Opened letter by mistake, previous owner

[BingoBastards]

I'm not sure what to do now, previous owner had a letter through. I wasn't looking properly to see it's not addressed to me and opened it. It's a cheque.

I've emailed him about it but what the fuck do I do? Tear it up and put it in the bin? I don't exactly want to get sued for opening a letter by mistake.

He had some life crisis and disappeared so I don't think he's going to respond to email

My downstairs neighbours moved five years ago but we still received statements for her which for months I faithfully returned to the address on the envelope - but they still kept coming preumably because they had nothing to update to. You can't assume the senders will actually care enough to do anything.

@JarOfRocks so all addressed mail is returned to sender. For mail that has no return address if it's a stamped then it's sent to undelivered correspondence in Belfast where I think they open it to try and find a return address (but I could be wrong), if it has prepaid postage then it gets shredded.

@youdodoyou yes Belfast postcode!

There isn't masses more I can do, if others can't get hold of him I doubt that I can.

I did have a look back through emails and the reason why we exchanged was because I had a technical contact for work and said I'd forward it to him

@GRex honestly I thought the same as you but I returned bank post 'unknown at this address' for a solid five years before giving up in frustration! It just keeps coming (I bin it, if I'm feeling charitable I shred it). I got one yesterday - the couple moved out 16 flipping years ago.

Report it to the Data Protection Officer at the bank.

Ooh ok @GRex will do that, thank you

We moved into our place in January (a few years ago). Previous owners only paid for a 9 month redirection so we ended up with a load of Christmas cards for them. Didn't really think that one through, folks, did you

In my experience, posting it back ‘return to sender’ does nothing. The only way to sort it is to call the bank/HMRC whatever the company is, and tell them that account number 123XYZ doesn’t live here any more.

My address is Close, around the corner is Road, so I occasionally get mail for the man around the corner, i once got a parcel for him, and opened it, it was a large box full of light bulbs, I phoned husband and asked him why has he bought so many of them, it wasn’t his and the address label was so small we could hardly read it, I took it around to the man and he was laughing about it, he’s always getting letters for us and he just pops them through our door