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% of British households was registered with the service at that time. Not long after the figure had become public knowledge Royal Mail stopped being secretive about the number of households registered with the scheme, and we now know that the figure had increased to 0.8% by April 2009. To put this figure in perspective, roughly 10% of households / people is registered with the Mailing Preference Service, the main opt-out scheme for addressed junk mail.

Obscure as the Door-to-Door Opt-Out may be, if you want to reduce unsolicited leaflets you definitely should register with the scheme. The Door-to-Door Opt-Out will prevent between three and six pieces of junk mail per week - more than the Mailing Preference Service and Your Choice combined.

To register, you first need to ask Royal Mail to send you an 'Opt-Out Confirmation Form' 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 schemes at the same time.

If you request the opt-out form via e-mail or Junk Buster you will get the form sent to you via e-mail, which means you'll need to print the form yourself. If you rather get the opt-out form in the post you can phone the team administering the opt-out scheme on 01865 796 964 or 01865 796 988. Alternatively, you can also write to:

Freepost RRBT-ZBXB-TTTS
Door-to-door opt-outs
Royal Mail
Kingsmead House
Oxpens Road
OXFORD
OX1 1RX

I mentioned that the reason why few people are registered with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out is that Royal Mail refuses to advertise the existence of the scheme. This is not the only explanation for the extremely low opt-out rate. The Door-to-Door Opt-Out is not a very customer-friendly scheme:

• The opt-out process is lengthy and discouraging; rather than allowing people to register online Royal Mail insists that people complete a paper opt-out confirmation form.
• The confirmation form warns people that they “may miss important information from local or national government” if they decide to opt out. This warning causes a lot of confusion and probably explains why about half the people who request an opt-out form don't return it (see also Warnings… or 'scare tactics'? below).
• People usually don't get confirmation that they have registered, and Royal Mail doesn't send people a new opt-out form when their registration expires (which happens after a meagre two years).

In other words, the Door-to-Door Opt-Out is not a secret gem. In order to register you have to have some stamina, and you'll have to remind yourself to re-register every two years. As an aside, if you want to prevent your registration runs out you can re-register every year. Also, you can at any time contact door_to_door_ops_admin@royalmail.com to get confirmation of when your registration is due to expire. Do not send an e-mail to the optout@royalmail.com address if you have any queries about your registration - that address is used to automatically send out the confirmation form only.

The reason the Door-to-Door Opt-Out exists is that Royal Mail wants to ensure people make an 'informed decision' about stopping unsolicited leaflets. As far as I'm aware Royal Mail is the only company in the world to have such a policy; in other countries you can simply stop unsolicited unaddressed mail items by placing a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your door. Royal Mail, however, instructs postmen to ignore 'No Junk Mail' signs.

An opt-out scheme for unaddressed junk mail would be a viable alternative for a sticker scheme if such a scheme would cover all unaddressed junk mail. Unsurprisingly, this is isn't the case. The Door-to-Door Opt-Out covers only 25 to 50% of all unaddressed junk mail. To resolve this situation the Direct Marketing Association set up a second opt-out service for unaddressed junk mail in 2008; the rather obscure Your Choice scheme. Your Choice will prevent only a handful of leaflets a year; and so you still need to put a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your door to stop unaddressed junk mail not covered by the two opt-out schemes. That's three things you need to do just to stop leaflets you never asked for in the first place…

Reducing unwanted junk mail would be a lot easier if opt-out schemes for unaddressed junk mail didn't exist. At the moment your postman has to push leaflets through your door, even if you have a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your door and when it's obvious that the leaflets being delivered are junk mail.

It's difficult not to see the Door-to-Door Opt-Out (and Your Choice) as an attempt to make reducing junk mail more difficult. The argument that people who put a 'No Junk Mail' sticker on their door are not making an 'informed decision' about stopping unwanted mail is patronising and an insult to people's intelligence.

More information about why I feel opt-out schemes for unaddressed junk mail should be replaced by a sticker scheme can be found in Stop Junk Mail's Manifesto.

Registering with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out will not necessarily prevent junk mail with a generic addressee, such as 'To the Occupier' or 'To the Pizza Lover'. The Door-to-Door Opt-Out can only stop junk mail without a 'delivery point'. Translated into English; the scheme will stop any item that doesn't include a postal address. However, the scheme will not stop items with a generic addressee and a postal address.

