Universal Suppression Service

The Universal Suppression Service (USS) is a file made up of deceased and gone-away records collated from various sources by the Royal Mail. The main source is from The Royal Mail themselves, from mail redirections and returned mail. Other sources include selected companies who contribute their returned mail to the USS file and who let The Royal Mail know of other changes to addresses that customers have informed them of. If a person moves house and redirect their mail they are added to The Royal Mail’s Redirect file. If they agree to share this information with third parties they are added to the National Change of Address File (NCOA) and to the USS file. If they do not wish to share this information with third parties then they are only added to the USS file. The USS file contains over 12 million records and is updated on a monthly basis. Running your file against the USS database will help save significant amounts of money on postage, print and production thereby enabling you to run more cost effective marketing campaigns. Your company will also benefit from greatly reduced internal costs required to handle returned mail. Basically, there is no point mailing people who are no longer at the address on your file.