 8 buildings with 8 apartments in each building does not show up on the GIS system at all.  There are others but this is one example.

 

There are problems on each group:

The voter list does not include non-voters (probably at least 95% of people in the county are on the voter list.)

DATA-AXLE does not list people who do not receive mail at home but use a PO Box instead.  However, if a Post Office is on the territory, every consumer (not businesses) that has a PO Box will be listed regardless of where they live.  One large Post Office in one territory had 27 pages of customers using PO Boxes just for that one territory.

The GIS system has missing addresses because the file needs to be updated.  One of these missing addresses is listed in the previous paragraph.

USPS mail verification can have errors because a house burns down, a mobile home is moved.  It will still say yes, it gets mail, but it is actually vacant.  It also has some misspellings (who ever heard of names like Gertude. instead of Gertrude or Jetho, instead of Jethro.)  Sometimes the USPS says no mail because a new residence has not been added to the system yet.

 

When I started out, I had no idea that this post would be so long.  I really didn't mean for it to be that long. I think I will just stop now.

[Tortuga]

Have you tried Melissa.com? It seems pretty accurate.

 

I conduct the meeting for service on Tuesdays. it is the only "Zoom only" meeting for service, so nearly everyone that attends plans to write letters. There are several older sisters that go out on Tuesday, and they need addresses with names. So, every time I get a new territory I create a simple Excel spreadsheet for it, I have a Master that I use. I use Truepeoplesearch and Mellisa to look up the names. If I get the same territory again, I reuse the same spreadsheet. Since I can access the spreadsheets from my phone, it is easy for me to do a screenshot of a portion of the spreadsheet and text it to the sisters. It works well for us.

[Witness1970]

19 hours ago, Tortuga said:

Have you tried Melissa.com? It seems pretty accurate.

 

I conduct the meeting for service on Tuesdays. it is the only "Zoom only" meeting for service, so nearly everyone that attends plans to write letters. There are several older sisters that go out on Tuesday, and they need addresses with names. So, every time I get a new territory I create a simple Excel spreadsheet for it, I have a Master that I use. I use Truepeoplesearch and Mellisa to look up the names. If I get the same territory again, I reuse the same spreadsheet. Since I can access the spreadsheets from my phone, it is easy for me to do a screenshot of a portion of the spreadsheet and text it to the sisters. It works well for us.

I have looked at Melissa.com a little, but I haven't used it much.  I assumed that they got their information from USPS.  Am I wrong?  Where else could they get it?

[Witness1970]

There are a lot of elderly people in our Congregation.  There have been meetings for FS Monday-Wednesday and Saturday for many years, before and during the pandemic.  I got permission from the body of elders to conduct a FS on Thursday and Friday for several months during the pandemic.  I stopped due to health reasons after 8 months.  Another brother shifted his schedule so that he could have Thursday off and have a FS meeting.  Thursday is not popular for several because they are getting ready for the Midweek Meeting on Thursday Night.

 

We now have FS meeting on Thursday and Saturday on Zoom.  Health reasons have prevented me from being in the door-to-door work since it started back.  So, the Thursday and Saturday FS meetings on Zoom are a nice option for me if my health allows me to participate.  Our Zoom FS meetings are mostly for telephone witnessing with a very few who prefer letter-writing, usually no more than one person.  Some of the elderly write letters only but they are not usually on the Zoom FS meetings.  Their age or health prevents them from going door-to-door. 

 

My health fluctuates at times. At one point I started going to meetings regularly (sitting in the back room as the Zoom Attendant) and considered asking the elders about restarting the Zoom FS meetings on Friday.  Then my health deteriorates again, and I am back to Zoom for Midweek and Weekend Meetings and I realize that the ZOOM FS would be out of the question.  

[Tortuga]

4 hours ago, Witness1970 said:

I have looked at Melissa.com a little, but I haven't used it much.  I assumed that they got their information from USPS.  Am I wrong?  Where else could they get it?

From their site (Let the reader use discernment)

 

Why Melissa
Our philosophy is simple: Bad data is bad business. Our 38+ years of address expertise started with ZIP+4 and turned into so much more. We are now global leaders in data quality, address verification and identity resolution, helping over 10,000 businesses worldwide harness accurate data for a more compelling customer view. Our industry-leading solutions have processed over 1 trillion address, email, name and phone records and have been recognized in the 2024 G2 Grid Report which recognized us as leaders in Data Quality and Address Verification.

[dljbsp]

I use Melissa. I use it in two ways. As nowadays, there can be multiple families at the same address, and Melissa will only give me one name at that address, I look up names themselves on truthfinder.com, and I compare them using Melissa for accuracy. If you looked up my address on Melissa, you would get my wife's name. Melissa will actually tell you where the people that you're searching for have moved to. Not that I need that information because it might be someone else's territory.

 

I personally choose to be thorough in my ministry, and I write to every person within the home with a different last name. https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&docid=1102014939&srctype=wol&srcid=share&par=15
See Also: https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/love-people-make-disciples/lesson-9/

Some notes about truthfinder: they do not give you information on anyone that is a minor in the home. Sometimes you're able to ascertain who are the parents and who are the adult children in the home and I will sometimes choose to write to them separately, as truth Finder also provides the age of each person. I have had several issues with truth finder where they locked out my IP address or my login, and it takes about a week to straighten it out.  ( because of my use of their system was outside of their parameters and set up red flags) Each time has led to a phone conversation where I'm also able to give a witness as to what I'm using the addresses for.

 

truthfinder.com used to be my only source for addresses, and we got about 3% returns. When we added a confirmation with Melissa, we're down a half a percent returns.

