Redirecting mail

[Notcreative23]

AIBU to be annoyed that we're moving house and it costs £59.99 per last name to redirect mail for the year?!? I'm not from the UK and all of my travel documents/things like that are in my maiden name so haven't changed to my DH last name yet because it's not easy to replace these documents once I change. So we would have to pay basically £120. That seems so ridiculous to me.
Is there any way to just change address rather than redirect?! Moving costs are expensive enough as is!!!

If you call anyone who may post you important stuff like the bank etc and change your address you will have no need to redirect your mail.

We've just payed for 6 months post redirect as we have two surnames in the house and it is expensive. Do you really need a year? i only get 6 months to be on the safe side incase iv forgotten to change something. We still get post for the people that moved out over a year ago I wished they had got postal redirect. Once you have moved you can just contact everyone you need to with your new address. Or do you have anyone that could call round and collect post from your old house and post it to you?

If possible leave a forwarding address at your old address too, the post office often fail to redirect properly, its happened to me a few times..when I've paid for the redirection, and you'd be amazed what your forget to change address wise, which still goes to your old address.

..I've even left labels with stamps on to encourage people to forward on my mail, in case the post office dont do it properly

We just did 3 months, that was plenty of time for me to change addresses with all the banks, organisations etc.

I've just had to do this too. 2 surnames. £120. 6-12 months is the same price.
It isn't as simple as just changing address with banks etc. There will be things you will forget and some seem to take longer.

Pissed me off though that I changed address with next who sent a leter to new address confirming changes but also sent a letter to old address saying the same thing! If it hadn't been redirected someone else would have my mail. Identity fraud is easy enough, I don't want anyone having any personal info about me through their letterbox. £1 per week isn't bad really.

Yeh. We did it with two surnames and paid £120 too.

Then we moved again very quickly (within a month) and when I called up to ask if we could change the redirect address I was quoted another £120.

Apparently they'd already 'printed the labels' for the first address so we'd have to pay in full to do it again.

First address was my mum's so just left it, but was a bit

There is a cheaper way: calling every company you've ever given your address to.

I justwanna..My Mum has a similar problem with LeRoudet...They sent her parcel to her old address but the statement to her new one. The person at the old address then started ordering things, size10 and baby clothes, neither which my mum would buy but she was basically getting the bill for. It took ages to unravel, the police were hopeless and she was accused of fraud my Royal Mail

We did a year as I couldn't remember half the places I had to contact to change my name. There's probably still junk mail going to my old address 9 years later!

You are paying for a service! Just think about it. Someone (or technology) has to identify a letter addressed to you. It then has to cross check against the list of required redirections. Then someone (or a machine) has to fix the correct new address label and put it back in the system. All this for £10 a month. Assuming 20 items of mail per month that's 50p per item which is less than the postage cost in the first place!

I used iammoving.com to get template change of address letters for the vast majority of companies/orgs I needed to inform. Then just set up the forwarding service for 3 months for the remainder. Anyone I missed off I figured wasn't important enough to care about. Also, leave your forwarding address with the new occupants so they can forward your mail.

It's expensive and keep in mind it's not infallible - a portion of you post will still end up at the old address. (Usually the important things - the junk comes through fine.)

I recently moved and am so glad I moved a short enough distance that I can regularly pop by and collect my mail (block of flats; communal mail bin) so no need to pay. I'm a freelancer so no idea how many literally thousands of people and companies have been given my old address over the years.