23 July 2007 - A resident in Leicester has set a new junk mail record; by receiving no less than ten pieces of incorrectly addressed junk mail from a single company in less than two weeks time.
The mailings, from mobile phone company Carphone Warehouse, were sent to the address of Andy Prescott in Leicester. Mr Prescott said: "After a couple of years of relative freedom from junk mail it began arriving again from a fairly small number of companies. I've tried returning the items with a request for them to stop, but the senders rarely comply."
"The mailings are addressed to different people, all with what appear to be fictional names. None of the addressees has ever lived at this address, so I thought they must be trying out some kind of new dodge."
When four more mailings from Carphone Warehouse arrived, the case was taken up by Stop Junk Mail. Robert Rijkhoff, co-ordinator of the campaign, said: "We get many complaints about companies continuously sending unwanted and/or incorrectly addressed advertisements. However, never before have I heard of a single company managing to send ten pieces of junk mail to people who appear to be non-existent in such a short period of time.
"So far the companies responsible for the mailings have been unable to give an explanation for this rather sad record. It illustrates not only how wasteful unwanted mail is, but also how unable or unwilling marketeers are to prevent sending advertisements to people who are not interested."
Recently the government announced it is considering though new measures to tackle junk mail. Both Royal Mail and the Direct Marketing Association, the trade association for the direct marketing industry, have since stressed the importance of using high quality mailing lists.