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Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out is a free service that will stop unaddressed mail items delivered by the postman. Signing up to service will prevent three to six pieces of junk mail per week - far more than the other two junk mail opt-out services (the MPS and Your Choice) combined. It's the single most effective measure you can take to reduce junk mail.
Exactly how much unaddressed mail Royal Mail delivers is unclear. Until April 2010 an agreement between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers' Union limited the amount of leaflets delivered by the company to three items per household per week. This cap has been removed as part of Royal Mail's modernisation plans.
Royal Mail has never done much to promote the Door-to-Door Opt-Out and as a result few people know it even exists. In 2008, I discovered that less than 0.5 per cent of British household was registered with the service. In comparison, roughly 15 per cent of households are registered with the MPS, the main opt-out service for addressed junk mail. Obscure as the opt-out may be, if you want to stop unsolicited leaflets you definitely should sign up. To do so, you first need to ask Royal Mail to send you an 'Opt-Out Confirmation Form' in the post by sending and e-mail with your name and full address to optout@royalmail.com, or via Junk Buster. Using Junk Buster, you can contact up to five other opt-out services at the same time.
If you prefer, you can also contact Royal Mail the old-fashioned way and write to:
Freepost RRBT-ZBXB-TTTS
Door-to-door opt-outs
Royal Mail
Kingsmead House
Oxpens Road
OXFORD
OX1 1RX
Officially, the Door-to-Door Opt-Out team doesn't have a contact telephone number anymore. However, if it possible to request an opt-out form by phoning Royal Mail Customer Services on 08457 740 740.
If you contact Royal Mail via Junk Buster or e-mail you'll receive a standard e-mail asking you to reconsider reducing junk mail and warning you of the potentially disastrous consequences of no longer receiving unsolicited and unaddressed mail items (see Warnings… or scare tactics?, below). Attached to the e-mail should be a Door-to-Door Opt-Out Confirmation Form, which you can print, complete, and send to the above freepost address. Until recently Royal Mail insisted on sending the form to your home address (in order to "verify your address"); it is not yet clear if Royal Mail has now permanently simplified the opt-out procedure. The company's website still advises people that the form will be send to your address.
Opting out takes time
After the opt-out process has been completed you should stop receiving door-to-door items within six weeks time. This might seem like a long time wait, but compared with for instance the 'Your Choice' scheme it is not that bad; it takes 'Your Choice' no less than three months to become 'fully effective'.
Opt outs expire
Usually, a registration with an opt-out service is valid for a period of five years. In the case of the Door-to-Door Opt-Out the period is only two years. After two years, you have to confirm whether or not your household still wants to be opted out. Royal Mail will not will not send you a new registration form when your opt-out expires.
'To the Occupier'
Signing up to the Door-to-Door Opt-Out will not necessarily stop mail addressed 'To the Occupier'. The opt-out will stop junk mail without a 'delivery point'. In normal English this means that if an item only says 'To the Occupier', it will not be delivered. However, if the item also includes an address it will be delivered. To illustrate the point, an item with this address would not be delivered:
To the Occupier
But an item with this address would not be prevented by the opt-out:
To the Occupier
2 Mill Hill Road
NORWICH
NR2 3DP
With the Opt-Out Confirmation Form you will receive a letter explaining that registering with the opt-out will stop all unaddressed mail delivered by Royal Mail, including "leaflets from central and local Government and other public bodies". This warning has caused much confusion about the consequences of opting out and prevents some people from reducing unsolicited leaflets altoghether.
Royal Mail doesn't give much clarification on exactly what leaflets you may miss if your decide to opt out. After PostWatch, the former watchdog for postal services in the UK (nowadays part of Consumer Focus), took offense of the warnings issued to people wanting to reduce junk mail Royal Mail did confirm that election material (i.e. election leaflets from political parties) will be delivered as normal. It has also been confirmed that an alternative door-to-door service will be used if central or local Government really need to post a leaflet through each and every door in a certain area. An example of such a leaflet is the 'Swine Flu' leaflet produced by the Department of Health in May 2009. The leaflet was delivered to every household in the UK, including those households that were at the time registered with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out.
The warning that you may miss leaflets from central or local Government seems to refer only to free magazines published by most local authorities. If you do enjoy reading these, you will have to consider if not getting the magazine through the door weighs up against not receiving all those leaflets from Domino Pizzas, Virgin, TalkTalk, Farmfoods and the like. Perhaps you are able to pick up a copy of the magazine from your local Council or library.
Over the years I have received hundreds of complaints from people who continue to receive unaddressed mail items delivered by Royal Mail, despite being registered with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out. The main problem with the scheme appears to be that postmen have to learn by heart which households on their round have opted out. Royal Mail has no system in place that makes it easy for posties to remember which households on their round have opted out.
Getting unsolicited leaflets pushed through the door is always annoying. It is even more so if you have gone through the trouble of registering with an opt-out service. And, nobody likes to complaint. Yet, you should. Making a complaint is the only way to enforce your right not to receive leaflets delivered by Royal Mail. And the more people complaint, the more likely it is that Royal Mail will make an effort to make the opt-out more effective.
An easy way to make your voice heard is by contacting the Opt-Out Team directly via the optout@royalmail.com e-mail address. They will usually reply to say that they have contacted your local delivery office manager and that you should receive no further unaddressed mail items.
If contacting the Opt-Out Team doesn't solve the issue, you can start working your way through Royal Mail's complaints procedure. The first step you need to take if you wish to make a formal complaint is contacting Royal Mail Customer Services:
If liaising with the Customer Services department gets you nowhere you can next complaint to complaint to the Postal Review Panel:
Tips for complainants
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