Arjen's blog » unsolicited mail http://lentz.com.au/blog Dad, business owner, cook, gardener, explorer, philosopher, tinkerer. Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:27:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Other people’s mail is costly to me http://lentz.com.au/blog/other-peoples-mail-is-costly-to-me http://lentz.com.au/blog/other-peoples-mail-is-costly-to-me#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 01:33:30 +0000 arjen http://lentz.com.au/blog/?p=1277 Continue reading →]]> Before I lived at my current address, 4 students shared this location… and from what I can tell, before them some others. A lot of post still arrives in the mailbox for all these people,  even after a few years and me doing a lot of return-to-sender efforts. The same companies just keep sending stuff anyway, not just once but ongoing. Also some post has no decent return address. So what do I do?

The range includes super funds and insurance companies; local, state and federal government; credit card companies and banks; universities. I would be a identity theft goldmine, so what do I do? I apparently can’t make it stop. So I try to shred. After all, leaving someone’s Medicare card lying around in the garbage is not nice, is it. Not that I caused it, but it feels wrong anyway.

Because I have a home office, I have a medium load shredder, and thank goodness for that because my word what businesses send out…. “highlight” today was a cosmetics company that apparently felt the need to put some sachet with some cosmetic cream in the envelope also. Aargh.

Ponderings

  • does return-to-sender have any effect on company-client communications? I’m not talking addressed spam, but things like banks with their clients, etc. If so, how many RTS does it take to make it stick? If RTS doesn’t work, how do you make ‘em stop?
  • Companies sending me addressed unsolicited mail… I need to dispose of these items through shredding. The disposal process as a whole takes considerable time, as will asking them to stop mailing me (which apparently is not effective). Can I bill companies for this? Could I sue a company for aiding identity theft?

Update… someone has informed me of details from the Australian Commonwealth Postal Services Act of 1975. Essentially I can neither retain nor destroy the mail, on penalty of up to 2 years of imprisonment. So, no shredding then. The ponderings still apply (and it makes addressed unsolicited mail and unresponsive companies even more costly for an individual!).

And I suppose I’ll just have to hand in un-returnable post to the local post office or mail distribution centre… I can’t keep or destroy it, in those cases I am unable to address it back… so if the post gets me stuck in that way, I’ll have to hand back the responsibility to them. Best I can do?

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