(truthfinder.com is not free, well it can be for 30 days, but when you inform them, you don't want it they say are you sure what if they give it to you for this price, or what if we give it to you for that price. They took it down to my paying only $12 a month for their services. As I assist the friends in looking up addresses for them in their territories, I'm searching usually 300 to 600 addresses per month) 

[Tortuga]

5 hours ago, dljbsp said:

I use Melissa. I use it in two ways. As nowadays, there can be multiple families at the same address, and Melissa will only give me one name at that address, I look up names themselves on truthfinder.com, and I compare them using Melissa for accuracy. I

I do that with Truepeoplesearch and Melissa. Sometimes TPS will show multiple names, and Melissa can help me decide which one to use. 

[jwhess]

In our territory (parts of 3 counties), we usually start with the 'auditors' website.  Each county auditor maintains a complete listing of all properties in their county. They often have ages listed as well.  Photos of the property and map layouts are included.  It is completely free.

[dljbsp]

11 hours ago, jwhess said:

the 'auditors' website

Such information, in our experience, gives the owner of the property. Almost half of the time, the owner does not live on the property. So much mail has been sent to vacant lots. Others have rented the property out. 

[Witness1970]

16 hours ago, jwhess said:

In our territory (parts of 3 counties), we usually start with the 'auditors' website.  Each county auditor maintains a complete listing of all properties in their county. They often have ages listed as well.  Photos of the property and map layouts are included.  It is completely free.

That sounds just like the GIS system for this county.  It's all free.

 

The NC Voter list for our county is also free and there is no restrictions on how the data can be used.  I know that in some states they have a charge for getting information from their voter list.  And some states also restrict how the data can legally be used.

[jwhess]

7 hours ago, dljbsp said:

Such information, in our experience, gives the owner of the property. Almost half of the time, the owner does not live on the property. So much mail has been sent to vacant lots. Others have rented the property out. 

Our auditor's list identifies the property owner as to whether they live 'on property' or not.  We don't mail to names who do not live on the property.  The only letters returned recently are those that are sent to "vacant" homes.  We drive to the addresses to determine if they really are vacant.  With some rentals it is almost impossible to find the names of the people who actually live there (unless they are long-term rentals more than a year). To the se unknowns we address the letter to the last known renter and put a "or current resident" line underneath.

[Witness1970]

12 hours ago, jwhess said:

Our auditor's list identifies the property owner as to whether they live 'on property' or not.  We don't mail to names who do not live on the property.  The only letters returned recently are those that are sent to "vacant" homes.  We drive to the addresses to determine if they really are vacant.  With some rentals it is almost impossible to find the names of the people who actually live there (unless they are long-term rentals more than a year). To the se unknowns we address the letter to the last known renter and put a "or current resident" line underneath.

I only use the GIS system to get addresses.  The names and telephone numbers come from elsewhere, such as one of the address search websites or DATA-AXLE.  I guess the only way to verify if a property is presently might be to drive to the site.  One other brother is workiing on 

[Witness1970]

On 10/14/2024 at 5:37 AM, Witness1970 said:

I only use the GIS system to get addresses.  The names and telephone numbers come from elsewhere, such as one of the address search websites or DATA-AXLE.  I guess the only way to verify if a property is presently might be to drive to the site.  One other brother is workiing on 

I only use the GIS system to get addresses.  The names and telephone numbers come from elsewhere, such as one of the address search websites or DATA-AXLE.  I guess the only way to verify if a property is presently vacant might be to drive to the site.  One other brother is working on checking addresses while in dood-to-door work.

 

I must have been half asleep when I wrothe that post.  It was somewhat incoherent.

[Witness1970]

On 10/12/2024 at 10:15 AM, Tortuga said:

From their site (Let the reader use discernment)

 

Why Melissa
Our philosophy is simple: Bad data is bad business. Our 38+ years of address expertise started with ZIP+4 and turned into so much more. We are now global leaders in data quality, address verification and identity resolution, helping over 10,000 businesses worldwide harness accurate data for a more compelling customer view. Our industry-leading solutions have processed over 1 trillion address, email, name and phone records and have been recognized in the 2024 G2 Grid Report which recognized us as leaders in Data Quality and Address Verification.

The USPS wants everyone to have the correct addresses. If they send a piece of mail all the way to a carrier and then have to do the same thing sending it all the way back, it costs them twice as much.  So it is in their best interest to make sure the addresses you have are all correct.

 

I trust what the carriers note on hte mail more than I trust the yellow stickers.  A carrier uses UTF for unable to forward, NSS for no such street, VAC for vacant, etc.  I dent one piece of mail to a PO Box, and it was returned as No Mail Receptacle.  Most people who move don't take the PO Box with them.  Unfortunately, my wife had taken the yellow sticker from the envelope and stuck it on the letter.  I do not know what the clerk had noted on the envelope.

[Tortuga]

2 hours ago, Witness1970 said:

The USPS wants everyone to have the correct addresses. If they send a piece of mail all the way to a carrier and then have to do the same thing sending it all the way back, it costs them twice as much.  So it is in their best interest to make sure the addresses you have are all correct.

 

I trust what the carriers note on hte mail more than I trust the yellow stickers.  A carrier uses UTF for unable to forward, NSS for no such street, VAC for vacant, etc.  I dent one piece of mail to a PO Box, and it was returned as No Mail Receptacle.  Most people who move don't take the PO Box with them.  Unfortunately, my wife had taken the yellow sticker from the envelope and stuck it on the letter.  I do not know what the clerk had noted on the envelope.

I also use the USPS site for our rural territories and gated communities to verify an address is deliverable.