To not be wanting to be bothered by past owner's mail

[redoneslast]

Three years on.
Its getting irritating.

I have been on the recieving end of someone peed off at recieving my mail ...We moved out of a house that belonged to a family member but it took a few weeks to change everything ...then i couldnt remember what else i had to change - obviously done the important stuff so i popped to the old address to get any post ...the new tenant had a right go at me ...said he couldnt be arsed keeping anymore so would just bin it and gave me a MASSIVE pile of post ...most just said "to the occupier" that said i changed what i could and never went back for anymore ...had he been nicer i would have gone back for a few months ..once a month just to make sure we had changed everything that said we are not missing anything important ...oh except a bank statement that was a bank error for months

I bin it and I know it's illegal but if they can't be arsed to tell these companies that they have moved then it's not my problem.

the guy who lived in our house before us owes a hell of a lot of money. We are here nearly four years and still get letters and visits from debt collectors here. We even had the police out to arrest him for unpaid court fines when we had been here nearly two years. Most are ok when i say he doesn't live here any more but some are bastards, asking for my ID, proof that its just us living there now asking all sorts of questions. It was horrible when i was at home with DD as i was there all the time with people looking for him. It seems to have dwindled now, but there has been one or two recently.

I was visited at my home address by the police fraud squad who had been tracking a couple of people. I had to prove i lived there ! I send all their stuff back to them up north. They also tokd me if it lands on my doorstep then i can open the mail. That was 4 years ago and the post was drying up so havent bothered any more. I have recently been getting an influx of mail fir them again. Dr letters / hispital letters in ehich i even went to the drs and told them they do not live at my address and more recently catalogue items in which i have told the company they havent lived there fir over 5 years !!! How were they ever going to collect their item. Unless they live nearby and keep watch.... Really pering me off now.

One of my rental properties gets lots of mail still, we've owned it for 4 years.

The guy is still using that address as being his and the tenants are getting balifs too and the tax office have been insistent that he lives there with her and it's affecting her benefit appraisals etc.

I'm doing all I can to clear it but I feel so badly for my lovely tenant and wish I had a magic wand to make it all go away.

The past owners did that to us. He kept turning up at really annoying times like dd's bedtime and asking for his mail. Wanted us to leave it in porch but we declined as it looked like no one was living there. In the end (after several months) I told him he couldn't keep "dropping by" any longer. Mysteriously he then managed to redirect his mail even though he told us he'd done it before...

I have been in my house 20 years and up until last year i was getting a christmas card for the previous person I think he died about 10 years ago and i am assuming the sender is no longer with us either, although when i was getting official letter i just popped them back in the post box

I bin it. Don't care if it's illegal

My parents have just sold their house after 25 years of living there. Just before they moved a birthday card arrived at the house (it wasnt either of their birthdays), it was the correct address, correct postcode but only a first name which was similar to my mums.

When opened it was a birthday card with £50 cash in it. Mum went and knocked on a few neighbours door and asked if "Julie" (name on the card) was there but drew a blank.

We were telling her to donate the money to charity but she handed the card and money in to the post office. Dont know what happend to the money, I dread to think.

I open and read the RSPB magazine that comes to my house.

We get post for the previous people who were here (9 years ago) but it is just Sky trying to sell them broadband, and we get post for someone who lived here yonks ago who is now dead, and it is a magazine for people in her profession. I have told both sky and the professional body that they are not here anymore (SO MANY TIMES), but the post never stops, so in the recycling it goes.

It's not outright illegal to open mail, I forget the exact wording but the law says something like you need a reasonable excuse and must not intend any harm. Someone who lived in our house years ago still has an active bank account registered here - after getting loads of official looking letters I opened one, called the bank and told them. I checked, I haven't broken any laws by doing that.

For the past 7 months I've returning to sender post for the previous tenant, the tenant before him, and the landlord. From reading other posts I've still got a long way to go before it will stop!

I was being driven mad for 18 months with piles of multiple previous tenants' stuff. At least 6 different names. Including demand notices addressed to the landlord (who owns lots of properties). My friend, who briefly worked for the post office, told me to strike through the address panel with pen (so the computerised sorting system couldn't read it, and simply redeliver it to back to me, which is what was happening), and write on it in big letters 'Not at this address.' Anyway, it worked. After a couple more months, things had slowed to a trickle. 6 months on, I get only the rarest of dodgy deliveries (once every two weeks, maybe).

We still get some after 12 years. I've contacted a few regular senders, especially the small local charity for a very obscure disease, I felt bad that they were spending money on a completely pointless newsletter four times a year to a person who'd moved three tenancies before we bought the place.

One that made me was a regular weekly official letter for the previous owner's wife. These started up about six years in, and we'd taken to binning stuff by then. One day I opened one before binning - and it was a cheque for compensation she'd been awarded by the court, which was meant to be paid off by the offender in weekly installments! That one I did return to sender (we had no idea where they'd moved to).

I open all mail that arrives that isn't addressed to anybody living here. When I first moved in I was swamped with what seemed every debt collection agency going. The woman across the street would pull the postman for her friends mail.. then getting him to post all of it through her door so she could sift through them and then give us ours (had to complain about the postman) the previous tenants would knock and get narky with me because I wanted them to change their address.. This was months down the line.

In the end I rang up all the companys and gave them her new address.

Then more recently next door were having immigration letters sent to my house because one of them had over stayed their visa and we're fighting to stay in the country. I asked then to change the address (not really knowing if it was a risk for me having an overstayer registered here) in the end I had to actually go down to the solicitors office and make then change the address.

If people don't want their mail opened then it shouldn't come to my house

Locally we had someone move out but not change their bank details and the incoming tenant was not on good terms with previous occupier...

We've been witness to allegations of fraud, allegations of fraudulent allegations of fraud, rows and a lot of gossip.

I would now get a PO box before I moved and get everything switched to there before anything else.

Keep posting all back return to sender to stops after a few month. If they have a new address then you can send it so they have to pay postage to collect at local post office.

illegal my arse, bin it

or return to sender

but after 3 years....bin

It is illegal to open or destroy. You are supposed to return to sender, or, mark "not known at this address" and put back in the post box.

It is NOT illegal to open letters if you can prove it is done without malicious intent.

In other words if you open a letter to find a suitable forwarding or return address, then it's not malicious.

YANBU. We still get a fair bit for people who used to be tenants of our property. We've been here five years. Mostly I just hold it for a while then chuck it but every year we get a 'rakhi' from some obviously old friend of a an old tenant. They write a lovely letter and send a couple of the rakhi thread bracelets which I give to DD so she can tie them on her brother's wrist .

Would just add that they don't write a return address on the envelope or letter, otherwise I'd definitely letthem know their friend doesn't live here anymore.

god, I didn't know it was illegal to bin it! The previous owners didn't set up a forwarding service, they just left us with a load of address labels to forward the post on. Which we did for about 6 months. We also did return to sender but that was more often than not ignored (yes, Amnesty International, I'm thinking of you).

I moved and took out the redirected service for a year. I'd say about half got through.
Despite having only moved a few houses away, the new owner never bothered to drop our stuff round. Even worse, she actually opened and used anything she could. I discovered this when I tried to find out where a particular membership pack had got to and discovered it had been sent to the old address and used.

They are taking action against her for fraud.

I break the law then.

If people are stupid, tough