Someone is using my address. What can I do?

[Fuma]

I'm a tenant, lived in my flat for two years. When I first moved in I used to get multiple letters addressed to multiple people with different surnames from credit card companies, the dwp and others. Sent them all back return to sender and they gradually went away. All good

Last week I got a letter with "final demand" in red all over it to a person unknown to me so I opened it and phoned the company up. They're a debt enforcement agency and said as far as they're concerned the person on the letter lives here and they will continue to pursue. Then yesterday I got another letter addressed to a person with a different name again and it was to reject an application for a credit card. I think someone is using my address. What can I do?

Only thing I would as is: phot everything you send back as proof

You write an email to the debt companies confirming your stay at this address and ask for confirmation that they will stop sending these letters to your address. That’s what I did!

We've had it happen at 3 different addresses. Actual bailiffs have turned up twice, thankfully v nice both times.

Not much you can do but keep sending the letters back. They can't actually do anything as you aren't the person in question and can prove so. It won't affect your credit rating as they are personal and not linked to addresses. It is quite annoying though!!

Writing "return to sender, not at this address" does not work. I did it for 5+ years for the previous owner of our house, not knowing you were allowed to open mail addressed to others under certain circumstances. Then when I found out you could, I opened each one that came in for the next 12 months and did a standard letter for each company, changing details and references accordingly, telling them he had moved out in 2006 (!) that I am the owner, have no association with the previous householder nor a forwarding address, and that they should stop writing. The correspondence stopped from all but one or two of the companies. Those letters now go straight into the recycling, the absolute useless fuckwits.

A few years ago, I started getting letters from car insurance companies, addressed to a person I didn't know, but with my address on it. I hadn't encountered that before so I opened one of them, and when I phoned the insurers to tell them this person didn't live here, it turned out someone had used my address to get a better premium. They said they had already flagged the application as suspicious anyway, and I didn't get any further letters after that. I did have to make a witness statement to the police, though, when this person was prosecuted for fraud!