Next Door Using Our Address

[SundaeGirl]

I think our neighbour is using our address for bills.

We live in an old building that is subdivided into different properties. Our address is the main address with the front door eg The Old Schoolhouse, Little Village. There are neighbours who live at e.g The Flat, The Old Schoolhouse, Little Village and also Housekeepers Cottage, The Old Schoolhouse and The Bakery, The Old Schoolhouse and so on.

The postman knows who everyone is, so letters get to the right door. But we get a lot of letters/bills addressed to one of the neighbours whenever it is not our usual postie. They are never addressed to her at her full address, just to ours (e.g The Old Schoolhouse). It's odd because this is the kind of post where when you are filling in the dropdown menu on address forms, she would have to have chosen our address.

She has a reputation for running out on bills and would have a rubbish credit score, I'm sure. I am getting a bit anxious. DH doesn't want to rock the boat by saying anything and neither do I (she's a lovely nieghbour).

AIBU to stick my head in the sand?

Experian website

(Should read not to include, not It to include!)

I live at 37 but a neighbour appeared to start using our number, she lived at 32. Initially I just shoved the post through her door. Then on one occassion I actually handed it to her, saying that this had come through my letterbox and it was actually for her. However it kept happening so I took to marking the letters for her as "REDELIVERED" - I only had to do it twice and haven't had anything since - fingers crossed.

She may be some sort of snob though, I noticed that the person we sold my late father's house to seem to use the whole street as her address eg Church Way with no number although there were 9 houses in the street. So maybe she wants people to think she lives in the whole old school house rather than part of it.

Good luck, I know how annoying it is.

Another one saying it may be a drop down address thing. Some sites force you to select an option - you cannot input your own address. I live in a property that was subdivided about 30 years ago, so what was property x, is now property x and property xa. Unfortunately whoever provides this drop down list does not recognise the xa, so I have no choice but to select neighbours address.

If it is just one company it could be that they are at fault

I had an order delivered (posted through door) while a neighbour was away, I had no idea because they weren't there so I chased it with the company and they insisted it was delivered, I asked where to and they told me. I asked them to update my address properly and they assured me it was now correct, they sent out a new item as I needed it urgently and said that the other had to be returned by x date or I would be charged for both... Guess where the second one went to! I wrote it down correctly when I placed the order, I was assured it was changed to the correct address over the phone, but still it was wrong

I also receive parcels from a website that insists I am a Mr FeelingSmurfy, every time I order (must have been 30+ times over the many years) I change it, and every time my order arrives it is still insisting I am male!

I would expect it could be a website error.

Although you say they are listed correctly on websites you've looked at, that doesn't necessarily mean all websites have them correctly.

We used to live at an address like Flat 2, 3 High Street.

Some websites allowed us to pick this address. Others didn't have the "flat 2" address as an option, and we had to pick simply "3 High Street". Other online databases, and the council, had us as "First floor, 3 High Street".

I have this problem, my house was built at the end of a existing road so it doesn't appear in the drop down menu. If I'm buying something instore and they need a home address I always tell the person serving to add the letter after the number (only numbers appear). Half the time they don't and if the company sends my mail to next door, if it's the usual postman then he knows but if it's not then my neighbour writes "not known at this address" and sends it back. It has happened with passports, school exam results...it's bloody annoying for both of us.

You have no legal right to open up mail that is not addressed to you

Wrong.

You can open mail if you are not being malicious or intending to deprive the addressee of its contents. If you are opening it to find out where the letter has come from in order to inform the sender that they have the wrong address, then that is fine. I know this because I was getting letter after letter from debt collection agencies for someone who had never lived here. I was told I could open them if it was to get the details of the agencies to tell them that they had been given a false address. I did that, and the letters stopped. Nothing illegal about it.

And drop down menus....I wonder if my parents win!

They bought their home as a new build 28 years ago, it was originally going to be named (say) Smith Court, and was referred to like that until the road was being adopted on completion, but the council for reasons we have never established, didnt like that so they named it Jones Court.

99% of the time their postcode brings up Jones Court but very occasionally it brings up Smith Court, despite Smith Court never being the official name of the road! 28 fucking years! :o

My in-laws' address never did exist according to the Post Office. Their postcode came up with a farmyard down the road. They lived there for over forty years.

