Dumb Previous House Owner... AIBU?

for the bank card and pin I wonder if it's the bank at fault. I once asked for a new card and provided my new address, received nothing, asked bank again and checked they had my new address, yes they did, third time, still nothing. Finally I went to my old address (student house) and there were three bank cards and three pin numbers! Luckily the students had just thrown all post into a box.

In my experience of this as someone living in a house that was previously occupied by someone with debt, it is incredibly unpleasant to have the baliff knocking on the door at 7.00 in the morning. I had repeatedly sent back the payment reminders with "Not known at this address" and it makes no difference. The baliffs are absolutely useless and just turn up at the last known address. I pointed out that a quick google search shows you exactly where the person now lives but supposedly they aren't allowed to do that. In the end I forwarded the next payment reminder letter to the person's place of work which may be morally wrong but certainly led to him updating his contact details/paying off the debt as I never received any more letters or visits from the baliff!

When we moved into our house in 2002, for two or three years we received post addressed to a former occupier. Only, it wasn't the couple we'd bought the house from, whom we'd met when viewing it. They had lived there for ten years, so this post was addressed to someone who'd moved out over a decade ago! 🤷‍♀️

I love threads about mail.
1- misquoted law and it keeps going
2-how many people believe RTS actually does anything
From my experience it does fuck all

@Misanthropologie

I did not say being a widow confers anything - please quote me?

It's against the law to open mail that is addressed to another person.

You should always, write on the envelope 'Return to sender, not known at address'. This simple act alone would have likely prevented all this carry on!

This. Every time.

I've lived in my house for 14 years. I still get bank stuff for a previous owner despite RTSing every envelope with "not known at this address since 2011" written across it.

It takes 5 seconds out of my day. No hardship.

Yes It's not exactly a strange and unusual situation getting post for the previous owner.

From the get go, if you receive something for the write "No longer at this address' and put it back in the postbox. Not rocket science.

Write ‘not at this address - return to sender’ on it and put it back in the post box. Don’t be opening other people’s mail.

Argh!! So annoying!!! It was sheer luck for me that I hadn't tried to use my card after the block had been put on, and also that my payment date was approaching so I phoned them up to find out my balance.

Have you never lived in a property before? This is perfectly normal. How hard is it to cross out your address, write RTS and pop any post in the postbox when you bumble past one?

It's illegal to open other people's post.

I've been in my house 7yrs and still receive letters for the previous owners. They were here 20yrs so hardly surprising. I was 20yrs in my last house too and I daresay they get the odd bit of mail too. It's hardly an inconvenience.

I don’t think there is any need to call her “dumb”. It is pointlessly rude.

We occasionally get post for people who lived here years ago. When we first moved there was loads and to start with we would pass it on as the family lived near by. But after a while (like a year or two) that got annoying. The volume definitely decreased after I wrote “no longer at this address” on the envelopes and put them in the post box. It goes back to the sender, and they eventually change the addresses. I was even getting stuff from HMRC for one of them! It’s a minor inconvenience, not a reason to name call though.

She probably hasn’t redirected the mail but I paid for mail to be redirected for a year and some mail still found its way to my old address so even paying for the redirection service isn’t foolproof.

Just return to sender, it's been over a year.

My sister's friend's hairdresser's neighbour got sentenced to 5 years in prison for opening a previous owner's bank statement. True fact that.

I’ve had exactly the same thing happen - same name but Avenue/road. House was probably less than 1 minute walk away and I frequently dropped stuff mistakenly delivered to my address to them, but they returned it saying not at this address so I had my account frozen whilst at work and only found out when I couldn’t pay for lunch and bank said it couldn’t be reactivated till the next day so had no way to pay to travel home 🙄

"Beer ? What beer? "

According to the Postal Service Act 2000, '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' - it's only illegal if you do it maliciously. You have reasonable excuse, as they are clearly important and you're trying to resolve the issue, not go on a spending spree with them. It must be so frustrating though.

Just keep writing 'Not at this address' and putting them back in the post. We did this with several bailiffs' letters for the previous occupants of our house. We eventually opened one because they just kept coming and we were getting stressed about them turning up at the door. We rang the number on the letter and said they'd moved (I think we gave them the estate agent's details, but it was 19 years ago so I'm not sure), and we never heard from them again.

We had a massive bunch of flowers and a bottle of champagne turn up for someone that lived here over 10 years ago..! Sadly had to reject the delivery when I realised they weren’t for me 🙁

It's not against the law to open mail not addressed to your address!

We purchased the house from a single woman named Jane (widowed) in probably her late 50s/early 60s.*
Was this relevant?

We had similar experiences with our vendors - it went on for several years. They had not left a forwarding address so we kept doing 'return to sender', etc.

Then, one wonderful December (I think it was 4 full years after we'd moved in), a selection box of various beers arrived, with a gift card - an Xmas gift from some rellie who was close enough to send a present (after 4 years of apparently not doing so) but no so close that they knew their rellies had moved 4 years ago.

Reader, we drank the beer ourselves.

As it is a bank card and pin , does the Banks address or PO Box number appear on the back of the respective envelopes ?

Might not do for security , but I got a new card recently and I'm sure mine had .

( I'd be inclined to go into the Bank and hand the envelope to them , give them the date she moved out and that you want their Branch Manager to amend this )
Because ignoring or returning isn't working here

Yeah, just put 'RTS not at this address.'

She clearly isn't paying the bills you're forwarding onto her new address as they keep coming back to you. So it's not like what you're doing is stopping things from being delivered to your house for her.

I don't think it is stupid.

When people do not redirect their mail, it's often more out of extreme laziness, or in many cases, they do it for unscrupulous purposes.

Such as thinking that they are going to be able to avoid paying bills by trying to keep their new address secret from the people they owe money to.

Which is stupid, because these days finding out peoples new addresses is not hard.

If you want to have your mail redirected without telling the new occupant then it is easy and relatively cheap to do so, so there is little motivation for not doing this.

I have been in a place 6 years and I still get mail marked as "important/private" addressed to the previous occupant.