to open the letters for the previous tenant

[OhDearNigel]

when I had High Court Sherriffs at the door on Friday trying to come in and seize £5k of my property due to an outstanding seizure order against the previous tenant of the house we moved into 3 weeks ago ?

It would appear that she has at least £12k of court collection orders out against her; we have paid more for our electricity the first month than we needed to due to a preloaded meter being installed to pay back her £1k electric debt. The gas had been cut off, as had the phone line which we had to pay to get reinstated. It has been incredibly stressful and I am having to write disassociation letters and try to get her removed from the electoral role. We have an excellent credit rating and I certainly don't want that wrecked by her credit blacklisting.

I am aware that opening post is an offence although as the full offence requires you to be opening the post "to the addressees detriment" I doubt it is made out. However due to bailiff situation I'm not really giving too much of a shit about "doing the right thing". I have informed all agencies that have written to her that she no longer lives here and where a forwarding address may be found.

Is opening someone elses post really an offense? Even if it's delivered through your letter box?? I have done this before and glad I did otherwise bailiffs would have been turning up at my house.

YANBU I have done the same. Once I even went to the court to tell them to call off the bailiffs. The court clerk was very helpful and not at all concerned that I had opened the letters.

YANBU but it is illegal!

I once opened a letter without really looking, when I'd just moved into a new house. It was for the people who'd just moved out, and showed that they were trying to raise a huge loan giving that address! I phoned pdq.

YANBU. The extended family of the previous owner of our house used our address to get credit, FIVE YEARS after we bought it. The bailiffs came wrong. Luckily it was pretty obvious that I was not the person they were looking for. I didn't even have to use my jedi mind tricks. I might have used the baseball bat I kept behind the door in that flat though.

We did it too when it became apparent that the previous tenant was still using the address and we had bailiffs calling; the return to sender marked 'not known at this address' and a year of carefully sending to the estate agent made no difference. Have to say though that every bailiff we met was so used to this happening that all we ever had to do was pull out a driving licence to prove who we were and that was the end of it. Any guilt over opening the mail was more than balanced by the fact they were using our address to buy things they had no intention of ever paying for.