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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

mail redirection - a statute of limitation

39 replies

FenLondon · 21/10/2010 15:49

Somewhat lighthearted, but it's annoying me, so what would you do?
Bought our house in June. Prev owners had pretty much moved out last November. On completion day big pile of their mail which we ended up putting in an envelope and paying to post rather than hand redirect. Then they got 3 months redirection, but now it's over we're still getting two or three items a day for them and their adult kids.
I'm still dutifully crossing out our address and writing theirs in and reposting, but how long's enough? At what point to bin or return to sender?

Wouldn't mind so much if there hadn't been things like them not giving the power company a final reading so they tried to bill us £200 for the first month, or what looked like a final demand from the water company turning up last week (yes, on the bright side I at least could call and give the utility their new address...)

OP posts:

nocake · 21/10/2010 15:51

We don't have a forwarding address for the previous residents of our house so everything goes back in the postbox with "please return to sender". It's their problem if they miss something important as they should have notified everybody by now.

mrsoliverramsay · 21/10/2010 15:55

I just bin it. I am constantly getting mail from the last 2 or 3 owners of my house. It is their fault if they don't get it as they should have sorted it by now

warthog · 21/10/2010 15:56

i got annoyed with our previous owners because of this. plus they left the house filthy and dragged their dishwasher and washing machine out leaving deep scratches in the wood floor.

after a couple of months i started returning to sender. even the contact lens replacements. call me evil. by that time i had genuinely lost their address. it's nearly all stopped now. took me 2 years to get halifax to work out that none of their post was getting through tho, before i wrote a cross note on the envelope.

i'd start returning to sender now if i were you.

anonacfr · 21/10/2010 15:57

That's completely their responsibility. I can't believe they tried to bill YOU!
Part of moving house (and it is a pain in the arse) is having to notify people/utility/council etc of your change of address.

If they don't do it, tough. Maybe you should just hand the letters back to the postman next time.

Casserole · 21/10/2010 16:15

RTS it for another month, then bin it.

marcopront · 21/10/2010 16:43

I used to get a letter from a debt collection agency at least once a week for various people who used to live in my house. After a year of sending them back I started opening them and then emailing the agency about it. Even though they claimed they weren't connected after a couple of emails they stopped.

Barbeasty · 21/10/2010 19:43

3 years on we still get post for the previous owners, which all has the address crossed out and is put back in the post with the comment "still not at this address since 2007". When the National Heritage cards come again next year I will add the comment "next year I assume I can keep and use these for myself".

At my previous house I took great delight is sending back the car tax notification to the DVLA. The state they had left the house in warranted the £1000 potential fine for failing to notify change of address after 2 years!

Waltons · 21/10/2010 19:54

How odd that someone should post about this today.

We have been in our house for 13 years, the couple who built it (80 years ago) died in 1976 and there have been 4 owners since then.

Today we received an airmail letter from Australia for the daughter of the original owner marked: "Please forward if not at this address"! We have never received any correspondence for her before.

Sadly I have no idea of the daughter's whereabouts, as the link to the original family was lost with the people we bought the house from, so all I can do is return to sender.

So, the statute of limitations in this case is 34 years!

octopusinabox · 21/10/2010 20:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AKMD · 21/10/2010 20:17

I returned to sender for a month and now take great joy in binning everything. We also had an awful experience with the previous owners leaving the house looking like a pigsty and us having to spend thousands on cleaning, redecoration and installing a working boiler (ok, our fault for not getting a super-expensive survery done, I know). If I'd had an address for them I would have happily passed that on to all the debt collection agencies after them.

exexpat · 21/10/2010 20:19

I just wish more people would put a return address on things.

For the three Christmases since I moved into my current house there has been a card addressed to a name I don't recognise - not the previous owners, or the ones before them as far as I know. I opened one to see if there was an address to send it back to, but apart from a chatty handwritten note, there were no clues. Reminds me to put my address on all cards this year if I can be bothered to send any.

Last owners also still haven't told the tax office they've moved. If I get one more thing for them I'm returning it to sender (but I have been enjoying the masonic magazines).

tyler80 · 21/10/2010 20:20

At our last rented house I used to open all the Christmas cards and display them on the mantlepiece no matter who they were addressed to

exexpat · 21/10/2010 20:30

But why has no one mentioned the ultimate (but of course sadly defunct)women's magazine - Spare Rib? I actually used to enjoy that one, even bought the diaries.... Private Eye must really miss it too.

exexpat · 21/10/2010 20:30

Oops, wrong thread

JaxTellersOldLady · 21/10/2010 20:37

exexpat, are you on the correct thread?

tyler I still get cards addressed to previous owner, despite me phoning them 2 years ago to tell them that the lady no longer lived at this address and hasnt done for almost 5 years now!

