Previous owners - help me decide how odd this is

[HarriettheSpy]

We moved about six weeks ago now and are currently on holiday. We have someone staying in the house at the moment who told me this morning that one of the previous owners had come round to read a meter yesterday. Six weeks later? Came round w.o ringing or anything, I assume he knocked (we have changed the locks). Makes the observation: Yeah, it's a bit strange to be back in the property. No kidding mate.

This is on the back of our finding out one of them still had a car registered to the house (complete with summons' re parking tickets/fines/threatening letters suggesting the next step would be ballifs).

Okay, so I'm thinking, this is a grown man, he's got to know that after six weeks whatever the reading was when he left the property it's going to be DIFFERENT now. So, what's he doing anyway?

On a scale of not too weird to really quite weird, where is this?

Gievn the situation with the car as well, is it worth doing something like asking our solicitor to write to their solicitors saying, please sever your ties to the property at this point, or some such. Or am I just being a bit uptight? DH thinks yes, other friends totally outraged, think write the snooty letter.

[notasheep]

Dont think he came to read the meter really.

I would voice your concerns with your solicitor

[traceybath]

Oh i had to go back and get a meter reading as i'd written it down wrong! Mind you i was moving house with a toddler a newborn and a DH with man flu!!

But i phoned first and dropped round and didn't go in - they'd got the meter reading ready for me.

Your previous owner does sound very disorganised if perhaps not odd.

[HarriettheSpy]

Tracey
That would be the normal thing to do, wouldn't it? Get in touch, mention what's happened, and ask for the info. I bet you didn't go back 6 wks later either.

[2sugars]

I'd do that with the solicitor but also 'phone the 'leccy company and tell them what you've told us.

[Freckle]

So where is your meter? Inside or outside? If inside, how did he get in if you have changed the locks and if outside, how did he open the meter covers?

[HarrietTheSpy]

It's inside. The person staying in our house let him in. Which is a separate issue. But I also see why it would have been awkward for him - I guess.

[TheGirlWithGreenEyes]

I would be wondering if he knocked at the door to check if anyone was in (for possibly suspicious reasons) and then used the meter reading as an excuse for being there when your friend answered...

[Seabright]

Get a letter sent by your solicitors - they shouldn't charge you (I wouldn't if one of my clients asked me to do this). I'd get the car mentioned in the same letter too, just so they know you're on the ball and aren't going to let them get away with anything

[Ripeberry]

The previous owners of our house seemed quite nice when we were viewing.
They used to let us have a look around by ourselves and they would actually leave the house and just tell us to close the door after us!
But we fell in love with the house straight away and put in a lower offer because it was in a right state!
On the moving day they still had not moved out and we had to wait for 2hrs before we could even unload our van!
They even tried taking the bulbs whilst we were watching them, soon put them straight.
But the eldest son made a point of taking every single peg off the washing line .
That night we found out that they had taken out the fuse for the shower and left it on the side..just to annoy us.
But the worst thing was that they kept turning up every few weeks to collect their post as they did not have a forwarding address.
The boyfriend was a traveller so they had no fixed address anyway.
Eventually after 1 yr of doing this we told them that we would be binning all mail.
But even a few years later, the traveller boyfriend would sit outside our home in his van and watch the house (according to our neighbours), we never saw him as we were at work.
But they were a very bad bunch. Never forget the scene when they drove away and we got to move in.
The neighbours came out of their houses and cheered! And our immeadiate neighbours invited us in for a drink once we had emptied the van.
He explained how that familly was really bad for the neighborhood and that the sons had burgled most peoples houses around there.
Still get problems with that previous familly as they keep getting letters about money that they owed to different companies and she even had the cheek to get a CRB check for herself using OUR address when she had moved out 3 yrs before!
Soon let the CRB people know about her!

[HarrietTheSpy]

Ripeberry
Awful story. I would have been fuming about the CRB check.

Although what The Girl with green eyes said did occur to me, DH had a chat with the person staying in our house again about what precisely happened and we've decided these people are just really disorganised rather than doing anything deliberately sinister.

tks for replies...

[Fanlight]

Glad you have it sorted HTS

I hope he stays away now...

Ripeberry we had a lot of bailiff letters at our old house too - that was horrid.

[nervousal]

Re the car - changing registration details is easy to forget to do - took me 5 months to getting round to sorting it out when we moved