Opened previous owners mail

[justalittlelemondrizzle]

Since buying the house almost a year ago we have recieved all the old owners mail. Everything from car insurance and bank statements to birthday cards and junk mail. I've been returning everything to sender and for the last couple of months letters have greatly reduced and have almost stopped. It was my birthday the other day and today a birthday card came in the post. I didn't look at the name on the envelope as it was clearly a birthday card so just opened it like a giddy child wondering who it could be from. Well it wasn't for me but the previous owners son and £50 fell out. I'm not sure what to do. I have no forwarding address and I can't return this to sender.

Won't the DS's name be in the card?

So you have his surname on the envelope and his first name in the card - I'd have a good look on Facebook.

It's not a criminal offence space. That's a bit of an urban myth

I'm a little shocked that you would hold onto it tbh OP. Give it to the estate agents. It's really not that difficult

How much time should the OP have to spend on this, when it's not a problem of her creating?

Maybe after a few months, you could donate it to your favourite charity

hmmmm. I love how competitively worthy MN is.

spend it on drugs and booze OP

It's not a criminal offence space.That's a bit of an urban myth

It's an offence to knowingly intercept/open someone else's mail with the intention of using the information therein to the detriment of the addressee (ie stealing bank details in order to defraud them), but accidentally opening mail that lands in your possession - nah, can't see a dawn raid happening

I'm really surprised at how many people would spend the money, regardless of whether the birthday boy is actually a boy or an adult it would be stealing to spend money that isn't yours.

I'd make the best efforts I could to find the person - do you live in a place that as any local facebook groups, mine are pretty good at tracking down people, it's not uncommon for people to post about wrongly delivered or addressed mail

Lazy people. They should have paid for a redirection and updated family and friends as well as service providers. I'd look on Facebook perhaps but I wouldn't do too much investigating and I wouldn't schlepp to the estate agent. . It's their fault - people need yo take responsibility for stuff.

We get mountains of mail for the people who used to live here. They moved out nearly three years ago, they get more mail here than we do. Most of it is junk mail but it's driving me insane.

I probably have about 80 items of mail sitting in my porch for them.

I would you what definitely would not do - that's post it on AIBU !

but its not stealing of the op genuinely doesnt know where to forward the money onto peggy

Yes it is. If you know it's not yours and you take it that's stealing, if you cannot get it to its owner then you get it to someone who can or to the police.

Is no one else thinking the sender might have forget they moved? Especially if an older relative.

Yeah, give it to the estate agents. That'll pay for the office sandwich run tomorrow!

Put it in a drawer and mark today's date on it, along with anything else that arrives. In a years time dispose of it all and keep anything you fancy. If they are going to be so lazy as to not bother redirecting their post for the best part of a year, or updating with their bank or insurance, that's their problem. You are not their PA. Stop sending ANYTHING back in the post. They'll have to contact you sooner or later. Perhaps I'm not a nice person, but I'd consider the money karma for being their personal post sorter for eleven months...

MarthaElf They haven't told their bank or insurance companies, why bother telling relatives? And the OP says other birthday cards have come during the year. It seems like they don't want anyone to know where they are!

Sometimes people haven't chosen to not use the redirect service.

The redirect services will not allow you to use it if you cannot identify yourself to their standards, I have a huge amount of clients who through no fault of their own and certainly no dishonesty who cannot do that so their mail does not get redirected.

Good grief. Spend it, OP

I redirected for 2 years and informed every catalogue I'd moved

But catalogues just update with the new address and continue to send them to the old. And they add new ones on.

So my old house gets about 30 miscellaneous bits of crap a month - must drive them nuts since I haven't lived there for 5 years

1 Basic definition of theft.E+W. (1)A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.

Stealing? Really?

Space even then The offence you refer too is about interfering with Royal Mail delivery which hasn't happened

We still get mail sometimes for previous owner.The manager at local Royal Mail Sorting Office told me I just needed to write a letter to them listing the names of the people with my address and that would be enough information for them to stop the unwanted mail arriving.It worked.

Sorry I meant we used to get mail before I sent the letter to sorting office.

Normally if you'd found the money on the ground in town or something I'd be one of the ones saying "keep it"...

However this money was not dropped by accident, this is a gift someone has given to a loved one in good faith. I'd hate to think of my nan sending £50 to someone in the post not realising/remembering they've moved, thinking they'd really benefit from it, and it turns out some stranger kept it instead.

Not only that, but what if the sender gets in touch with them eventually and asks if they got the card? It could get back to you and it's going to reflect badly on you if you have just spent it... I suppose you could just lie and say that you marked it as 'return to sender' and gave it back to the post office.