Roger in trouble (2)
Last time, it was South Wales postman Roger Annies who was suspended by Royal Mail for advising customers on his round how to stop receiving what RM calls door-to-door, that is unaddressed and unsolicited mail. I blogged about this here when I explained that, on behalf of the consumer watchdog Postwatch, I did seven interviews on the topic of junk mail.
Now I’ve been the subject of a complaint to the Postwatch call centre because a postman took offence at one of my broadcasts. He felt that I was too hard on Royal Mail. You can read the short interview below and decide for yourself.
INTERVIEW WITH ROGER DARLINGTON
Programme : NEWS
Station : BBC TV 1
Date : 30/08/06
Time : 13:22
SOPHIE RAWORTH: Presenter
You may remember the story we told you yesterday about the postman who’s been suspended for telling his customers how they could stop receiving junk mail, Roger Annies could now lose his job. Well since then you’ve been sending us hundreds of e-mails supporting what he did and web sites which block unwanted mail have been inundated with applications. On average we get more than 600 items of junk mail every year from the Royal Mail and other senders, it’s thought one-third of that goes straight into the bin but the rest we do read and it generates £25-billion worth of business a year and according to the Royal Mail blocking it may not be the best thing to do.
Well I’m joined now from Central London by Roger Darlington from Postwatch, good afternoon, thank you very much for joining us. How much of this can we actually blame on the Royal Mail, 600 items a year per household, how much of that is coming from the Royal Mail?
ROGER DARLINGTON: Postwatch
I think the majority is probably coming from Royal Mail either as addressed items which is what most people refer to when they talk about junk mail, or through unaddressed items which Royal Mails calls door to door.
SOPHIE RAWORTH:
And does it make the Royal Mail an awful lot of money?
ROGER DARLINGTON:
It does make them money and of course it makes the direct mailers money otherwise they wouldn’t do it, and overall that’s to the benefit of customers, it helps to keep postal prices down. But Postwatch believes that customers should have a choice and if bearing in mind these considerations they would prefer not to receive this type of mail they should be able easily to opt out of it.
SOPHIE RAWORTH:
But the Royal Mail are saying that if you opt out of it, which you obviously can because this postman who’s been suspended has told people how they can do it, the Royal Mail say that if you do that you then don’t get council circulars and government circulars, important information that you probably do want to get – it seems very unfair doesn’t it?
ROGER DARLINGTON:
I’m afraid if Royal Mail are saying that they’re wrong, you will still get communications from the government about elections or other important activities even if you opt out of… of direct mail.
SOPHIE RAWORTH:
It is an issue that really does irritate people isn’t it, we have literally had hundreds of e-mails, and some people are actually calling this postman who’s been suspended a national hero.
ROGER DARLINGTON:
Well one of the ironies of the suspension of this postman on which I obviously can’t comment, is that it’s inadvertently given enormous publicity to the option to opt out, and Royal Mail must be wondering whether they’ve shot themselves in the foot over this.
SOPHIE RAWORTH:
Roger Darlington, thank you very much.
September 8th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
What you said seems to me completely appropriate and factual. The only part I can imagine anyone taking exception to is your comment about the majority of “junk mail” coming through the Royal Mail, and given your position, I would assume this had been researched and was not conjured up out of nowhere.
But did anyone else on Postwatch give interviews on Pip or this topic, or was it all left to you- hence the 20+ you clocked up?
September 8th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Yes, I did all Postwatch’s national and London radio and television interviews on both PiP and junk mail – with some of my colleagues doing some local media.
September 9th, 2006 at 12:47 am
Don’t people understand and particularly presenters, who presumably have people to do research for them, that unaddressed mail, is Junk Mail. Any other piece of mail with your name and address on it has to be delivered. You cannot opt out of ‘addressed’ mail.
And what possible grounds has the postman complained
too hard on Royal Mail not in a million years. Factual yes, hard never. Maybe he did not listen properly.
September 9th, 2006 at 2:09 am
I don’t get it. I can’t tell you said anything anyone could complain about, but then in America, we are used being able to criticize the government or government entities and not worry about repurcussions — First Amendment.