Receiving letters to my address from a bank for a stranger

[CatsRidingRollercoasters]

We keep receiving letters from Lloyd's Bank addressed to someone who doesn't live here. We bought the house almost a decade ago and he's not the previous owner who was here for longer than that.

We returned the first few letters to sender and eventually rang the bank when they kept coming. They promised to update their system and said we wouldn't receive any more. They wouldn't discuss it any further because for confidentiality reasons.

2 months on and another letter has come. I'm quite worried. What possible legitimate reason could there be for someone having what seems to be a current account registered to my address?

Also annoyed because the bank clearly didn't deal with it after all.

My address is shown correctly, including the postcode. I have no idea who this person is.

Has anyone else had this? Best to go into the branch or better to write to them do you think? Thanks all.

When I got several letters from a bank with my address but not my name, I opened one and it was a demand for repayments due on a loan. I phoned the bank immediately and didn't receive any more.

The name was very unusual and a search brought up only one person in the UK, in a city hundreds of miles from me.

Three words - Data Protection Act

This happened to me and I emailed eventually saying I was harassed and the government fraud team emailed me a massive apology and I didn't get another letter

I don't think I was believed before then

We had the previous owners' son's stuff coming here for years. He didn't even bother informing dvla which meant the police showed up at our house when he caused an accident and fled the scene. They advised to return everything to sender. If I'm concerned I now write a cover note and send it to the bank. It goes to a different team and I've got a record of when I returned something. Usually only takes one go.

I got fed up with redirecting and returning to sender so took an unopened letter into the relevant bank branch.

Lady said she could see note on file saying incorrect address, so my redirection notes had been picked up, but accounts had to have an address associated with them so she couldn't remove mine until she had a new address to enter.

I said that the bank needed to incentivise them to correct the address or I'd start charging them, the bank, redirection services. I said can't you block their card or something so they have to contact the bank to sort it out. She did just that. No more letters from that bank.

If the customer has not changed their address the bank has to send mail to that address. They can not take instructions from anyone else, regardless if they have ID or not.
An example would be a marital dispute and one party decided to be vindictive and say the other party had moved when they hadn't.
If the person had an account years ago and has forgotten they are very unlikely to contact the bank.
I would maybe check your credit file to make sure nobody has used your address to obtain credit.

Contact Radio 4s You & Yours programme if you have the evidence and it persists.

Complain officially and demand a full explanation for their incompetence.

Worked for me and I got £100 compensation

Op, how long did the previous owners live in your house?

We bought our house exactly 20 yrs ago and started to get post about 12 yrs ago, from 2 or 3 different sources, for previous owners, the main one being about shares held through an Irish stockbroker. I Sent letter after letter back but they never stopped.

Our neighbour then bumped into previous owner and found they had moved again and she got their address. I started to forward any post on, initially nicely (most were for the man and neighbour said he had died) but when the post continued in wife's name, I added some strong words on the envelope questioning the post coming to our address after 15+ yrs.

I was thinking a couple of weeks ago that I would delete the forwarding address I had, as hadn't had any post for a long time, when lo and behold another letter came. M&S storecard. I sent back to M&S with some strong words and 'last known address...' on it.

We also once got a DVLA letter about renewing a driving licence at 70. Didn't recognise the name, and was a bit wary as it was a foreign name - neighbour told me the last but one owners were scandinavian and it sounds like it was her. Guess they went back abroad without cancelling licence.

So it could well be a previous owner, is what I am trying to say. If we had sold up after ten years, our buyers would be mystified about post coming here still, in our sellers name!

Thanks for all the replies! kath the previous owners were here for around 15 years as far as I know, but from what you've experienced it's possible that this is a predecessor!

Will report back once I've spoken to the bank. I'll certainly be following up any conversations in writing this time, and asking for the name of whoever I speak to.

I'll also knock on the doors of the same house numbers on the streets with similar names, just in case!

We had a letter addressed to a random woman who had applied for a bank loan but it had been refused. I rang the bank, and at first they were quite offish when I said I wasn't the person to whom the letter was addressed to. However, when I explained we had never heard of this person and she had never been at our address their attitude changed instantly, and they said it would be passed onto their fraud department.

Haven't heard a dicky bird since. That was a few years ago.

I would keep ringing the bank.

Yes we had individual letters from a finance company to a husband and wife who were in thousands of pounds of debt, and the letters were threatening legal action to get the money back. They were a couple who had never lived in the house, although DH wondered whether the previous owners had taken on an alias as they left in a hurry following a cheap sale, for a much reduced price.

It was quite scary, as I was a SAHM with one toddler at the time, and we were also worried about our credit rating being affected. We rang loads of times informing them that the couple had never lived in the house, it took about 2 years before the letters stopped altogether.

We had a very similar problem in our previous house. The owner had left quickly because of a failed business venture and we kept getting business letters coming to our address. He was quite clearly hiding from the taxman and the neighbour, who had been his partner in the business, wanted us to simply hand the letters over to him. We didn't do that, as we were totally fed up with receiving the said letters, so we just returned them to sender.

He didn't have anything redirected, we received Dogs Trust letters among others.

It was quite clearly a scam, as the neighbour's house was repossessed a year after we moved away. We were very glad to get away, as there really was reason genuinely worried about there being a poor credit rating attached to this house.

Btw, we really don't have a poor credit rating ourselves lol.

According to Experian, credit checks nowadays are on people not addresses, so whatever somebody else who previously, currently, or never lived at your address did, that will not affect your credit checks. Your credit report is only linked to another person if you have something like a joint bank account.

Piles of mail, and potential harassment from debt collectors, is another matter of course.

If you have tried to correct the situation and it re-occurs, forward the letters to the Internal Audit department of the bank, with a covering note. Internal Audit look at processes and controls so will be wanting to know why previous requests to deal with the matter have not been actioned.

As a PP mentioned this is also data protection but that takes longer to sort out via the ICO.

I've had a couple of letters recently from previous banks informing me of changes in conditions, overdraft fees etc. Both accounts they relate to are closed, one has been closed for over 10 years. I think banks are just rubbish about updating mailing lists and providing his is what your mail is, it's probably nothing more sinister than that. Bloody annoying and not rocket science tho.

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