You have no legal right to open up mail that is not addressed to you

I second what Bogeyface said. Will also add that if someone appears to be breaking the law by having mail sent to my house with the intent to commit theft or fraud I would be opening it pretty quickly too.

Ms Adora I think that your parents win!

Incidentally, I have started a thread about a theory I have about your husband

I would knock on her door and ask her if she knows she is using your address. If she is "lovely" she will fix it - it's not for you to be embarrassed about or worried about rocking boats.

This may not be sinister.. We were in a similar situation with old buildings and sub-divided addressses. It caused all manner of post issues as so many databases are out of date and many websites don't let you put the address in manually, or don't give you enough lines etc. as another poster said sometimes you end up having to leave off the flat number/ flat name just to make it fit.

Was a bit of a nightmare but nothing worse than mix ups with post. Hopefully it is just an admin thing.

Perhaps your address, THE big house, is more prestigious than Flat 1, the big house. So she prefers that.
Can you rename your house?
Headmaster's Hovel, The Old Schoolhouse....I'm not sure how complicated that is to do.

She may be some sort of snob though, I noticed that the person we sold my late father's house to seem to use the whole street as her address eg Church Way with no number although there were 9 houses in the street. So maybe she wants people to think she lives in the whole old school house rather than part of it.

I used to live in a flat converted from an old house. It too had a 'name' rather than straightforward eg flat 5.

In all the time I lived there, I could never convince the water company to send me a bill, as I was never on their lists.

Wasn't 'pre-internet' - but utility companies weren't on it yet.

Could be similar here. Have you checked the Royal Mail website to see what available addresses they have for your post code?

Bogeyface what? My husband?

business not residential, but we had a situation where Parcelforce wouldn't deliver to XYZ Ltd 1 The Street because their database had ABC Co listed there. They weren't able to knock on the door of 1 The Street and ask if they people there (us) could take in a parcel for XYZ, but they could knock at 3 The Street and ask them to take it in. Even though it wasn't possible to deliver to somewhere where the name didn't match, it was possible to deliver if the address didn't match either .

Postcodes are weird - there are some houses in (I think) Hastings converted to flats where the ground floor has one postcode and the first floor has a totally different one.

Our house at our postcode often doesn't come upon drop down menus and we live in a lodge house that was attached to a sports field some 40 years ago.
In fact I was trying to buy something off a wedding list in John Lewis recently and she had to register my purchase against my neighbours address to put the transaction through (even though I have a John Lewis account registered to my address)
The Post Office still have the address on their data base as belonging to the sports club which causes all sorts of problems with post if our regular postie is away!

Even when they appear in drop downs, the back end systems don't always 'parse' the address correctly for want of a better word. Especially in the kind of situation you describe. We have similar living in eg 10 New Lane, Main Road, Anytown, AB1 23C.

When I search by postcode for AB1 23C it mostly comes up but not always and even if it does the lovely lady at 10 Main Road, Anytown still sometimes gets our post wrongly addressed. If a form has fields but no dropdowns and is badly designed then addresses like mine and your neighbours can cause real problems - there may not be enough fields or you have to put one in as a house name or perhaps flat number and that might not get recorded properly.

As others have said, it won't be affecting your credit and I personally wouldn't automatically assume it's the neighbour deliberately giving out your address, far more likely it's incompetence on behalf of companies and/or the non-regular posties.

Parse?

As in assign the different components of the address (house no. street, road name, etc) to the correct corresponding bits of the database and program they use to print address labels.

You can open mail if you are not being malicious or intending to deprive the addressee of its contents.

To note, that may be okay in the UK, but in the USA, it's highly illegal to open any mail that is not for you, even if it comes to your household. While rarely pursued by the addressees, it is literally a federal offense.

I've been receiving clothing catalogues from various companies addressed to Jane Smith at my address. She doesn't live here and doesn't live in my street, so I know it's not a neighbour who has picked the wrong house number.

However if I google her name, it comes up with a lady of her name living at my house number and street name, but different town, in a state in America! I think she may have signed up online and has typed in the first line of her address which has then matched it to a UK address since these have been UK companies. No clothes have ever been delivered here and no bills come, so I guess she isn't ordering stuff online but it's getting to be annoying.

The first few I phoned the companies up, the most recent one I may send back as return to sender. I'm also planning to check our credit report, just in case, I do find it a bit worrying.