Junk mail is an irritating scourge in the modern world: wasteful of resources and time, demanding attention like an obnoxious child, and hiding the important post amongst a sea of glossy paper waste. Royal Mail have received a high crap score from us for their part in promoting it. Well, the good news is that a new initiative should make it easier to opt out in future.
"The average UK household receives more than 370 items of unsolicited paper mail a year, the majority of it unaddressed." Source
Sadly the Telephone Preference Service is still useless. It is funded by the companies which make money from spam calls, so was never going to be any use in combating them, was it? I receive spam calls every day, despite being registered with this service. I tried to complain to the TPS but they only act if you have the company name and their phone number. Since the spam callers I spoke to refused to give a real company name, and also it was impossible to get their phone number, it means that the TPS refuse to do anything. So when the situation occurs where you need someone to step in, they turn their backs on you! In their automated (and no-reply) response, they said:
"You may already be aware that TPS does not have the facilities to know which companies are calling you and therefore relies on the complainant to ascertain this information upon the receipt of an unsolicited direct marketing call."Pretty crappy, TPS.
