Royal Mail don't give a fuck about consent

[NowIsTheWinterOfOurDiscontent]

Royal Mail do not want you to opt out of junk mail. Or, as they call it "unaddressed mail". So you have to go to all the lengths of printing out their form, filling it in and posting it back to them. You can't just opt out online.

In the year since I did this (and they confirmed they received said form), I have still received unaddressed mail (sometimes 10 items) in about 50% of my deliveries. Seems you ALSO have to tell each individual postman at least twice.

The absolute ATTITUDE you get when you complain as well. Yes I'm well aware the only thing keeping RM in business is junk mail and nasty letters from TV licensing. But I'm not here for RM's convenience and they shouldn't be treating my letterbox like a recycling box when I have explicitly opted out.

Such drama! I wonder if they are now doing it specifically to piss you off 😂

@ghostyslovesheets I think you overestimate their cognitive abilities!

Yeah junk mail might seem like a small thing to some people but to me it's the principle of the thing - I'm pretty hot on consent/respect for people and their property.

There probably just isn't any cost-effective way of the posties keeping track of who is opted out. I recycle it without giving it a second thought.

Just recycle it.

I've only opted out once and managed to avoid junk mail since then but on re-reading their webpage it says you need to send it every two years to be active. How long ago did you send the form? Edit, nvm you said a year. Just send a new form rather than complain in case left hand dept doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

It also won't stop your TV licensing letters as 1) they have to deliver post addressed to "The Occupier" still and 2) you opt out via the TV Licensing website, not RM.

I wasn't aware that you could opt out of the unnamed stuff tbh. We just plonk it straight in the recycling.

When its junk mail addressed to the house holder I thought the recipient needed to opt out by contacting the sender.

Consent !! I thought this was something serious. Do what everyone else does and bin your junk mail.

@LittleGreenDragons it says in my post that I filled in the form a year ago and they confirmed they have it. (In response to my various online complaints).

Yes I'm aware they have to deliver anything with my name and/or address on. So TV licensing letters and ADDRESSED junk mail.

@Lomonald Gonna take a wild guess that you're a man. Either consent matters or it does not. It should not be for you to approve whether it's re a sufficiently serious matter or not.

This is an extremely niche worldview on what constitutes consent? No?

Royal mail are cutting 2,500 jobs.

Our postie is fantastic and he tells us just how much his job has changed over the past 30 years he has been doing it.

He is expected to deliver faster, over a wider area and not just letters/small parcels but enormous amounts of junk mail too.

He does his job with a sense of humour, working in the scorching heat and the pouring rain.

Consent has nothing to do with this.

Wow, what a hill to choose to die on!

@AgnesX you are correct. To opt out of junk mail that's actually addressed to you/your address you need to contact the sender.

For mass produced, unaddressed leaflets/brochures etc (where Royal Mail are just being used as goons to deliver shite basically, this is what you are supposed to do - PRINT the form):

How to opt out of advertising mail

Royal Mail, when they ignore your submitted form, are super keen to try and deny responsibility and blame the "local leafleting delivery companies" even when you have Ring doorbell footage that it was RM who posted a torrent of shite thru your door.

Mind you, keeps the council tax nice and high, paying for all that recycling.

Consent to put something through your letterbox! Jesus wept.

@AIiswatchingyou gosh - and all that free of charge? He doesn't draw a salary...?! Wait...

Yes yes you are correct i am a man ! Well done you 👏 you know you are talking about the least serious thing and making a mockery of "consent" i bet you don't open the door to anyone who hasn't phoned/text/emailed first.

You can't blame them for making it difficult as it's a massive income stream for them. But if you've paid to have it suppressed then it should at least reduce it.

Some post that's not addressed to anyone's actual name is still legitimate correspondence. Like the Census and social research, NHS or council /government information and things like that.

It feels easy enough to just put it straight it in recycling. Unless you really are absolutely bombarded?

And most junk mail is leaflets delivered by hand that don't even bear your address. Or private courier firms other than RM.

Thank you for the link. Very handy.

Other firms also deliver junk mail, you do realise that, don't you? I'm surprised that anyone could get so furious about something so fantastically trivial.

I have no words for how concerning your attitude is. So tell me, who decides whether a particular matter is important enough for consent to matter?

@BillieWiper Government stuff like electoral material is not included in the unaddressed mail category. So I should still get that.

@blacksax As explained above, I have a ring doorbell. So I'm well aware who is putting the torrents of shite thru the door.

I completely agree with @Lomonald as it happens. Your use of the word 'consent' for something as insignificant as this is absurd, and trivialises and demeans its use for things that really do matter.

You don't need to take a wild guess about whether I'm a man or not, because I wouldn't want to trouble your grey matter any. I'm a woman.

I'm very surprised that in this "save the planet" age, there isn't more of a clampdown on printing/distributing junk mail.

@blacksax can I have a list of matters where consent is relevant and where it is not please? To whom to I need to justify myself?

Women can have troubling attitudes about consent, respect etc albeit it is more prevalent in men. Some women are fantastically misogynistic.