I have been diligent all my life. It has taken me to the age of 30 to realise that this does not mean everything results in success. Case in point: RTS mail.
I bought my house in March 2009 and let the existing tenants stay. I then moved in last year. Of course I realised I would be returning a whole bunch of mail. I did the right thing and wrote 'RTS no longer at this address' on everything that wasn't mine. Most senders took the hint, but there was one persistent correspondent, only known by its return address (Locked Bag 5004, Parramatta NSW 2124).
At the beginning of this year I began to record when I received these letters and the number. Today I reached 78 for the year and something in me snapped. For some reason it hadn't previously occurred to me to Google the address to see who the sender was. This evening I discovered it was Roam, the people who manage the road toll accounts.
FFS, I don't even own a car.
Here is my email to them:
Hello, my name is Adeline Teoh. You won't have a record of me because I don't own a car. I do, however, own a house at [address given].
One of its previous tenants was a guy called Peter W. He has not lived at this address for more than 14 months. I'm guessing he had a car and didn't pay the toll because letters and letters and letters from you keep turning up at my house.
I have done the right thing. I have returned every one of them notifying you that he no longer lives here. This year, I started numbering and dating the returns. I can tell you when each and every one of the 78 letters you've sent in 2011 arrived.
Please, for the love of god, find another way to contact him because he doesn't live here any more and I'm just tired, so very tired, of sending back his mail. Why don't you update your records? WHY?
http://twitpic.com/55e9um
I will keep you posted on what happens.
3 comments:
Good on you! I've been receiving at least twenty letters from them a week! Did you get any response?
I appear to have had some success on this issue!
After some Internet research, I wrote a letter to the chief executive of Roads and Maritime Services. I explained how I'd returned over a hundred items and continued to receive them. I requested a review of the agency's RTS procedure.
A week later a received a letter acknowledging receipt, and less than a week after than I received a letter from the Director of Journey Management advising that a mail stop had been placed on the previous occupant and giving me the direct telephone number of a policy manager in the event that I needed to persure the issue further.
I'll give it three weeks - one for any letters still in transit to try up and another two to monitor for additional activity - before declaring victory, but all in all a pleasing result.
An even more pleasing result would be if this actually has resulted in a policy change and other people who are returning letters stop receiving them.
Don't be too quick to blame ROAM. The intended recipient of the letters I receive is still on the electoral roll at my address even though he hasn't lived here for approx. four years! If people don't notify a change of address, there's not much a company can do (except take note that mail is constantly being returned and stop sending).
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