To be honest, we don’t get much personal mail the the postal system. It tends to be bank statements, information from various Governmental organisations and stuff like that. The occasional holiday postcard might find it’s way in there, but not so often these days.

But what we do seem to get a lot of, is mail that is addressed to either one or both of us offering some kind of financial service. These usually get dumped along with the rest of the junk flyers. What we have seen a rise in, is post that includes an application form, where all our personal details are all ready completed. One such form came on Monday that had 4 pages (pages, 8 sides in total) that had my name and address in 6 places. All this information has to be, according to the ‘experts’ shredded to prevent dubious sorts getting hold of my details.

Now a big issue with shredding, is that the Local Authority is unable to recycle shredded paper as they claim “We do not collect shredded paper in the green recycling bins. This is because we are unable to process it due to the small fibers which can interfere with the machinery creating costly maintenance issues”. My email to them suggesting they look to upgrade their machinery (and their spellchecking software) seems to have fallen on deaf ears as I am yet to receive a reply. Their advice is to “only shredding the parts of documents that contain your personal details e.g. name, address etc” which makes the task significantly longer.

Then this morning, I received a item of post from an organisation (I’m not going to mention their name, as I’m awaiting a reply from them) that I had never heard of, that had my name and address on both pieces of paper. I was quite annoyed about this, as one of the sheets was asking for a donation. The donation range started at a single £5.00 increasing up £1000.00 and what really tipped the balance was that the £25.00 check box had already been ticked. The other page was one of those ‘sob stories’ that are supposed to trigger an emotional response. They don’t work with me I’m afraid.

I have emailed a complaint about this and asked them to remove my details from their database, and name the source of the information. I doubt that either will happen. I have also redacted my details from the 2 pages and have posted it all back to them in their enclosed pre-paid envelope.