JUNK MAIL

Blame local authorities and government agencies for the mountain of junk mail that falls on your doormat. They rake in £50m a year by selling the personal information they keep on your household. This information, your address, who you live with, how much you paid for your home and how long you've lived there, is gold dust to banks, insurers, credit card companies and utilities providers seeking customers. A credit card company will pay up to £50,000 for access to every electoral roll, for instance. The overall volume of direct mail being sent by private companies has ballooned by 87% in the past ten years. In 2004, more than four billion items were posted to households.

There are ways to reduce the amount of unsolicited marketing calls and junk mail that you receive, but it is difficult to block it completely. You can make a start by ticking a box the next time you fill in the electoral roll form. It states that you do not want your data to be passed on to third parties. Mike Hare, managing director of a privacy service My Right To Be Private, says this alone will do little to help. "The tick-box on electoral roll forms was only introduced a few years ago," he points out. "Many people are already on thousands of marketing lists, so even if the local authorities stop passing on your details in new lists, it isn't difficult for marketing companies to cross check with other databases to find out that you still live at the same address."

Signing up to the mail, phone, fax and e-mail preference services is free. It takes about a month to become active, but it puts you on a register that states you do not want to receive unsolicited marketing mail, calls, faxes or e-mails. All companies are obliged to check the phone and fax preference registers and are forbidden by law to contact names and numbers on it. However, it cannot prevent randomly generated marketing calls made by computers or calls from companies based outside the UK. Also, the mail preference service is not compulsory and some companies will ignore it. "The only sure-fire way to stop junk mail is to call the companies directly and ask them to take you off their mailing list," says Hare, whose firm charges £16.99 to do this for consumers.

Credit card company Capital One, one of the biggest senders of junk mail among financial companies, spent £61m on advertising in the year to April 2005, according to a survey by Nielsen Media. Its next rival in expenditure terms is card firm MBNA, which spent £46m in the same period. Estimates suggest that 60% of this cash went towards direct mailing. Capital One's mailings, which are frequently criticised for recklessly encouraging borrowers to take on unaffordable debts, usually include gimmicks such as fake plastic cards and ballpoint pens. (Source: Mail on Sunday)

Out of a staggering 3.4 billion pieces of junk mail delivered a year, 750 million goes straight into the bin unopened. The worst offenders in 2005 were MBNA, ahead of Lloyds-TSB, and Capital One. However, mail order catalogue companies and charities are also spending huge sums on pointless mailshots which irritate millions. Names like Direct Wines, Saga and Reader's Digest are also high the mailshot league as are Cancer Research UK and the animal welfare charity, IFAW.

The figures make clear that the junk mail industry is at the centre of astonishing waste, both in terms of the cost of postage and printing and handling the rubbish it creates. Research was carried out by Marketing magazine and Nielsen Media Research which monitored how 10,000 households dealt with direct mail. The total value of the junk mail market in 2005 was put at £1.87 billion for the cost of printing and sending 3.4 billion items.

The Royal Mail has recently made clear that it is hoping to substantially increase the amount of direct mail it pumps through letter boxes. The company has changed the pay and conditions of postmen to lift a restriction on deliveries to a maximum of three items per household each week. Marketing magazine insisted that many companies and organisations would be delighted to discover that around 80% of unsolicited mail is at least opened. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Sep/06)

When postman Roger Annies told residents on his round how to avoid junk mail, bosses at the Royal Mail suspended him, and he is now facing the sack. Mr Annies has worked as a postman for the more than 10 years and considered his actions part of customer service.

He decided to act after receiving dozens of complaints from householders who were fed up with the piles of junk mail dropping through their letter boxes everyday. So, hoping he may have the answer to their prayers, he delivered his own leaflet to residents in Barry, South Wales, explaining how they could opt out of getting mailshots known as 'door-to-door' items by filling out a form.

Within days his local sorting office was inundated with at least 70 completed forms demanding an end to junk mail. Curious, his bosses decided to make a few inquiries and discovered the leaflet produced by Mr Annies. He was then suspended on full pay pending an investigation into alleged misconduct.

The Royal Mail claims it can deliver junk mail to up to 27 million homes across the country every day. After paying a minimum fee of £500 companies are charged up to £91.80 per thousand items, with an extra £8.50 per thousand for items that require extra folding. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Aug/06)