27 Oct 2013 How Can You Sort Out Your Mail? Mail Forwarding
The mail can be a frustrating thing. You can receive the letters of people who don’t live at your address anymore, never receive letters you were expecting, and have piles of junk mail land on your mat each morning. You don’t have to simply put up with a poor mail service – you can take some action to at least straighten things out a little.
Say No to Junk Mail
Are you fed up with junk mail? Most of us are. The leaflets and letters don’t even get read half the time. They end up going straight to the recycling bin or cluttering up the sideboard for days. You don’t have to accept the junk mail as just a part of life – you can do something to stop it, or at least reduce it. Contact the Mailing Preference Service and register with them. This will stop the junk mail that is addressed to you from popping through your letterbox. You can also contact the senders of the letters and opt out of the edited electoral register.
The other junk mail can be stopped if you contact the Royal Mail. They have services that you will be automatically signed up for. Give them a call and ask how you can opt out of their door services to ensure you don’t have any unaddressed junk mail to throw away again. Finally, if you receive junk mail for a family member who has passed away, you can register with the Bereavement Register.
Receiving Letters for Other People
It is against the law to throw away, hide, or open letters that are not addressed to you. This often leaves people confused as to what to do when wrongly addressed letters come through the letterbox. You do have a couple of options available to you:
- If you know the address of the person, you can forward it to them free of charge. Write the new address on the envelope and clearly state that the person is no longer at your address.
- If you don’t know the address or recognise the name, you will need to cross out the address and write “not at this address, return to sender” on the envelope.
If the mail has been wrongly delivered (this can happen if the address is similar), you simply need to write “mis-delivered,” include your address (where it was delivered to) on the envelope, and pop it in a letterbox.
Protecting Your Future Mail
Often, individuals move and forget to inform their contacts of their new address. This can be very frustrating for the people trying to reach them and for the new people living at their old address. If you are planning a move, it is important to take action to ensure your mail doesn’t end up in the wrong hands or frustrating the new residents.
Contact everyone you can think of and inform them of your new address. You can also set up a simple mail forwarding account that will ensure you receive all of your letters – and no one else does.