To illustrate the point, an item with this address would not be delivered:

To the Occupier

However, an item with this address would be delivered:

To the Occupier
35 Waldeck Road
NORWICH
NR4 7PG

The logic is that Royal Mail has a legal obligation to deliver all mail with a delivery point. Whether or not mail items have an addressee is irrelevant; Royal Mail delivers mail to addresses, not to addressees. 'To the Occupier' mail with an address therefore is addressed junk mail, and should be covered by the opt-out scheme for addressed junk mail: the Mailing Preference Service. (And guess what… the Mailing Preference Service doesn't stop junk mail with a generic addressee!)

As mention, when you ask Royal Mail to be spared from door-drops delivered by the postman you'll get an 'opt-out confirmation form' and a letter explaining that registering with the scheme will stop all unaddressed mail delivered by Royal Mail, including “leaflets from central and local Government and other public bodies”. The form itself even states that you may miss “important information”. These warnings have caused much confusion about the consequences of opting out, and they stop many people from registering. According to Royal Mail about half the people who request an opt-out form don't return it.

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 to all households. 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 an item 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 question remains whether or not you'll miss all sorts of important information if you opt out of receiving unsolicited and unaddressed mail items delivered by the postman. Since January 2011 I've been keeping track of all unaddressed mail items delivered by Royal Mail to my address. The Royal Junk Mail 'Catablog' suggests that very little information is distributed via the door-to-door scheme indeed. 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, and if the magazine happens to be delivered via Royal Mail's door-to-door scheme, you'll 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.

Over the years I've received hundreds of complaints from people who continue to receive unaddressed mail items delivered by Royal Mail after registering 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 doesn't have a proper system in place that makes it easy for posties to remember which households have signed up to the scheme.

Getting unsolicited leaflets pushed through the door is always annoying. It's 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 distributed by Royal Mail. And the more people complain, the more likely it is that Royal Mail will make an effort to make the opt-out more effective.

If you've opted out and you find you're still getting leaflets from the postman you should first contact the Door-to-Door Opt-Out directly. The best way to do so is via e-mail; that way you'll have a record of your contact with the opt-out administrators. The e-mail address to contact is door_to_door_ops_admin@royalmail.com. Royal Mail usually replies by saying they've contacted your local delivery office 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. If you want to make a complaint you should first contact Royal Mail Customer Services on 08457 740 740 or via the company's website. If liaising with the Customer Services department gets you nowhere you can next complaint to complaint to the Postal Review Panel.

Tips for complainants

Finally, if you're going to lodge a complaint, the following tips might be useful:

• In the letter Royal Mail sends with the opt-out confirmation form the company advises that “if relief staff are used, an occasional delivery may occur”. It's important to note that this can never be an excuse for delivering unaddressed items to householders who are opted out. It might be understandable that temps are likely to ignore households that have opted out, given that postmen have to learn by heart which households on their round are opted out. Nevertheless, in no way does it give Royal Mail an excuse for ignoring your registration with the scheme. The remark is irrelevant and Royal Mail will never use it to justify a poor standard of service.
• It's important to keep a copy of any correspondence you have with Royal Mail. You may need the copies should Royal Mail continue to ignore your opt-out and/or should you decide to complain to the Postal Review Panel.
• Sometimes Royal Mail's Customer Services department advises complainants to register with the Mailing Preference Service and/or to contact the Direct Marketing Association about how to reduce unsolicited mail. If this happens to you, explain that you are complaining about Royal Mail ignoring your registration with its Door-to-Door Opt-Out. The Mailing Preference Service is an opt-out scheme for addressed advertising mail and the Direct Marketing Association will not be able to help you in any way with your complaint – they have nothing to do with Door-to-Door Opt-Out.
• Royal Mail may ask you to forward the items you are complaining about to one of its customer services centres. This is a reasonable request; they want you to establish whether or not the items have been delivered via the door-to-door service indeed. However, it is also reasonable for you to refuse to let go of your 'evidence' and spend money on postage. You can offer to send scans of the items via e-mail (if you are able to scan the items) or ask them to provide you with a pre-paid envelope. Or, you could give them a description of the item, including any code on the item that may identify when and where it was delivered.

• Stop door to door confirmation form (PDF, 56Kb)
• Door-to-Door Opt-Out (royalmail.com)
• Royal Junk Mail (blogs.stopjunkmail.org.uk)