Dumb Previous House Owner... AIBU?

This isn't actually correct, although it's a persistant fallacy. The law is:

"A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him."

OP doesn't intend to act to the previous owner's detriment, and does have a reasonable excuse.

Yes sorry, I was replying to the PPs who (I had thought) were genuinely replying!

Criminal offence to open her mail

That's probably because the internal 'return to sender' process can take ages. It's low importance as 1) the customer clearly doesn't care 2) the person receiving it isn't doing anything bad with it. So it's left to the bottom of the pile of jobs to do. Often they have to receive 2-3 items back before they update the address in case it just delivered to the wrong place e.g. 14 Somewhere town Darlington Vs 14 Somewhere town Dudley. So you have to return a bunch and wait a while then it stops

I don’t think you should tell me how to post.

Only one person agreed with you, not a couple. Exaggeration weakens your argument.

I do have empathy for the widow part. I do. I stand by it. I have witnessed the effects of bereavement and that is why I mentioned it.

Please dont tell people what they can and cant post. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and all that.

But if you return to sender" then the unwanted mail gets cut off at source (the sender). If you keep posting it on, she's got no incentive to change the address.
I actually think I it might be an offence to open mail addressed to someone else (?) - although I admit I would if I thought there was some kind of fraud afoot.

I don't think this proves the point but I am no lawyer.

It states, without reasonable excuse. My interpretation of that is, for example if you have POA 🤷‍♀️

I think the PP was joking (given the 'mother's friend's neighbour's hairdresser's dog' description...)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/section/84 - here you go - only illegal if you do it with the intention of acting to a person's detriment.

I thought it was against the law to open their mail and I’m a little shocked you have. We moved recently and got a redirect. The previous owners also got a redirect. A lot of their post is slipping through without redirection. Also, a lot of places aren’t great for sorting these things out. We had to change it in several systems for our bank because different accounts appeared to be dealt with by separate systems despite it being the same bank. It sounds like she’s tried to sort it but something is going wrong somewhere. She doesn’t know that you have it and the address is the issue. Just return to sender if you don’t have time/chance to drop it off at hers. We’ve just been accepting it as one of those annoying time-wasting tasks that are out of our control.

Oh.Do.Come.On!

Prison??

Actual prison though? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Oh stop being so sanctimonious and just bin the stuff rather than opening it.

For all you know, she has updated her address and the bank/other providers haven't adjusted their systems yet. With the current state of customer services in the UK this would not surprise me.

And is she necessarily "DUMB"? (not like you of course!) maybe she's ill, or dead?

Then maybe you should have left “widow” off your comment and simply said “you lost me at “dumb” and “stupid”” if you don’t want to hear anyone called it - I clearly wasn’t the only one to read it the way I did as a couple of others replied to you saying the same thing!

Thank you for clarifying what you meant.

I personally think it’s fine to have an anonymous rant calling someone that in frustration. If they had named her, or posted it on the local Facebook group saying “what a fucking idiot Jane Smith is” then I would agree with you that there’s no need to be nasty. But we all do it at times anonymously - how often have you said something like “the fucking bank/hmrc/post office/random business are a bunch of useless twats who don’t know their see from their elbow! How stupid are they?” Either to yourself or a friend. Realistically you are calling a person, or multiple people, stupid - but you’re actually just venting your anger out so you can remain calm when talking to them to try to resolve it.

Merry Christmas!

Precisely! And it had been left outside the house by the courier, so we had no opportunity to accept or decline!

I agree with everyone, don’t open, put not known at this address.

Please don’t use the word “dumb” to mean stupid. It means unable to speak, usually because of hearing loss. That then moved to mean someone so stupid they couldn’t speak (which is obviously ridiculous, that’s not why) so its use is generally considered inappropriate ableist language.

Just return everything to sender without opening - 'return to sender - not known at this address'. Banks won't change address on someone's account without speaking with the account holder. And you definitely shouldn't open other people's mail - technically it can be a criminal offence.

This happened to me many years ago.
We got tons of post for the previous owner, and she called round a couple of times for it, then it just built up into a heap. We also had bailiffs round asking for them.
Then about 2 years later, I just got fed up and opened all that post. There was unbelievable stuff in there - a P60, a cheque, bank statements, insurance docs, so much stuff.
I had no forwarding address. I think I sent the important docs back "RTS, opened in error" and binned the rest. Unbelievable that people can be so disorganised though!

The previous owner of our house was the same. And he wouldn’t share his forwarding address. We even got a cheque made payable to CASH for his wedding - which I dutifully ripped up and wrote a letter back to the sender to explain.

It's a weird law. Firstly, if you opened something like a bank card and used it for bank fraud, surely they would prosecute you for fraud which I would guess is a more serious charge.

If you opened it and didn't use it for fraud, then a) how would they prove you ever received it and b) even if they could prove you received it how could they prove you were actually intending to act maliciously without you actually doing so unless you had actually committed the act of fraud ?

I suppose the letter could contain cash, but if it did, how could they ever prove it was delivered ?

The whole thing comes across as a bit muddled to me.

Maybe a lawyer knows more.

Its dangerous not to open post addressed to someone else at your address. Firstly, organisations dont take any notice of returned mail with return to sender on - they keep pursuing a debt regardless of this. Secondly, fraud using someone else's address is common. Ive been a victim twice; someone took out an expensive phone contract, and never paid; and I got a bill from British Gas for more than £4k from someone who owed it at a previous address and told BG that they had moved here. Both times the debt was pursued until I rang them up and sorted it out. It is an offence to open mail addressed to someone else according to the 2000 postal services act but only if you dont have a reasonable excuse or intend to do this to the owners detriment. OP, in answer to your query, I would say you are not being unreasonable but you do need to talk to the bank to stop future things being sent to you.

It's not "childish" not to want an ongoing admin job because someone can't be bothered to update their details.

We had this earlier this year

We bought our house in 2016 and the previous owner has been married but divorced him in 2000

We suddenly started getting parking fine letters saying x Smith owed £60 for parking too long in the car park attached to where I work

We didnt open the first few,just sent them back but then we started getting bailiff letters for him which we did open and contacted the bailiffs (who where useless) and we where getting at least one week

Dp finally got through to someone with a bit of sense and proved he wasn't x smith (driving licence and council tax letter)

Surely this guy has had more than one car in 25 years? (He moved out from our address in 2000) so God knows why he registers them at his old address

I hope they find him and give him a nudge to move everything to his new address-that should have been a £60 fine (£40 if he paid within a fortnight) is now closer to £500

After all his ex wife managed it with her post-weve had one for her and that was from sun holidays

He must know she moved as they have 3 dc together

Given the maximum penalty is 2 years, it’s absolutely not true and you’ve been lied to (and there certainly wouldn’t be any prison sentence for innocuously opening someone else’s post) - and actually it’d only be a 6 months max sentence unless there were other factors that made it an indictable offence…

Never mind "Jane", that's really poor of the bank to send a second credit card and PIN when you wrote explaining that she has moved.