Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
Virgin junk mail
We have received several junk mail letters from Virgin, except they’re not addressed to us, but to (presumably) a previous occupier of our house. Normally when we get other people’s junk mail, we return it to sender and they stop sending stuff to our house. Not Virgin, though. Despite having returned every single letter that passes through the letter box, and I’m now wishing I’d kept a record of them because it seems to be becoming more frequent now, another one came today. Last time, I wrote on the envelope to Virgin that the addressee was unknown at this address and to the postie to return it to sender. Obviously that didn’t work. This time, I wrote on the front for the postie “Please return to sender – not known at this address” or some such, and on the back, I wrote:
Dear Virgin,
Please stop sending mail to Mr [name withheld] at the address overleaf. He does not live here and has not lived here for some years. The current occupier is fed up of returning your letters now. Please update your records.
Thanks.
which I thought was quite polite, considering I was a bit annoyed at the time of writing. The letter is now awaiting collection in the post box.
Automagically-generated possibly related posts:
Phill at Friday 1st May, 2009 @ 11.03am BST Europe/London
Didn’t Virgin take over NTL? NTL was pretty notorious for that – at one of the houses I lived in at uni they kept sending letters addressed to someone who hadn’t lived there in ages.
Virgin seem to be just as bad – they keep sending us junk mail addressed to “the occupier”. I don’t know if there’s some sort of watchdog you can report them to but it’s definitely not on
Pandammonium at Tuesday 5th May, 2009 @ 11.37am BST Europe/London
I know NTL had a reputation for really bad customer service, but I didn’t know Virgin took them over.
I’m not sure junk mail addressed to the occupier can be returned under the guise of “not known at this address”…you need to be more creative.
Actually, there is some sort of register somewhere that you can sign up to or remove yourself from that prevents junk mail. Or is that phone calls? I would have a google if I were you and check it out.
Phill at Tuesday 5th May, 2009 @ 2.18pm BST Europe/London
Well, we are signed up with the Telephone Preference Service which is a government thing. Since signing up for that we don’t get so much cold calling – hasn’t cut it out completely but it’s better.
I will have a look and see if I can find something equivalent for snail mail!
Pandammonium at Tuesday 5th May, 2009 @ 9.11pm BST Europe/London
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. We’re signed up to it as well, but we get phone calls from some weird-looking numbers. We use caller id and just ignore those ones!
Let me know if you do find something similar for junk mail.
sally at Friday 15th May, 2009 @ 6.47pm BST Europe/London
now i keep getting your virgin junk mail..and i notice Geoff has some too
Pandammonium at Wednesday 20th May, 2009 @ 8.46am BST Europe/London
Nice to see they’re not missing you two out!
Pandammonium: blogs [pandammonia] at Friday 5th June, 2009 @ 9.21am BST Europe/London
[...] wrote last month about a letter sent to my house from Virgin addressed to a previous occupier and how I wrote a message on the back because Virgin weren’t seeming to understand that he no [...]