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I had a different problem, when I moved into my new house, I got the old phone number of a bail-bondsman, I would get calls from the county jail asking me to come bail them out. When I tried to tell them that I wasn't that person I would get yelled at and threatened. It got pretty funny in the end.
I'm personally tired of marking up every single piece of mail for someone else. Apparently 6 different people lived at my place. I get no less than 20 pieces of mail a week for them.
I have a condo mail box. Our names are clearly listed on the inside of the box for the mail person. I've tossed HUNDREDS of envelopes back in the outgoing box. Is the mail person an idiot? If they didn't live there last week, and the week before, and the week before that - they don't live here TODAY either.
Since the post office doesn't do anything about it - I just throw them in the trash.
Unfortunately, the postman is legally required to deliver the mail as addressed even if they know that person doesn't live there anymore. We used to get our neighbor's mail - with their name on it, but the house number was wrong. Our postman knew the problem, but couldn't just put the mail in the right box because he had to put it in the box that was addressed... similarly, we had to hand deliver these items to our neighbors because we couldn't legally put them in their box either.
We have tenants who left in the middle of the night and I don't think they did a change of address. For a while they would sneak around and pick up their mail and then we rented the house to other tenants. Some things still drift here and there to them. I just put them in the trash. Talked to the guy at the PO and he said if they did not live there, then that was their problem if they did not do a change of address. The PO does not even know where they are.
Unfortunately, the postman is legally required to deliver the mail as addressed even if they know that person doesn't live there anymore.
What a waste of taxpayer money. And what happens to them after I cross out the name and stick it back in the mail box? Where do they go? Even if it goes back to the nameless faceless company that originally sent it - they aren't going to remove the name from the mailing list. AAAARGH!
I guess I just want to support the OP and whine a little myself.
I hear ya! I want businesses to stop bombarding me junk mail... I got my name removed from the big list, but that doesn't help me against all the catalogs and flyers addressed to "current resident" because you can't remove an address. And you can't remove someone else's name either, so you still get junk mail for the previous resident. It does irk me when companies get returned mail and don't update their lists, or when you have to call a company a gajillion times to get your name removed (I once got 3 copies of the same catalog every month for a year -- maiden name, married name and misspelled name!!).
Even if it goes back to the nameless faceless company that originally sent it - they aren't going to remove the name from the mailing list. AAAARGH!
I worked previously for a large mail order company. Whenever we got mail sent back saying remove me from list we removed them. When angry people sent torn up junk mail from us sent back in one of our prepaid envelopes if we could find a scrap of paper in that mess that had their name or address so we could look them up in our computer then we took the hint and removed them from mailing list. The bad part was our company told us catalogs were printed 3-6 months in advance so it took a long while for them to stop getting catalogs. People couldn't understand when you sent out catalogs twice a week for over 1 billion people printed 6 months in advance that there was no one whose job it was to search for "their" catalog in those stacks of catalogs and remove it. Do you know how many billion catalogs they would have to sort through to find "your" catalog?
I'm not trying to defend my previous employers overzealous junk mailings just trying to explain why it takes awhile to stop them. At least we were nice about honestly trying to stop mail when we could. You'd think we'd hate the public after the stuff we put up with. We got tons of envelopes sent to us with white powder during the white powder in mail terrorist attacks things (copycats you know). We got tons of porn mailed to us, yes morons would cut up hundreds of pictures of naked men and women paste it on posterboard in a collage, fold it up and mail it to us. lol We got that ALL the time...maybe it was same bored idiot? We also got pre-paid envelopes returned to us filled with living insects, lint, balls of what looked like human pubic hair, lots of religious literature and tons of anti-Semantic letters ..and we weren't Jewish owned.
I used to work in a publishing company who printed catalogs (among other things), so I can tolerate a delay in them stopping... I know how it works. But a year or longer is just not good management
My biggest beef with most catalogs and junk mail is that they use the glossy papers and petro inks and envelopes with the little plastic windows, which are not so good for composting and can leave nasty deposits in your flue if you burn them in the stove... much prefer my junk mail to be newsprint with veggy ink so I have free firestarter all winter
Luckily, our town and post office is so small that our post mistress doesn't put the previous box holder's mail in for us; but she has to put in "... or current resident" stuff. We've gotten some truly bizarre catalogs that way, seems that guy had some interesting hobbies
I had a different problem, when I moved into my new house, I got the old phone number of a bail-bondsman, I would get calls from the county jail asking me to come bail them out. When I tried to tell them that I wasn't that person I would get yelled at and threatened. It got pretty funny in the end.
I used to hang out at a bar that had a pay phone that was one number off from a phone at a local strip club. We'd get calls all the time asking for Candy, Princess, etc. Once we got a call from a guy on an airplane looking for one certain girl. A woman at the bar got on and played the part, promising him what he'd get when he arrived at the club. She talked to him a good 20 minutes. Must have been a pretty nice phone bill for him.
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