Consumers flood DMA with mail opt-out requests

by Claire Murphy

September 05, 2006

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Consumers flood DMA with mail opt-out requests

LONDON - The Direct Marketing Association has received 100,210 requests from consumers to be added to the Mailing Preference Service, in the wake of last Monday's news that Royal Mail had suspended a postman for encouraging people to opt out of door-drop deliveries.

This 3.5% increase in direct mail refuseniks takes the number of people signed up to the MPS to more than 3m. The most powerful catalyst spurring people to contact the DMA proved to be GMTV's coverage of the issue on ITV last Friday, which prompted 31,000 consumers to opt out of direct mail deliveries.

A Royal Mail spokesman would not reveal how many requests it had received from consumers wanting to opt out of unaddressed door-drops, but it is believed that Royal Mail's website crashed at one point because of the volume of consumers looking for information on door-drops. "We operate entirely separately from the DMA," said the spokesman. "There is no reason why we should publicise those numbers".

He added that Royal Mail's website had always had details of how to opt out of door-drops, but accepted that it had not proactively publicised the option.

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