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- Quick Guide
- Junk Buster
- Door-to-Door Opt-Out
- Letterbox stickers
- Your Choice
- Mailing Preference Service
- Edited Electoral Register
- Tick boxes
- Return to sender
- Contact the sender
Other Junk
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Guide to stamping out junk mail
Tip 7 - Return to sender
If you receive junk mail with a return address on the envelope, write 'Unsolicited mail, please return to sender' on the envelope and put it back in the post unstamped. The sender will have to pay the return postage and may remove your details from its mailing lists.
If you receive a lot of addressed junk mail, consider buying one of these pads with return to sender labels. It makes the job a lot easier…
Is it any good?
Sending back junk mail will definitely make a difference. Most organisations will understand that there's no point going on sending you advertisments and leave you alone. It's a waste of their time and money and it's not their interest to keep annoying you. Some organisations may need a couple of returns though; dealing with returned junk mail is often not much of a priority for bulk mailers.
It's true that there are also irresponsible organisations that won't even bother to look at returned junk mail. Unfortunately, there's little you can do about this. It's not unlawful for a company to ignore any items you return; only an 'official request' has to be respected (see Contact the sender). Returning junk mail to the sender is no more than a polite request.
That said, returning junk mail is a lot easier and less time-consuming than contacting individual bulk mailers. It is also a good antidote for junk mail frustration. And or course if everybody returned all junk mail they are not interested in, companies would very quickly become a lot more careful sending out junk mail in the first place…
Links and tools
What's next?
» Tip 8 - Contact the sender