How to Stop Current Resident Junk Mail

What Current Resident means

A label such as “Current Resident,” “Postal Customer,” or “Our Neighbor” can keep a piece deliverable even when the named person has moved. Some mail is addressed to one household record. Other flyers are sent to every address in a selected area.

The USPS describes USPS Marketing Mail as a class used for advertisements, flyers, circulars, newsletters, and catalogs. It also includes Every Door Direct Mail. That is why writing “not at this address” may not solve an advertisement that is meant for whoever lives there now.

Can you stop Every Door Direct Mail?

Every Door Direct Mail, often shortened to EDDM, lets an advertiser select postal routes instead of buying a list of named recipients. The USPS route-selection tool shows that mailers can target residential or combined residential and business routes.

USPS delivers eligible pieces to the selected route, so there is no national USPS household opt-out for every EDDM campaign. Contact the advertiser printed on the piece and ask it to exclude your address from future campaigns when its mailing process allows that. One advertiser cannot remove your address from unrelated route mailings.

Look for a company name in the largest print, then inspect the edges and back for a website, phone number, franchise location, or offer code. If the flyer bundles ads from several businesses, contact the publisher or distributor named in the small print.

Try these steps

1. Identify the advertiser. Look for the company name, website, phone number, return address, or small-print mailing instructions.
2. Ask for address-level suppression. Give the delivery address exactly as printed and say the request covers mail addressed to Current Resident or similar wording.
3. Name the campaign when possible. Include the offer, flyer date, customer code, or other identifier that helps the advertiser find the mailing list.
4. Save the request. Keep the date and reply. Printed mail already in the delivery stream may still arrive.

Set expectations: a sender-specific request can stop that advertiser. It cannot remove an address from every neighborhood campaign run by unrelated companies.

Do not mix it up with former-resident mail

If the label names a former resident and also says Current Resident, the advertiser may consider you an intended recipient. If it only names the former resident, follow the steps in our previous-resident mail guide. Do not open personal mail addressed only to someone else.

Using a photo

Photograph the advertiser name and the full Current Resident label in one clear frame. Junk Mail Magic can use that piece to prepare a request to the specific sender. If the advertiser is unreadable, take a closer photo. We will not treat a blurry or unrelated image as a valid mail request.