Does the US Post Office notify sender upon change of address?

Question

After filling out a "change of address" form at the US Post Office, I seem to recall that most of my junk mail (catalogues) and some of my magazine subscriptions permanently and correctly updated my subscription address without me having to contact each individual company.

Am I mistaken that the post office notifies these senders of my address change and that some companies use that information to update the address of my subscription?

Answer 1

They do not notify senders I know this from experience we've been getting mail belonging to our houses former owners for a year now...it's simple to notify senders anyhow. You can get cards to fill out from your postmaster and mail them (with postage unpaid).

Answer 2

If a mailer is willing to pay for your address information it can be provided, but those mailers are few and far between. One of the new services the USPS now includes in its change of address packets is a postcard to send to a clearing house of cooperative mailers which will take care of several of your magazines, although of these most are advertising oriented anyway. What you may be thinking of is the that fact that after a year your change of address status goes into a secondary mode and all your mail is returned to the sender with the new address included. After that six month period all forwarding ceases. All customers would be best served if they heeded the admonition on every yellow forwarding sticker they receive which says, "notify sender of your new address."

Answer 3

I worked for the Post Office...
and yes some junk mail requests for an updated address and pay for that information. Same for magazines. But if something is important and you dont want to risk not having it forwarded, you should send them postcards the PO provides for this purpose.

Answer 4

your mistake, and your responsibility.