Mirror under fire for attack on unaddressed mail

The Daily Mirror has launched a scathing attack on unaddressed direct mail, despite being part of the Trinity Mirror group which publishes scores of free local papers packed with inserts that are hand-delivered to millions of households.
Under the headline “Junk earns Royal Mail £1.1m in year”, the Mirror claims “households have been deluged with even more junk mail since Royal Mail was privatised”.
It adds: “Almost 3.2 billion items of unaddressed post were delivered in 12 months – up by 14 million in a year – earning it £3m a day. Royal Mail’s boss Moya Greene has seen revenues from the unwanted letters soar to £1.1bn a year since the firm was sold off by the Government in 2013.”
It goes on to claim the public are being denied the right to opt out of receiving up to seven items of unaddressed mail a week – four more than previously allowed – quoting industry nemesis Robert Rijkhoff of the Stop Junk Mail campaign.
He said: “Royal Mail’s opt-out scheme for junk mail is hopelessly inadequate. Royal Mail is still working with paper opt-out forms and provides confusing material about the ‘consequences of opting out’ including scaring people into thinking they might not receive unaddressed election material.”
However, it fails to mention that as well as being a huge user of direct mail itself, the company publishes a raft of so-called freesheets, which also count as “unaddressed mail”, that contain an unlimited number of inserts.
One industry source said: “You know it’s a quiet news week when they start having a pop at ‘junk mail’. If you look at the figures, unaddressed mail volumes were actually down 8% to September 2015. If Trinity had to stop offering free papers and inserts, it would soon lose a highly lucrative revenue stream.”