It estimates that 60% of the 14.5m lost letters every year are delivered to the wrong house, but only 10% of customers complain about it.
Although many of these delivery errors are corrected by people pushing it through the right letterbox or dropping the mail back into a postbox, this causes delays and in some cases the mail never arrives.
Postwatch commissioned a survey by Mori which found that 54% of people said they have received misdelivered mail in the last six months, with 5% admitting they put it in the bin. Lost mail can result in missed hospital appointments, and responses to job and university offers can go unanswered, Postwatch says.
To encourage consumers to complain, the Postwatch campaign is making available packs containing a complaint form and a diary so that consumers can keep track of misdelivered mail they receive. They are also handing out stickers to put on misdelivered mail when they pop it back into the post to alert Royal Mail and the intended recipient that they have been wrongly delivered.
Consumers can get a pack by logging on to a or by phoning 0845 6013265.
A spokesperson for Royal Mail says it has been working very hard to reduce misdelivery and that in the last year the amount of mail lost or delayed halved in 2002/3 from 2001/2. Only around 0.07% of the 21bn letters Royal Mail handles a year were lost or substantially delayed in 2002/3.
"Misdelivery is the biggest cause of mail loss and delay, so it is important that we all work hard to tackle this problem,’’ the spokesperson said.
She said Royal Mail supports Postwatch's initiative and apologises for any misdelivered mail.
"Misdeliveries happen for a variety of reasons -- the item may be poorly or wrongly addressed, or may be mistakenly delivered to the wrong address.
"We encourage customers to make sure they write the recipient's address clearly, add the correct postcode, make sure their own house or flat is clearly numbered or named, and always put a return address on the back of the envelope."
If you have an opinion on this or any other issue raised on Brand Republic, join the debate in the .
.jpg)
.jpeg)
