I’ve had the most success with contacting the sender and telling them to stop sending mail to this address, no mention of the mismatched name.

What I don’t know how to solve is that after successfully unsubscribing from a particular spam mailing I just started receiving apartment n+1’s instead. What am I supposed to do, work my way through the whole building?

Try using DoNotPay.com they will send a demand letter asking to stop the mail. I haven’t gotten anything since!

I've had some success with NOT AT THIS ADDRESS in red on the front. I also occasionally pay for a month's use of the Paper Karma app.

https://www.paperkarma.com/

Notable bad actors who refuse to acknowledge either:

• A previous tenant in this apartment received catalogs from MCX (Marine Corps Exchange, not MXC, the crypto exchange). Lots of complaints online about these guys sending unstoppable spam.

• A local self-storage facility sends monthly notices to a previous tenant, and despite returned mail, phone calls, and even an in-person visit, insists that they cannot stop sending those letters because they are obligated by law to "make every attempt" to contact that person.

Thanks, I might try the Paper Karma app since it claims to deal with previous residents’ mail too (unlike the DMA opt-out site).

My other idea is to look up the previous resident on a “living person” search site and then notify the mailer of their (supposed) new address myself. I’d hate to have it redirect the torrent of mail to some other innocent person, but hopefully it will just go to the rightful addressee.

For the self-storage spam, I eventually just googled the name and region and found contact information for a plausible match. I sent them an email explaining the situation, and while I never heard back from them, I haven't seen any more mail yet...

When I do that it just shows up in my mailbox again a few days later :/

Maybe I need to hand it to the USPS worker vs drop it in a mail collection box....