There are currently no less than three separate opt-out regimes for unaddressed junk mail:

1. Unaddressed mail distributed by Royal Mail is covered by the Door-to-Door Opt-Out;
2. Unaddressed mail distributed by distribution companies that are members of the Direct Marketing Association is covered by Your Choice; and
3. All other unaddressed mail - including free newspapers - can be stopped with a 'No Junk Mail' sign.

So how much unaddressed junk mail does the Your Choice scheme cover? As per usual, the Direct Marketing Association doesn't publish such data, and making a proper guesstimate is rather difficult. As at July 2011 there were 17 members of the Direct Marketing Association in the category 'Door Drop', of which 11 are distribution companies. In another words, there are only 11 distribution companies in the UK that will check to see if you're registered with Your Choice. As a percentage of all distribution companies in the UK this is negligible, but then the lists does includes some major junk mailers, including TNT Post.

Nobody knows how much junk mail Your Choice can prevent. And, to top it up, people registered with the scheme have no way of establishing how many leaflets Your Choice is preventing. After all, leaflets don't tell you the name of the company responsible for its distribution, let alone whether or not that company is a member of the association.

If you have a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your door you don't need to register with Your Choice. Just about all leaflet distribution companies nowadays instruct employees to respect 'No Junk Mail' signs, and it's just about unthinkable that a distribution company that's a member of the Direct Marketing Association would tell employees to ignore such signs.

I should add that the Direct Marketing Association's Code of Practice (which can no longer be viewed online) carefully avoids an endorsement of 'No Junk Mail' signs. The article that deals with 'requests not to receive unaddressed items' (13.23) states:

"Members must have in place a structure to enable every effort to be made to respect a householder's wish not to receive unaddressed items, whether such requests are made directly to the member or via any industry schemes approved by the Association."

Strictly speaking, a 'No Junk Mail' sign is not a request “made directly to the member”. The Code uses the adverb 'directly' because the Direct Marketing Association would like you to send a letter to senders you don't want to receive leaflets from (they're here to make things easy for you, right?). Still, a 'No Junk Mail' sign is a request not to receive unaddressed items, and of course it isn't much of an effort to respect such a request. In any case, distribution companies know that ignoring 'No Junk Mail' signs is not going to do much to improve their reputation - and refusing to respect people's wishes is unlikely to make clients very happy.

The moral is that the Your Choice scheme is redundant. If you want to stop leaflets you only need to put a 'No Junk Mail' sign on your door and register with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out (as Royal Mail does instruct postmen to ignore 'No Junk Mail' signs).

To understand why Your Choice has nothing to do with an opt-out service you need to know that the scheme is the Direct Marketing Association's unwanted child. The junk mail lobby group never wanted an opt-out service for unaddressed mail. It regards opt-out schemes as 'blunt instruments'. They much a prefer a system whereby 'consumers' (not 'people') contact those organisations from whom they don't want to receive 'direct marketing materials' (not 'junk mail'). Your Choice was born because Defra - the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs - told the Direct Marketing Association to introduce an opt-out service for unaddressed junk mail.

The demand was made in Government's Waste Strategy White Paper, published in May 2007. Defra got impatient with the Direct Marketing Association's reluctance to reduce waste caused by junk mail and thought an opt-out scheme along the lines of the Mailing Preference Service would make it easier for householders to reduce unwanted junk mail. The Direct Marketing Association complied with the letter of the demand, but not with its spirit. Every effort has been made to ensure that Your Choice is as limited as possible.

Marketing

It's interesting to note the Direct Marketing Association no longer advertises the existence of the Your Choice scheme. For about two years there was a single page with information about the scheme on the website of the Direct Marketing Association. The page didn't exactly encourage people to request an opt-out pack, and it's perhaps not surprising the page was removed when the Direct Marketing Association relaunched its website in July 2011. (If you're interested to read what the Direct Marketing Association had to say about Your Choice, I cached the page before it completely disappeared.)

Still, it's bizarre the Direct Marketing Association doesn't provide the public with any information about Your Choice. I mean, they're the representative of the marketing industry! The complete absence of consumer information must mean one of two things:

1. The Direct Marketing Association isn't very good at marketing; or
2. The marketing strategy is to prevent people sign up to Your Choice.

I suspect the latter is the case. The Direct Marketing Association is well that aware the take up of the Your Choice scheme is extremely low. In April 2010, the Direct Marketing Association had to report Defra that at that time only 1,600 household were registered (that's 0.006% of all households in the UK). The organisation was worried about this. A meeting of its Governance Committee in March 2010 raised the concern that “should the number of registrations on the file not increase, Defra may push for a change in legislation”. In its subsequent meeting, in May 2010, the Governance Committee noted that a review of the publicity strategy for Your Choice was “urgently needed”.

The Propaganda Pack

The opt-out pack contains three pages with information about the blessings of unaddressed mail and the limitations of the Your Choice scheme. A pre-paid return envelope, something which bulk mailers usually enclose if they want a response, is not provided. And after the form has been returned it will take no less than twelve weeks before your opt-out becomes 'fully effective' (exactly twice as long as Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out). It just goes to show that this scheme hasn't been set up because the Direct Marketing Association thought it was a great idea to give householders the choice to opt out of receiving unaddressed mail.

More worrying is that householders are unable to judge whether or not their registration with Your Choice is making a difference. The scheme is supposed to stop unaddressed mail items delivered by members of the Direct Marketing Association. Which is great, provided that you are able to establish whether or not a particular leaflet was delivered by a member of the Direct Marketing Association. And guess what… you can't.

When I asked the Direct Marketing Association how people are supposed to know if a leaflet has been delivered by a member of the association they replied that it's possible to check a list with members on the DMA website. What they conveniently ignore is the obvious fact that junk mail never includes information about the company responsible for its distribution. As a result you have no way of knowing how useful the opt-out is. Your Choice must be the first opt-out service that will never attract a complaint about its effectiveness.

Your Choice should stop unaddressed items delivered by members of the Direct Marketing Association. As per usual, there are some major exceptions to this:

• Free newspapers do not come under Your Choice. There's a sound reason for this; many people don't want to receive leaflets but do want to receive free newspapers and other circulars. If you want stop such items, get a 'No/No' letterbox sticker and/or write to the publisher of your paper.
• Registering with the Your Choice scheme doesn't automatically register you with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out. Royal Mail is a member of the Direct Marketing Association but the two opt-out services operate independently. From a consumer point of view this is a rather poor service; it would have made sense to combine the two opt-out services for unaddressed mail.
• Your Choice is a household opt-out. If you opt out, your whole household is opted out. The Your Choice rules state that you must seek the approval of all adult members in your household before returning the opt-out form. The rules also state that if you share your front door / letterbox with other households you cannot register.
• A registration with Your Choice never expires. No kidding… if you opt out, your address will be opted out forever. I reckon that this was simply not considered when the opt-out was set up. (Perhaps another sign that this is not a scheme to be taken too seriously).
• Businesses are not allowed to express Your Choice. You can only register your home address.

As mentioned above, it's unlikely that anyone will ever make a complaint about the Your Choice scheme (as it's next to impossible to establish whether or not the junk mail was delivered by a member of the Direct Marketing Association). Nevertheless, if you do have a complaint, contact the Direct Marketing Association via yourchoice@dma.org.uk, in the first instance.

• Download the information pack and opt-out form (96Kb)
  (Please note that if you wish to register with Your Choice you still need to request the information pack. The information pack has been added to the website for information only.)