I got a couple of e-mails about Virgin Media junk mail this week – it seems Virgin has stepped up its carpet bombing campaign. Here's one of the e-mails:

I keep getting junk mail from Virgin Media that is not addressed to me by name but to 'The Occupier'. This is despite the fact that I have been registered with the Mailing Preference Service for a number of years. My question is: is this a ploy by Virgin to get around the rules, and will contacting them directly work, when they do not seem to know who lives at my address?

First of all, 'To the Occupier' junk mail can't be prevented by the Mailing Preference Service because of the 'To the Occupier' loophole. The Mailing Preference Service sees any junk mail with a generic address (such as 'To the Occupier', 'To the Householder', 'To the Pizza Lover' etc.) as unaddressed junk mail. As the Mailing Preference Service can only prevent addressed junk mail the opt-out scheme can't stop mail addressed 'To the Occupier'. In case you're wondering, it's not allowed to register the name 'Occupier' with the Mailing Preference Service.

What about the Door-to-Door Opt-Out, then? This is Royal Mail's opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail items delivered by the postman, so if Virgin Media's leaflets are delivered by Royal Mail (which they are) then perhaps signing up to this scheme would stop them? Well, no. The Door-to-Door Opt-Out will only stop junk mail with a generic address if it doesn't also include an address. To visualise, it would stop a leaflet that is addressed like so:

To the Junk Mail Lover

But if the item shows an address the Door-to-Door Opt-Out will not prevent it:

To the Junk Mail Lover
10 Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A 2AA

Royal Mail sees any mail items with an address as addressed mail. The company doesn't care whether an item is addressed to 'Mr Smith', 'The Occupier', or indeed to nobody at all. Mail is deliver to an address (in technical terms a 'delivery point'); the name of the addressee is irrelevant.

So, you can see the ploy unfolding. If a piece of junk mail has a generic addressee and an address it cannot be stopped by either opt-out scheme. The Mailing Preference Service sees it as unaddressed junk mail, the Door-to-Door Opt-Out regards it as being addressed. You can't win…

Are there any other solutions? Data Protection Notices spring to mind. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 you have a right to ask any organisation in the UK to stop (or not begin) using your address for direct marketing purposes. But, the Act only deals with people's personal details. Unless 'To the Occupier' happens to be your name you can't really issue a Data Protection Notice. It may be worth a try though; the organisation targeting you with 'To the Occupier' junk mail may feel its better to be safe than sorry and take your details off its mailing list.

Which leaves us with contacting the sender informally. Will asking a company like Virgin to stop sending advertisements addressed 'To the Occupier' do the trick? Judging from the e-mails I have received it doesn't. People have phoned Virgin time and again asking to be left alone, only to be ignored. To be fair to Virgin, they're no exception; all companies that send 'To the Occupier' junk mail ignore people's wishes.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try contacting the sender, but it's important to realise that the sender has no legal obligation to comply with your request. It's also useful to understand that the motivation for sending junk mail to generic addresses is that it's the cheap option for the sender; they don't have to purchase an expensive mailing list with names and addresses, they don't have to check their mailing list against the Mailing Preference Service and they don't have to spend money on targeting the advertisements at people who are actually potential customers. It's all about sending out as much junk mail for as little money as possible, and it's unlikely the sender is willing to spend resources on cleaning up its mailing list. That said, it's still worth a try.

Another way of contacting the sender is to return the items. Simply cross out your address and write 'Return to Sender – Junk Mail' on the envelope or leaflet and put it back in the post, unstamped. If the item doesn't include a return address, Google the sender and write the address on the item. Again, you don't need to use a stamp. Let them pay for their cheeky ploys!