Door-to-door opt-out survey
Q5 - Did you receive a confirmation letter from Royal Mail?
In total, 82 people had received, completed and returned the opt-out form. We asked this group if they had also received a letter confirming their opt-out. The reason for asking this question was again to check if Royal Mail actually does something with the opt-out requests they receive; householders who got a confirmation letter will have been registered.
Chart 5 - Did you receive a confirmation letter?
|
||
 Yes |
58 | 70.7% |
 No |
11 | 13.4% |
 Don't know |
13 | 15.9% |
Just over 70 per cent did get a confirmation letter, with 13 per cent being unsure whether or not they received one. This suggests that at least 11 per cent of opt-out requests had not being dealt with.
Of the 11 householders who did not get a confirmation letter, seven said that they were still getting unaddressed mail from the postman. Three householders said the deliveries had stopped. However, one of these people wrote to us to say that he/she had to fill out no less than three opt-out forms: "I filled in the first form, they sent me another. I filled in the second form, they sent me another. Three times I filled in and sent the form, all the time still receiving junk mail. After a lot of arguing via e-mail with Royal Mail and an official complaint it finally stopped arriving, months after the request was first made."
Not receiving a confirmation letter does not necessarily mean that an opt-out request will have been ignored. However, if we look at the number of people who said that they are still receiving unaddressed mail from their postman, it appears that Royal Mail does indeed frequently ignore completed opt-out forms. Of the people who did not get a confirmation letter, 63.6% told us they are still getting door-to-door items. The percentage for all the people who returned the opt-out form is 53.7 (see Are you still receiving door-to-door items?).
Chart 6 - Are you still receiving unaddressed mail?
|
||
| Yes |
7 | 63.6% |
| No |
3 | 27.3% |
| Don't know |
1 | 9.1% |