It seems that Stay Private is struggling to keep up with the number of people wanting to sign up to the Mailing and Telephone Preference Service via its website. The below is from stayprivate.org/about/updates:

10 June 2010 - 17.07
Thank you to everyone who has signed up. We are working to bring down the queue of submissions and are processing them slowly.

The queues are currently at:
TPS: 844
MPS: 807
BMPS: 6

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10 June 2010 - 17.48
We are continuing to work through the queues of submissions. We are currently submitting them at a rate of about 1 a minute and will continue to do so over night. We are hoping to have reduced the queues significantly over the next few hours.

Thank you for your patience.

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10 June 2010 - 18.00
Thanks to everyone who has sent us comments, suggestions and questions. We have some good ideas on how we can improve the site. For now, we are concentrating on reducing the queue of submissions. We will start to look through and answer questions from tomorrow.

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10 June 2010 - 18.22
We are still working through the queues. We have had another big influx of users, as a result the queues currently stand as follows:
TPS: 1004
MPS: 959
BMPS: 7

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10 June 2010 - 20.00
We are currently submitting the earliest users who signed up for StayPrivate.org. We are continuing to process these at the rate of about 1 per minute and will continue to do so throughout the night. We will reassess the queue first thing tomorrow and post an update here.

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11 June 2010 - 10.00
We have worked overnight to bring the queue of users down, but due to the level of registration the queues have unfortunately grown. We are investigating ways to speed up the process so we can reduce the backlog more quickly and will post another update later this morning.

We are aware that some users have not received their activation emails, if this is the case, please email us at team@consumerfocuslabs.org with "ACTIVATION" in the subject. We will either manually activate your activate your account or send you another activation email.

We will be responding to all enquiries and comments as quickly as we can throughout the day, but please bare with us while we concentrate on clearing the submission queue.

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11 June 2010 - 11.53
We are continuing to bring down the queue of submissions. Since midnight we have submitted 357 people to the Mail Preference Service and 300 people to the Telephone Preference Service. In order to speed up these submissions and bring the queues down quicker, we have temporarily stopped sending confirmation emails to users (emails that tell you we have submitted your details to the TPS/MPS). Once we have submitted you, you will receive an email from the TPS/MPS to tell you that they have received your registration.

The queues currently stand at:
TPS: 1461
MPS: 1317

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11 June 2010 - 16:18
We are continuing to work on the submission queues and will monitor them over the weekend. We have recently posted an update on our blog explaining everything we've been doing over the past 36 hours.

Since Thursday we got a second Junk Buster-like service in the UK. Not run by the junk mail industry itself; the Direct Marketing Association et al still would prefer it if you contact the plethora of junk mail opt-out schemes the industry has set up over the years one by one. The more time-consuming and complicated opting out is, the less likely it is that you will sign up - it's as simple as that.

The new service is called Stay Private and is run by Consumer Focus. Via a single web form you can sign up to three opt-out schemes run by the Direct Marketing Association: the Mailing Preference Service, Telephone Preference Service and Baby Mailing Preference Service. Somehow the Facsimile Preference Service has been excluded; judging from the number of e-mails I get about unsolicited fax messages it seems that there is still quite a demand for a scheme that can stop marketeers sending you junk mail via fax.

Interestingly, Consumer Focus has achieved what my own Junk Buster has so far failed to achieve; the Direct Marketing Association is actually fully co-operating with Stay Private. When I launched Junk Buster in March 2009 the representative of the junk mail industry told me in no uncertain terms that the Mailing Preference Service does not accept 'third party registrations'. This was a lie - it's well known that for instance various local authorities act as a third party - but they must have reckoned that Junk Buster is small enough to ignore. Consumer Focus is less ignorable; it seems the Direct Marketing Association's arrogance has now boomeranged on them. Or, it has started to boomerang on them, as there will no doubt be further developments. Stay Private is intending to add more opt-out service to the list, and I still got ambitious plans for Junk Buster myself. It seems unavoidable that the next twelve months or so will see the emergence of a one-point-stop for all types of unsolicited marketing. Stay tuned!

It's here… Junk Buster V2.1. The changes are fairly modest this time round and it wouldn't be realistic to call it 'version 3'. But, at least for you as a user of the little opt-out machine, some important changes have been made.

So, what's new?

The changes only concern the Mailing Preference Service. Earlier this month I found that the MPS had stopped sending paper registration forms to people asking for such a form via e-mail. That made it rather pointless for people to contact the opt-out scheme via Junk Buster; requests for an opt-out form would simply be ignored by the Direct Marketing Association (the organisation that runs the opt-out scheme).

Obviously, the Direct Marketing Association hoped to sabotage Junk Buster this way. And, even more obviously, I was not in a mood to let this happen. Of course it wouldn't help you in your quest to eradicate junk mail if Junk Buster would continue to send e-mails to the Mailing Preference Service as if nothing has happened. But at the same time I didn't want to stop encouraging you to sign up to the Mailing Preference Service. The solution? If you now choose to contact the Mailing Preference Service via Junk Buster the application will send an e-mail to you instead, to explain the situation and encourage you to sign up to the scheme via the Mailing Preference Service website.

