Have tried speaking to the company (specifically Virgin Media) and still getting hefty lumps of promotional material on a regular basis. Good for Royal Mail, bad for the enviroment. Any ideas on how to stop it?

is it specifically addressed to you or just general stuff that Royal Mail deliver?

If it’s the latter they just get paid £x per thousand – you may be able to ask them not to but I’m not sure they will.

I get junk mail from Virgin media and I’m already a customer of theirs!

The recycling bin is quite close to the front door, it’s no great difficulty to put it in there.

Thanks wwaswas! It’s addressed to ‘The Householder’. I’ve already regeistered with the Mailing Preference Service, apparently if it’s not specifically addressed to you it circumvents the Data Protection Act. I’m developing a strong dislike for Virgin Media!

Yep, recycling away Samuri. I just feel it’s a waste of resources and consequently bad for the environment, which annoys me.

You could try scribbling out the address, put ‘Not wanted, return to sender’on the envelope, along with ‘Please remove me from your mailing list’ and stick it back in the post box.
Printing off some sticky labels and putting those on would speed things up, too.
Trouble is, once your name is on these lists, they get sold amoung the various people who do mailings, and it’s very difficult to get it stopped completely.
One point, when you blank out the address on the front, don’t cover up the little dotted square to the right of the bar-code thingy under the address, that looks like a QR Code; that will be scanned by the mailing house to update the list, in fact that’s exactly what I’m doing for a bunch of charities at the moment.

I agree. I guess they must see a return on investment though otherwise they’d stop doing it. That’s not true about the Data protection Act though.

In these Direct Mail mailouts, the normal ROI is around 0.5%

😯

We did a ‘cold’ mailing for a major charity a while back, and the ‘RTS/Gone away’ returns were staggering, but they seem to think a 10% hit rate is worth it. Most mailings are ‘Warm’, where the recipient has been phoned, or is a long-term customer, and it’s usually only peole who’ve moved, or died, that get returned.
Posties scribble over the address with a blue crayon if you dont bother covering the address yourself anyway, so even that’s not really neccessary, just write RTS on it and shove it in the post box.

Ok CountZero, will try that.

Are you sure samuri? That may well be the case, I got my info from here.

Johndoh that ROI is tiny. I’m even more annoyed now!!

http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help-and-support/how-do-I-stop-receiving-any-leaflets-or-unaddressed-promotional-material

Virgin are riduculous for it.
I also seem to have a mounting pile of poly bags from various charity organisations in my porch. Thinking of putting a box outside marked “Charity bags in here”.

Thanks for that Cougar, not sure if it applies to this though:

Royal Mail is still legally obliged to deliver all addressed mail, which includes mail that is addressed “To the Occupier”

the promotional stuff has my address on it, but not my name…

LWKMD DezB! 😆

re charity bags == free bin liners (I get about 3 a week)

re mail – if there is a reply envelope, simply remove all details relating to you, fill with as much untraceable other junk mail (and charity bags) as possible, make it really heavy, and pop in post.

Anything with a pre-paid envelope, usually Barclaycard, gets put in the envelope and returned to them.
Anything without one, usually the AA, gets added to someone else’s prepaid envelope and sent to them instead. Share your junk mail around.

re mail – if there is a reply envelope, simply remove all details relating to you, fill with as much untraceable other junk mail (and charity bags) as possible, make it really heavy, and pop in post.

Please DON’T do that, it achieves nothing other than pissing off the person who has to deal with the returned mail, ie me. If the personal details are removed, then how the **** can your details then be removed from the database? All you’re doing is perpetuating the issue by being an arse! 🙄
FWIW, as I update the database the client charity gets a report every week with the details of those scanned in shown up. I’ve had two queries this week regarding someone shown as ‘gone away’, who was still living at the address, (the admin system only allows gone away/deceased), and someone, a young woman flagged up as deceased.

As Cougar points out opting out of un-addressed stuff is all or nothing. You can’t just have stuff from the Govt but not Sky and Direct Line. It’s a lazy system that helps protect their profits.

I solved any and all problems of junk mail by fitting a paper shredder directly behind the letter box.
Anything really important, they will eventually phone you

Tried all of the above (up to but excluding the shredder) and still got a bumper package from Virgin Media today. SCUM SCUM SCUM! 😉

See the second half of this page.

http://www.ico.org.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/junk_mail

Did they supply a return-paid envelope?

burns well in the stove.

previous owners seemed to have signed up for every bit of junk going.

Thanks Cougar. Unfortunately although it’s my address it’s actually addressed to ‘The Homeowner’, so I can’t stop it. It’s a loophole. But will try that anyway!!

Have tried speaking to the company (specifically Virgin Media) and still getting hefty lumps of promotional material on a regular basis

Had the same thing with vigin on the rediculous media lot, just ring the freephone num,ber and ask for the free set top box, tivo box and free instalaltion then when they ask for your bank details tell them repaeately , that the stuff youve asked for is free and FREE MEANS FRE, and keep repeating that, and tell them to remove your details of their mailing list, then repeat a few times, they soon get the idea.

Oh and the calls free as well.