Previous owners being CFs?

[Pippylcoat]

9 months ago we moved in our house. The previous owners came over every week for the first three months asking for their post. We saved up the first bulk of post to give them, but when it became clear they didn’t want to pay for a redirectory or stop the ‘routine’, I began sending the post back as ‘not known at this address’. Each time they knocked I told them we had nothing for them and asked them to ensure they have updated their address with all bills and contacts. Several recent letters have been clearly important such as a hospital appointment and parking fines. I still returned to sender as they should have updated their address, knowing it is an illegal offence to not do this for the DVLA I refuse to support their continuous use of our address. The most recent arrival of them asking for post left a sour taste in my mouth, I was informed I must be keeping or opening their post as I legally have to return it to them. On top of never receiving a thank you this has made me realise what entitled CFs they are with no intention of stopping. I spoke to a friend who told me I should give them their post as the hospital appointment for example is a waste of nhs resources, and they will be prosecuted for not updating the DVLA. I don’t think I’m wrong for wanting this to stop, they have had 9 months and I didn’t mind at first but now I feel like an awful person about the letters I just returned. Has anyone else been through this and how did you handle it?

I’d have given them NHS and DVLA letters and told them I’m going to start redirecting it soon. Given they are knocking anyway what extra work is it to save a few letters and give notice you will start returning. This way they keep coming and you are going to the effort of sending the letters back, it would be easier to keep and hand over. But I guess not everyone is as nice as me!

When we moved into this house for years we would get phone calls for Christina who seemed to owe thousands of pounds to many organisations. We told them to remove the number from their records, the address they had wasn't ours, and we wished every new caller good luck in getting money out of her! Oddly though the local High School rang for her too, they had our number from when she had registered a child but not our address. BT were adamant that she had never had our number.

Its not "nice" Its risky. You shouldn't let people use your address unless you trust them.

We’ve owned our house for nearly 2 years and still get more mail for the previous occupants than ourselves. Most of its for our seller’s wife who died in 2019 and his dodgy grandson who hasn’t lived here for 10+ years.

I just write not at this address on it with a sharpie and then when I’ve got enough to fill a small bag I take it all to the post box. I asked the postman how I could make it stop and he said keep returning it. Catalogue retailers just ignore my returns, seems like a waste of their money to keep sending catalogues to a woman whose been dead for 5 years so more fool them 🤷🏼‍♀️

We’ve been in our house for 25 years and we still get post for the previous owner (who died about 27 years ago). His children refused to do a redirection, wrote their address on a napkin, we redirected for a while and then lost the address during renovations.
Think they have lost out because some of the post is from shares he owned and they knew nothing about- think they have lost thousands- all for the price of a redirection!

As someone who had bailiffs at the door, for unpaid congestion charge and speeding fines, for the owner before the one we bought the house from, I think you're absolutely within your rights to tell them to piss off and sort their admin out! People making more work for others due to their own ineptitude really annoys me!!!

It's only free if it's stamped by royal mail. A lot of businesses use UK mail and that isn't free to redirect. I have been charged excess postage that way a few times

That's interesting. We did it for my relative who had died so that we could get their post and deal with it as it came, when we no longer had access to their old house. I can't remember how we paid but it must have been with one of our cards. Maybe that's changed now.

2 years in the previous owner (who was a nightmare right up until moving day)

still has post, flowers, Christmas gifts and deliveries posted to my address - I have up until recently contacted her to collect but now all mail gets a 'return to sender'

I'm dreading the Christmas influx of stuff, as annoying as it is I feel mean not letting her know but find interacting with her given how difficult she made the move really bloody awkward!

100% CFs

I had mine that wanted me to pass to house down the road certain letters but not the red bills or demands. I had loads of issues getting my utilities set up

as for PPsaying it’s wrong not to pass on drs appointments and stuff. Absolutely not, the contact details have to be correct

make friends with your regular postie, they can take the letters back for you. Tell them when they knock you have no letters for them and to stop knocking

I would have a cease letter drawn up by a solicitor.

I sold my home last year. I didn’t pay for a redirect. I changed my address before I sold the house and final bills came to my new address. It’s really not that difficult.

Even if someone doesn’t know their new address they have friends, family and work addresses. There is another way that doesn’t involve the new owner of the property.

I have never met the person who bought my house and frankly I think it would be cheeky AF to stop by at any point as it’s no longer my home.

As some of the clever among us have already pointed out, and it bears repeating, passing on, forwarding or handing over any of the post to the utterly entitled CFs means that the UE CFs have formal documentation with your address on it which, presuming they haven’t updated their drivers license (as DVLA and/or parking fines will demonstrate), they can use to open bank accounts, apply for passports and all manner of nefarious extras… so return to sender and not known at the address will update all involved creditors and companies and may prevent crime on their part and a massive headache/debt/blacklisting/dawn raids etc down the line for you…cheeky fuckers or criminal fuckers… ?!?

20 years later we still get post for previous owners, not often now but still occasionally. I bin it now, I reckon they've had long enough

The only reasonable thing to do is what you are doing. Return to sender/not known at this address. And tell the CFs that is what is happening. Anything else is enabling them and puts your household at risk.

We've only bought from lovely people. We have always forwarded post for the first ten years! As others have done for us. We've stayed on Christmas card terms with sellers and purchasers!

I think the op's being rather unhelpful.

The OP hasn't lied. She said she didn't have anything for them. Which is true.

She's a better woman than I. A month and I start recycling.

We had a phase after a tenant moved out when we had post for 20-30 different people who had all registered bank accounts at our address.

Yanbu to be doing RTS but you should have told them. It's unreasonable to not tell them that this is happening.

We had a very similar situation (except the CF previous owners had arranged for the next door neighbour to call around once a week for post rather than coming themselves.)

I can't remember what the timescales were but RTS didn't actually work to stop the flow of mail. This is because the sorting warehouse for RTS mail has an enormous backlog. My dad once had a personal letter returned to him that he had sent to the last known address of a friend of his dad to inform him of his dad's death. It took 4 years to be returned.

To actually stop the flow of mail you need to write to the "from" address of each organisation sending mail to let them know that mail is not being forwarded. It is legitimate to open mail that has no "from" address on the envelope. It's only illegitimate to do this if you are intending to do something nefarious with the information - helping to keep data correct is a reasonable cause.

In our case it was quickly clear that the CF previous owners had skipped out on significant debt and were doing their best to be untraceable.

Our lawyer told us to redirect the mail to the seller's lawyer in this situation (15 years ago). It did seem to stop fairly quickly.

This issue resonates with me. I've got a shed load of post from various other residents of this house. I just have not been told the people new address and or I haven't had time or enthusiasm to deal with the letters.
I WISH PEOPLE WOULD LEAVE FOREARDING ADDRESSES As some have lodged here. What have they got to hide??????? Why don't your previous owners just tell you their new address so you can just pop them in the post box.

To be honest this issue is part of life to a certain extent. What I have issue with is: Them expecting ME to enter onto an appointment system which they want so they expect me to appoint a certain amount of my time to wait in for them to come and get the Mail. I said to one previous owner " You can collect mail randomly, I'm not telling when or not I'm in; you have to randomly try ."

Do you not get it? You could be colluding with fraud, you could end up caught up in fraud.

What is DVLA and CF?

Yes I get it but they've been nice people who have owned for a long time before us and had good relationships with neighbours and have kept up with them.

Another thing I've done is gone out of my way to redirect letters like finding out where that person works to redirect letters to them.This act of kindness funnily enough triggers the person to get their act together and stop the mail.

Then stick it all in a new envelope with no stamp