EAch year I get a card from the same family, each quarter I still get a charity magazine, some christmas cards from various charities and the occasional photograph.

Now I just display the cards.

ratspeaker · 21/10/2010 20:39

Tp th OP I wouldn't bother redirecting letters to them as
A -its up to them to inform firms/friends/ relatives/comapnies they've moved
B -any firms/companies may conclude they still live there therefore any debts still outstanding will have the debt collectors at YOUR door
My mum had callers looking to collect money from the previous owners years after she'd moved in. Mum had been nice enough to let the previous owners pop in occasionally to collect mail
I took to "accidentaly" opening the letters then phoning the banks/credit card companies/car payment people

elvislives · 21/10/2010 20:49

We lived in a rented house from December to September. Every day our post consisted of several letters for the previous tenants. They had left us a note with their new address on and asked us to redirect but I assumed this was for odd bits, not regular deliveries.

I redirected for 3 months then started writing on the redirected letters that I wasn't prepared to do it anymore. After a week of that I just put it back in the post Return to Sender.

We had a tax disc reminder for each of them; bank statements, you name it. They clearly didn't tell anybody they'd moved.

But it was the twice weekly phone calls for them that really made me , especially from his mum and her dad

SpookilyDoodleydoohoohoooooo · 21/10/2010 20:58

It really annoys me this because we had it at our last house, when we moved we paid for a years redirection in 2 surnames so we didn't miss out. Sadly the POST OFFICE cocked up and didn't redirect quite a lot of the time so we got pls forward etc etc from new owners. Sometimes it isn't always the ex-owners fault, although I would have thought that this isn't the case by the sound of it!

TurnipLantern · 21/10/2010 21:06

We've moved a lot over the years. We always pay for redirection and we always notify companies of our change of address. But some are absolutely shit! And if you get a lot of post (as we do) plenty fall through the post office's system.

When we moved here, it was clear the previous owners had paid for redirection yet we still got more than one letter a month for them for the year/18 months the redirection was there for. As we don't have a forwarding address we
send everything else back. The same stuff just keeps on coming!

Milliways · 21/10/2010 21:17

The best letter we forwarded on, was sent back to us with a nice note - it was an offer to buy our new back garden

We too also still get a Christmas card for the old owners who moved out in 1999 (but, to be fair, they still send us one each year too as we got to know each other during the move.)

FessaEst · 21/10/2010 21:22

I printed out a load of labels - not known at this address, please return to sender - saves hand writing. However, when they were clearly debt letters and final demands that KEPT arriving, I opened the and rang/wrote to the banks/debt collectors to insist they stopped - it seems to have worked.

thefirstmrsDeVeerie · 21/10/2010 21:26

When we sold our flat to a young couple I paid for 6mths redirection. Their parents bought the flat (cash buyers).

I let them have my phone number in case they needed any info re boiler etc. just being nice really.

Big mistake. The bloke kept phoning me and complaining whining about getting post after the redirection ended. I had informed everyone who needed to know. The stuff he was getting was junk. He actually moaned that we were getting more mail than him!

I told him to bin it or return to sender. What the hell did he expect me to do? We had lived there for about 10years and were voters, had kids etc so were on all kinds of mailing lists. Hardly our fault.

I still get stuff here for old owners. I put it in the recyling or return it. Hardly a problem.

Stinkyoldclottedcatspus · 21/10/2010 21:33

In our old house, we got tons of mail for the previous owner. As I new her, I just passed it along until all that wa left was junk mail. In the end, I stuck a label to the letterbox, telling the postman to only post mail in our names through the door.
When we moved, we changed everything we could, left our address and asked the new people to give any mail to our old neighbours/best friends. They did nothing. Except open our mail, read it and put it in the recycling, then discuss our business with another set of neighbours. I had been very polite and reasonable, bent over backwards during the sale and left them useful stuff. I wasn't amused!

warthog · 21/10/2010 21:59

i found that if you RTS'ed on junk mail they stopped pretty darn snappish. i use that now on catalogues i don't want.

costs too much for them.

Original poster

FenLondon · 21/10/2010 22:01

thanks all very much for making me feel I'm not just a petty little b((( ! (apols for not posting earlier, whole nother AIBU thread about picking DD up on my day off)

Casserole, good plan. RTS till the end of October then circular file it is.

Houses eh?

OP posts:

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