mail redirection - a statute of limitation

[FenLondon]

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...)

I still regularly get post for the previous owners from ten years ago. Gives me the irrits, bigtime. I just bin them, but even that annoys me.

Bitof did you buy my old flat

a pet rescue agency turned up ar our house once with the previous owners dog. they hadny bothered updating the address on the chip

Is this a record? We still get post for the previous owner - who moved 19 years ago!

It is illegal to open someone else's mail, or to bin it. You have to return to sender.

What do you do then when you move into somewhere and have no forwarding address and no return address?

After a few months/years it gets boring writing not known at this address.

If you live in rented accommodation chances are you get more mail for previous tenants than you do for yourselves. There's only so much time I'm willing to devote to trying to put it right. I'm shredding it and binning it, illegal or not.

What do you do then when you move into somewhere and have no forwarding address and no return address?

After a few months/years it gets boring writing not known at this address.

If you live in rented accommodation chances are you get more mail for previous tenants than you do for yourselves. There's only so much time I'm willing to devote to trying to put it right. I'm shredding it and binning it, illegal or not.

We get a christmas card adressed to the previous owners very year. We have been here since 2003[hhmm] There is no return adress so when I am fed up looking at it and pondering what to do, it gets binned[hblush]

Also an art catalogue comes every now and then, that's it really.

Our previous adress pre-dates our internet shopping days, if we were to move again heaven knows what crap the next owners would get through the post. I seem to have found myself on the mailing list of every crap clothing store that trades in the uk[hhmm]

we have been in our house 10 years, the previous owner was only here a year, we still get mail for the 2 previous owners before that going back 25 years!

needless to say, i chuck it in the recycling unless it looks anything important

however, i am saddened every xmas when we get a card in elderly handwriting from someone called Tom

poor old Tom, sending a card to an old friend every year and never, presumably, getting a reply - one of these years it won't come and Tom will have popped his clogs - do his old friends know or care.

Your can get your mail redirected by the PO for well over 3 months - you can also renew each year.

I have left sheets of stickers with new residents previously after asking if they would mind (with please redirect to & my name & address on stickers) but subsequently I've redirected with the PO. Most of it is junk mail nnyway as within a month or too anything important will know the new address details - we'll probably all be getting junk mail to our former addresses for 100's of years.

I'd RTS it with a sticker saying "this person hasn't lived her for X years/months. Please send no more mail". Then after a while shred it. Having said that if something personal looking arrived I'd RTS rather than shred.

We get in excess of 30 pieces of mail for other people per week that are either mailshots where earlier ones have been returned to sender more than once already or have no return address.

I think attempting to deal with the mail for over a year is more than reasonable. Fine if you find it no bother, but I find it a pain in the bum. If necessitates me finding a pen and making a special trip to the postbox. I'm not talking about the odd bit of mail here and there, it's huge volumes. The house we're in now had been empty at least 6 months before we moved in, it took me hours to deal with the post! It wasn't even time well spent because we're still getting the same bits of mail from the same companies addressed to the wrong companies.