My e-mail to Royal Mail was really a follow up on the correspondence I had with Moya Greene in 2013 (see Moya Greene about Royal Mail opt-out scheme. The answers I received weren't quite satisfactory but at the time I never got round to responding.
The issues I raised in my e-mail are straightforward enough. As before, I questioned the conflicting information the company provides about the consequences of opting out and the rationale for not sending householders a reminder before their opt-out registration expires.
From: Stop Junk Mail
To: doortodoor_customerservices@royalmail.com
Subject: Questions about opting out
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:43:01 +0100
Dear Sir, Madam,
I have a couple of questions about the information you provide about your opt-out scheme for unsolicited, unaddressed mail.
#1 – Election material and important information
The auto-reply text asks people to consider the following statement:
Some of the items that we deliver may contain important information issued by local and central Government departments, for example materials relating to elections. Because we cannot legally separate these items from the others we deliver – such as advertising offers or leaflets – you will not receive these if you choose to opt out.
However, on the page with information about opting out on your website you state:
Opting out from Royal Mail Door to Door stops all unaddressed items from being delivered by us (although we do work with Government to get a message to every UK address in exceptional circumstances). Election material is not delivered by the Door to Door service and is therefore not affected by this opt out.
My understanding is that registering with your opt-out scheme will stop all unaddressed mail distributed by your company with two exceptions:
- Unaddressed election communications (that is, the one-off free door-drops to which candidates standing for MP are entitled to).
- Unaddressed items which local or central government want to be delivered to every address. An example of such an item is the "swine flu" leaflet produced by the Department of Health in 2009.
Could you confirm if this is correct please?
#2 – When do registrations start?
Registrations with your scheme expire after two years and you advise that households who wish to remain opted out should re-register before the two years are up. Could you confirm if households are registered from the date the form was signed, or whether you use another start date (for instance, the date the opt-out request was processed)?
#3 – Reminders
You don't send households a letter / e-mail to confirm that their opt-out request has been processed, nor do send households a reminder before a registration expires. I genuinely don't understand why this is. In particular the reminder would be really helpful as it's easy to forget to re-register after (roughly) 22 months. I appreciate that you want to check if a household still wants to be using your opt-out scheme (the household might have moved) but I don't understand why the assumption is made that households that don't re-register want to opt in again; it gives the impression that you don't want households to opt out. Or, to put it differently, I don't know of any business that simply assumes that clients no longer want to business with them after a certain period of time. Normally, at least one reminder is sent.
#4 – Verifying addresses
Your website states that you will send an opt-out form to the address of the person who requested the form and that this is done to "verify that those resident at the address have requested the opt out". Am I correct that this statement is wrong? When I sent an e-mail to optout@royalmail.com I get the form attached to an auto-reply message. And if so, is it correct that you don't verify that the household did request to be opted out? (Obviously, this question is related to my question about sending people a confirmation letter, which in effect would prevent people can register random households).
#5 – Identifying door-to-door items
Would you agree that it's difficult for households to know whether or not an unaddressed mail item was distributed by your company? Last week I got two leaflets: one from a company called 'Barracudas' and another from a company called 'Hunters'. If I were registered with your opt-out scheme, how would I know whether or not those items should have been prevented?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Etc.