As the official reason for the Direct Marketing Association's decision to cancel paper registration forms is that the junk mailers want to "save paper" I have at the same time designed a digital registration form (opens as a PDF). I expect they'll refuse to accept the form. As it has not been designed by them it's a 'third party request', and the Direct Marketing Association has already pointed out in no uncertain terms that third party request are not welcome if they have anything to do with Stop Junk Mail / Junk Buster (other organisations are allowed to issue such request!). The reason why I nevertheless designed the form is because it shows just how insincere their paper-saving exercise is. If the Direct Marketing Association wants to save paper they should encourage people to sign up to its junk mail opt-out schemes and endorse initiatives such as Junk Buster, not try to throw a spanner in the works.

Not that I'm opposed to saving paper. But to just stop producing forms altogether is silly. It would be easy enough for the Mailing Preference Service to send an e-form to people asking for an opt-out form via e-mail. They would save just as much paper while still providing a decent service to the public.

And, the Direct Marketing Association could do the same for the Mailing Preference Service's little cousin, the Your Choice Preference Scheme for Unaddressed Mail. If you contact Your Choice via e-mail you still get no less than three sheets of A4 paper send to your home address - no desire to "save paper" there! Surely having an e-form for people who contact Your Choice via e-mail would be a good way of saving paper?

Funny how the DMA consistently chooses the least customer-friendly option. It's as if the representative of the junk mail industry doesn't want people to sign up to its opt-out services…

On Monday, I came across this column on the Marketing Week website. I've read most of Russell Parsons columns; they're usually pretty much free of gobbledygook and on occasions critical of the junk mail industry, in particular about its apparent inability to 'green up its act'.

This week's column was about the scrapping of the 'three items per household per week' rule. Parsons' talk about "the utterings of the nation's moral guardians" doesn't really seem to match his admission that the guardians do have plenty to complain about: poorly targeted mail-outs; few companies seeking to abide by a new voluntary code for 'green' junk mail (PAS 2020); and a reluctance within the industry to the promote the plethora of opt-out services set up by the industry. Pretty much a summary of what I've been observing on this blog for the last couple of years…

The column ends with this observation on opting out:

"Making prospective consumers aware of an option to cut mail out of their lives might appear counter productive, especially when mail volumes are in decline, but marketers and the Direct Marketing Association should look upon it as an opportunity to be left with the willing and bypass the reluctant."

Thank god there are still people within the junk mail industry that don't beat around the bush! Very few people are aware indeed of the existence of opt-out schemes such as the Door-to-Door Opt-Out and Your Choice. The reason is simple; the organisations that run these schemes (Royal Mail and the Direct Marketing Association, respectively) don't want you to know about the "option to cut junk mail".

Of course Parsons' didn't say it that explicitly, but the message seems clear enough. So, I left the following comment:

"Russell, isn't the problem that marketers are reluctant to "bypass the reluctant"? If Royal Mail would simply make its D2D Opt-Out a bit more customer-friendly and effective (or maybe start advertising the existence of the scheme) there probably wouldn't have been such a fuss.

"There seems to be an enormous gap between rhetoric and practice. A scheme like Your Choice, for instance, is a poor service by any standard; people can't register online and will never be able to judge whether or not signing up is at all effective (how are householders supposed to know if a leaflet was delivered by a member of the DMA?).

"Similarly, none of the paper directories delivered door-to-door in the UK tell people that they can opt-out. Yet, they all write big reports on how environmentally sound their book are. It just doesn't seem to add up."

And guess what? Marketing Week didn't publish the comment. I'll rest my case.

While I'm writing this nearly 10,000 people have used Junk Buster to contact opt-out services. A milestone to be proud of but no more than that - the aim is to add an extra two zeros to the figure!

Looking back at how Junk Buster has fared so far I have to say it has been an interesting adventure. It started with the Direct Marketing Association - the organisation behind the Mailing Preference Service and the Your Choice Scheme - trying to prevent being contacted via Junk Buster. In the debate that followed they got themselves in a bit of a muddle and after the launch of Junk Buster V2 the representative of the junk mail industry had to accept that there's nothing they can do to stop a free one-point-stop for contacting opt-out schemes.

Directories were initially equally reluctant to accept opt-out requests. None of the directories that can be canceled via Junk Buster (the Yellow Pages, Thomson Local and BT Phone Book) has ever advertised the existence of its opt-out schemes. I used to ask people like Adam Billiard BSc (Hons) Msc etc. - Environment Manager at Yell - why directories don't tell people that they can opt out of receiving directories. The reply was always that directories receive very few opt-out requests. Thanks to Junk Buster that tautology is no longer true; over the last couple of days Yell received over 2,000 opt-out requests via Junk Buster alone. The Data Publishers Association has now publicly acknowledged that all UK directory publishers maintain an opt-out scheme, and Thomson Local has at long last set up a system (sort of) to deal with the many opt-out requests the company receives. There's no way back now; sooner or later directories will mention that people can opt-out.

All good news then? Well, no. The Direct Marketing Association is at it again. They have started sending an e-mail to people requesting a registration form for the Mailing Preference Service saying this:

Due to environmental reasons MPS no longer produces registration forms. You can register with our FREE service via our website: www.mpsonline.org.uk or by calling the automated registration line on 0845 7034599.

They must have had a good laugh when someone suggested to cite environmental reasons for the decision; they're cynical like that. Of course I won't let the Direct Marketing Association sabotage the opt-out machine. Work is underway for Junk Buster V3!