To think he's a cheeky bastard and possibly shifty?

[MatildaTheCat]

We bought our house in 2002. Since then there has been a large amount of mail for previous occupants, most of which went in the bin. Every so often there has been something more important looking which I've opened.

In about 2005 one of these more official looking letters arrived which I opened to find it was telling the previous owner he had won £50 on the premium bonds. I tracked him down and posted the cheque on to his address abroad. No acknowledgement for this.

Last year I received two more premium bond wins for him in a short time frame. I hunted him down on Google, emailed him and made a suggestion that he might want to consider letting them know of his change of address since he was on a lucky run. He replied and sent his address and I posted them on, abroad again and never had so much as a thank you by email.

Yesterday two letters arrived from France addressed to him and I again opened them. They were two separate speeding fines from earlier this month. Both somehow registered to my bloody address. I emailed him again in a fairly cross fashion asking what he wanted to do about this. They are the sort of fines that increase if you don't pay up immediately. I didn't keep his address last time naively thinking there would be no further need.

The irony of all this is that I emailed via his workplace and he's the CEO of a risk company which offers advice to financial institutions so surely a clean reputation is paramount. So, is he shady or disorganised? And WWYD? DH says just bin them although now I've emailed.

It's given me the rage.

We used to have this with the uselessly disorganised people who lived in our old house before them. The first year we were there we got more Christmas cards for them than we did for us! We knew their address so we would just write the new address on the envelope and shove it in the post box.

As years went by fewer and fewer things arrived that looked worth sending on, they were just junk mail so I did sometimes open them if I was interested, because I knew that it would be junk mail and I wouldn't be forwarding it anyway.

One day an envelope from a world-famous manufacturer of a certain luxury item arrived. I won't say what it actually was, but say it was yachts or something. I assumed it was a junk-mail style brochure. Intrigued as to how much these luxury things actually cost (I had no idea whether they were £5000, £10,000, £20,000 or £50,000) I opened the envelope to have a gander. It was a slightly stroppy letter from the company saying that the previous owners owed them twelve grand and hadn't paid anything off this debt for ages.

I was really alarmed as:

• I didn't want debt collectors turning up at our house
• if I sent the letter on to the previous owners they'd think I was an awful nosey cow (which I am, but that wasn't why I had opened it)

So what I did was ring the prestige company and explain and say that I had opened it. They were really nice about it and VERY pleased to have the new address which I gave them. < phew! > They then sent the same snotty letter to the new address.

Nothing at all, credit rating is based on name not address.

Its not illegal to open mail delivered to your address if you suspect fraud or misuse.

From now on get a big felt pen and write notknown at this address since 2002 on everything that comes for him and put it back in the post box. Premium bonds, fines, the lot. It's not your job to sort this out for him or to trace him. It's his responsibility to inform companies, DVLA, Premium bond, banks...
It doesnt matter if its hundreds or thousands of bits of mail, keep returning as not known , how else will the people writing to him know that he doesn't live there?
I'd not even tell him you are going to do this. After 14 years he is taking the right piss

Does the post office actually return them to the address tho'?
When we moved into our house we had bailiffs turn up for the previous tenant, unnerving, but no credit rating issue for us.
Slight more unnerving was getting library overdue notices for the man's daughter, with book titles like 'Guns and Knives', 'Serial killers' etc

Post them back with his business address on for the sender

I'm sure a friend popped into the local post office or sorting office and they stopped delivering the previous owners mail it was a few years ago now but maybe worth asking. I also like Creampastry idea of putting his business address on all the mail as well as return to sender.

MrsGuyOfGisbo - they definately used to, as I once had a very dull temping job over a summer going through the "return to sender, addressee gone away" returned mail to update a database not to post mailings to that address anymore.

OP - just put 'return to sender, addressee no longer at this address" on everything - including things that look like his winnings on the premium bonds etc, it'll take time, but bit by bit those databases will be updated, if you had been doing that from the start, it's unlikely you'd still be getting so much post for him, unless he was still adding your address as his on new things. If he wants his winnings, he can sort out contacting them.

It's illegal to open mail with malicious intent or if you intend to use the information to the persons detriment.
It's not illegal to open it to contact a company and tell them that the person doesn't live there. I looked into this as I was having similar issues with a previous tenant in our house.

Guy The post office usually have a dedicated team at the sorting office whose job it is to trace and return the items to the sender. Usually it is pretty straight forward as most have the address on the back of the envelope or on a letter inside but I've heard from my friend who used to work in such a team that they had to turn detective in some cases!

He's doing something dodgy by using your address in the UK, could be all manner of fraud, e.g. some financial products can only be held by UK residents.

I'd stick a return to sender not known at this address since 2002 on every envelope that comes for him and maybe ring any benefit or fraud office that crossed my mind

Cross through address, write in big red ink "return to sender. Moved in 2002!" We do this with previous owner's post and it has cut down a lot of it. After their mail forwarding expired we were getting football tickets, christmas cards, pension plans, bank statements delivered, the lot! Cheeky fecker turned up one evening asking for his football tickets. We had hung onto them as we realised their mail forward must have just expired and suspected they might turn up asking for them. We gave them to him and being the nice people we are asked for his forwarding address just in case anything else slipped through. He refused to give it to us and just asked to return everything to sender?! Still kept getting loads of post. A couple of weeks later some ebay purchase was posted through the door. I shoved it back in the letter box as return to sender the next morning. Have not had much since.

Don't open them, just cross out the address at the front, and put no longer at this address, and pop it back in the post.

I had the same temping job as a PP, it was desperately dull! But you basically got given a huge stack of post with NNATA on and had to add the name and address to the database. AFAIK this still happens.

I'd be concerned that you might end up with bailiffs at the door if you know they are fines so I wouldn't ignore them on this occasion.

I'd phone whoever sent the letter, say you opened the post by mistake and that you don't have a forwarding address. I would however hope the exowner did email you his address and then I'd pass it on to the DVLA. He is breaking the law by not changing the address his car is registered at.