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Original poster

Throwing out previous owners post?

65 replies

BabynamehelpArgh · 02/02/2019 13:48

Wondering about the legality of this....

Previous owners moved out over a year ago. Still receive quite a lot of post for them - mainly rubbish ie catalogues but occasionally letters that look official and increasingly severe...I can recognise a dvla one that’s been sent several times now so I know they haven’t noticed them of change of address and from what I can tell are incurring charges for not taxing the car...

We have no forwarding address for them. Initially I re-posted some things saying ‘not known at this address’ but it went on for so long and there was so much I got annoyed, started saving it in a drawer for if they got in touch and they never did. Drawer got full, life got very busy for me and I made decision to throw it all out...have I done anything wrong here (legally not morally!)

Not really relevant but sellers were not pleasant people and screwed us over on several things...

OP posts:
username10001 · 02/02/2019 16:29

When I moved house 13 years ago now NDN said if you have any post for previous tenant put through our door as in touch with them ok I said .
Anyway not the odd letter it was all sorts bank letters etc . After a few weeks I thought sod this they are using my address so started putting return to sender and sending back in post. Eventually old tenant knocked on my door never introduced herself ( we never met , had moved out by time we bought house ) and said have you got my post I said no it's been returned to sender . Cf previous tenant just said oh looking pissed off Envy.
Anyway years later we still occasionally get the odd letter even one time a p45 ( I opened no return address on envelope) I'm sure may still use our address or have attempted to in the past .
I'd definitely return in post .

DoNotBlameMeIVotedRemain · 02/02/2019 16:52

If you know they are dead just write. "Addressee deceased. Please remove details." Surely that's easier than carrying on getting mail for old occupiers indefinitely. We've been here over 10 years and still get the odd thing. Basically I did the RTS thing for all mail. Most companies stopped but where they didn't I would open mail and forward with suitable message to that person It does take a while but we do seem to have dealt with most things now. I'd rather stop it than keep receiving stuff.

DoNotBlameMeIVotedRemain · 02/02/2019 17:11

In the early days I printed sheets of labels with, "Not at this address. Please return to sender." on so that it took no effort to stick them on then post next time way passing post box.

LoversLane · 02/02/2019 17:23

The people we bought from nearly 10yrs ago didn’t bother redirecting post, they used to pop back every once in a while to collect their mail from us (they rented the place out before we bought and this was the agreement with tenants!). After the third time they did this DH have them a redirection leaflet. After this we starting binning.

We still get the odd letter for them including a very formal looking letter from a solicitor last year. I didn’t open it but looked up the company on the headed envelope and called to explain that it was the wrong address. The solicitor quizzed me about the address and asked me to confirm again that they did not live here. Turns out that all the siblings were contesting a will from a parent and they have their old address for post! Some people are weird!

PickAChew · 02/02/2019 17:24

It is not against the law to open post not addressed to you unless you do it for malicious purposes.

sueelleker · 02/02/2019 17:35

A year after we bought our house from 3 sisters, we got a hospital appointment letter for their Dad; who died before they sold the house! I rang the hospital and explained (Didn't have the sisters' new address)

Svalberg · 02/02/2019 17:41

I used to get letters for a random people who'd never lived here. I rang the sender eventually, it was a council and the CFs had used my address as a forwarding address when they'd left their previous home with council tax arrears. Turns out it's a thing to use the address of a house that's been up for sale as a false address that you're moving to.

OutPinked · 02/02/2019 17:59

I used to send them back at my old address with ‘not at this address’ written across but none of the companies got the message because they still sent them. I just started putting them in the recycling bin.

Original poster
BabynamehelpArgh · 02/02/2019 18:31

Interesting how split the opinions are on this...

I guess I just feel a bit like ‘why should I go to the trouble?’ About it all...

OP posts:
user1474894224 · 03/02/2019 05:19

@Isleepinahedgefund ladyshave, boys sandels and crocs too small for my kids.

ez345 · 03/02/2019 18:54

If it looks important I google the return address on the back of the envelope, phone them and explain they don’t live here. That’s helped for student finance, Santander and Dvla letters in the past. I phoned DVLA and they said to open it so they could pass it on to the relevant department and stop chasing us, which they did.
As it turns out there was lots of bailiff letters and court papers. We prevented a visit by posting off a council tax statement to prove the previous owners no longer lived here.

Sweetpea55 · 03/02/2019 21:36

DP works away from home so if he is working on a contract for a good length of time we rent a flat. I'm used to all the post being delivered for last tenants and usually drop it off at the EA. One flat we had the landlord was obviously having money trouble. There were loads of 'red' letters being delivered. The final straw was despite passing the post to the EA, who in turn gave it to landlord, the bailiffs attended Thankfully we weren't there at the time . EA waived the fee because of the distress caused (their words)

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 03/02/2019 22:27

Somewhere in Lancashire there is a lovely, loyal couple call Squiggle and Illegible-beginning-with-M who sent a Christmas card every year for twenty-three years to Janet and Ted, at the address we lived at until five years ago.

There wasn't a return address. We opened one or two, hoping, but no.

The funny thing about it was that we knew who had lived at that house since 1904, and none of them had been called Janet and Ted.

We did ask up and down the road (there were only forty houses in it) and in the road with a similar name a few hundred yards away, but there was nobody who had any idea who they were or had been.

So if you are Squiggle, or M-illegible, from Lancashire, who used to send a card each year to Janet and Ted in Reading and for all I know still do, they weren't being horrid when they didn't send you one in return. They just never got your cards.

KiteMarked · 03/02/2019 22:31

We've been here almost three years and still get post. I chuck it. I'm not going to go through the inconvenience of re-labelling their letters and trekking to a postbox when one isn't nearby (there was piles of it at first; they came knocking a few times but that quickly stopped).

Highonthehill · 03/02/2019 22:31

We have one of those. Christmas card sent to our house number. After doing a bit if Google i found the lady lived down the road (wrong house number ) so I duly took it to her 2 years ago. Turns out she was moving out just after Christmas but said she would let the friend know that she had now moved and the new address....

Christmas just gone... card arrived again... I don't know where the lady moved too... clearly not a close friend!

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