[senco-forum] Not SEN

Junk mail is not a great way of describing some of the things that

> Junk mail is not a great way of describing some of the things that
> come addressed to 'the occupier' Some of it is actually quite
> important.

Registering with the 'mail preference service' shouldn't stop you from
receiving important mail addressed to the occupier. Why? Because of
how the mailing preference service works:

Junk or 'unsolicited advertising' mail is mostly sent out by
organisations that use computerised mailing lists to target their
potential audience. These lists are not only maintained in-house, but
they are also freely bought and sold between advisers and
marketing agencies.

What happens with the mailing preference service is that your details
are made available to UK mailers in the form of a list of 'no mail'
names and addresses strictly for the purpose of cleaning your details
of these lists. Indeed I think this cross-checking may be a
pre-condition for mailers receiving the substantial Post-Office price
discounts associated with their 'Mailsort' mail service.

In any case each mail item costs money and the last thing marketers
want is to waste this on the people who known to be least likely to
respond. Either way marketers won't want to
simply ignore the mailing preference service.

This is very different from Internet mailing where the cost of sending
spam is almost negligible, hence having a 'no-spam' preference service
would be unlikely to work. Indeed making available a 'no-spam' email
preference list would be a big incitement for emailers to abuse this
list, as they could assume all the email addresses on the 'no-spam'
list are presently active and therefore of potential higher value in
terms of the likely response.

So why does it take up to a month or so for this to come into effect?
Well this is because bulk mailers will often stagger their mailings
over a period of weeks so as not to be inundated with orders on one
day. However the letters are often pre-printed and addressed in a
single job as it's cheaper to do it this way.

As for important mail addressed to 'The Occupier', well if it's
legitimate for example from your local council then this won't be
affected as it's not the post-office that restricts the the sending of
junk mail, it's the people who send it.

David Bowles