To stop forwarding post?

[BabCNesbitt]

We moved into a rented house in August, and in the first week we had a couple of official-looking letters for the previous tenants. I held on to them, intending to get the forwarding address from the landlady, but a few days later the old tenant came to the door to pick up the post and give us their new address (in a different city). I said I'd forward on anything that came for them.

I guess I expected that after a month or so, they'd have updated their new addresses, but these letters are still coming weekly for them, and I'm still dutifully scribbling "please forward" on the envelopes with the new address. AIBU to decide that enough is enough? Should I write something else on the envelopes or just start returning to sender?

We still get stuff after 7 years and I now shred it. They never left their forwarding address so we could only ever put it in the post as return to sender and now we're fed up with that.

he left me with no working internet or phone line and no hot water why would you expect someone to leave the phone/internet connection active when they move?

I'm sure it must be illegal to destroy someone else's post I don't get why it's such a big deal to just return it to sender yes its annoying but as several people have said the redirection doesn't always work. I also had an odd situation where I'd changed my address with a company but when I had some issues with my contract with them a few months later for some reason it reverted my address back on their system - luckily it was my dad's address so I found out pretty quickly.

Thanks for the suggestion, OwlCapone . Stickers with the new address on is probably a good way to do it.

The previous owners of our house asked us if we could forward mail for 6 months and that then we should just bin it/return it. They also left us a huuuuuge stack of pre-printed labels so we didn't need to do much.

The only thing we still get 4 years later is a, ahem "specialist interests" catalogue which arrives in a plain envelope. We have written to the publishers asking them to stop, they still arrive.

We paid for redirection for two years, figured by then we would have gone through two lots of annual renewals of everything, two lots of birthdays and two Christmases so should catch everything. Previous owners of new house only paid for one month. We forwarded for six months then returned to sender. Junk mail for them dropped off pretty quickly after that!

If you're getting lots of catalogues etc then just write on Return to sender, unsolicited mail and put in post box. Seems to work in getting you off their mailing list.

The people we bought our flat off left no forwarding address. As they also inexplicably took all the racks and the grill pan from the fitted cooker leaving me with an unusable oven, I felt the £60 & annoyance to replace the racks justified either RTS or simply binning it instead of calling the estate agent to arrange for it to be sent to her. We also suspect they have been letting themselves into our communal hall to collect their mail.

She has not changed a thing by the looks of things as 3 months on we are still getting bank statements, debt collectors letters and various other official bits. I do RTS for anything serious (bank statements etc) and bin her cruise holiday catalogues.

Mail re-direction isn't flawless as I know there is some mail that has skipped our re-direction including rather official stuff. YANBU though, I would not expect anyone to forward items after 8 weeks.

I wouldn't mind forwarding on something like the letter from a long lost friend however in the past year we have recieved items from DVLA so car reg docs not been updated after 10 months, pension paperwork recognised company, stocks and shares paperwork -company wrote to us to ask for forwarding address after three RTS, blood donation requests etc. We were not given a forwarding address and RTS for 9 months its only the last three we have ditched junk previous owners seriously didn't know how to opt out of marketing!

Previous owners of our house left no forwarding address and only post forwarded for 3 months so it all goes RTS. Anything important looking I put on 'not resident at this address for X years' so the company know they're barking up the wrong tree.

The most irritating and sad thing is that one of them is an executor for someone who has died and we get post again and again asking us for their new address - the company just don't get it that we have no idea where they are! This post is addressed 'to the occupier' so I'm not opening their post the company say they have to keep writing until they find them though they aren't trying v hard in my view.

If you move house then you arrange for the GPO to forward your mail for at least 3 months preferably 6. I have never had anyone not do this and if I bought a house and was asked to forward mail would tell them to arrange forwarding with the post office and that my time is valuable to me.
I have forwarded things for a couple of weeks after the GPO forwarding finished but then put return to sender on things apart from Christmas cards which I forwarded.
I would forward the next few letters in a batch (they can't be bothered about them arriving on time or they'd have changed the address) and a covering note saying you will be putting return to sender on future letters. The onus will then be on the sender to track down the correct address.

It seems odd to me that people expect people to forward things to previous owners years after they have moved. I had lost the address of the previous occupants by the time a year was up and have no idea who lived here before them.

As PPs have said, the redirection service is hit and miss.

I'd let the recipients know you're not going to keep forwarding then return everything else to sender. I usually add 'Please remove from mailing list/database' as well and the volume of catalogues etc seems to reduce, presumably because it's not in companies' interests to waste money sending stuff, only for it to be returned unread.

We still get letters for a bloke that lived in our house over 12 years ago, we have been here 11!
They come from debt collectors and over the years bailiffs have turned up periodically. We did contact police as we suspect that somehow, no idea how though, he still uses this address to obtain credit. They, needless to say, weren't interested.

We return them to sender but still they keep coming!

Royal Mail do a mail redirection service. You can choose 1 , 3, 6 or 12 months (I think the 6 month option is about £60).
They should do this, if the odd letter gets through by mistake then I'd forward it on (the redirection service catches almost all mail - but not quite everything).

After 6 months, if they haven't updated their address with everyone that's their problem, I'd just bin them.