WWYD - final demands

[newmomof1]

I wanted to put this into WWYD but couldn't find the topic so didn't know if it's been removed as a board.
If not, MNHQ please feel free to move the post!

We have been getting a lot of letters addressed to people who used to live in our house, around 6 years ago, as tenants.
It is now our family home (for just over 3 years).

I have been Returning to Sender, but they still keep being sent to us.
Yesterday we received an official looking letter, so I opened it (yes I know this is against the law but that's not the point of the thread so don't bother pointing it out!).

The intended recipient has a very large debt (in the tens of thousands) and was paying off £5 a month, which they have now defaulted on (how you default on £5 a month I'll never know but they were dicks when they lived here so I'm not surprised).

As the sender is ignoring the RTS's and the recipient has clearly not changed their address officially, and has no intention of paying off the debt, I'm concerned that at some point bailiffs might turn up at my door demanding money.

Obviously I can prove that these people no longer live here, but I don't have a forwarding address.

Would you contact the bank that the debt is with, or would this cause me grief for opening the letter?
Should I just keep returning the letters every time they come through the door?

I had to open the letters too in the end. Sent an email to the company stating that xxx doesn't live here for at least X years and if I receive nay more mail from them I will consider that a harassmen. I added name of an estate agent who they can contact in regards to previous tenant.
Bad signed as
Kind regards
Current Tennant

It worked. I think mainly because I have them the EA contact so they had someone else to contact.

Tenant 🙄

I had this and contacted the company and said they hadn't lived here in x years. I was surprised they just accepted my word but I never heard from them again.

Maybe dig out a copy of your council tax bill so you have it handy as proof if necessary.

yes contact them! you do not want bailiffs arriving at your door!

I had this in my old house, they hadn't lived there for at least 5 years prev to me moving in so it was clear they had no intention of changing their address.

I rang every company that sent a final demand and told them they weren't at this address and I wanted them to stop sending things to my house. They did. although one asked me if I had a forwarding address and I just said I didn't even know who they were, they weren't the person I bought the house from and I didn't have any more info.

the letters stopped and no bailiffs turned up.

I think its only illegal if you're going to do something naughty with it like steal details or something.

Remember that private bailiffs can't enter AFAIK. Only court appointed ones can and you can then easily show the person they are looking for is not there. If anyone else tries to forcefully get in or keeps banging the door I would call the police had tell them that debt collectors are scaring you had you don't even know the person who they are looking for

Is the intended recipient the person who lived in the house before you, or just some random person?

I've had similar and I contacted the people who held the debt. They asked me to prove that I was who I said I was and that I lived where I said I did - which was annoying. But I did, and then the letters stopped. (I also did a bit of digging and it turned out that the person they wanted lived at number 11 while I lived at number 1 - the dangers of the drop down menu, I think.)

We got a repossessed house. One time we had a bailiff turn up. I just said that they hadn't lived here for 5 years and we had no forwarding address.
We had a slightly more persistent phone caller, to which after a fortnight of daily calls I asked for his name, and his company name and told him if he called once more I would be contacting my solicitor about harassment. He never called again.

We had similar in our old property. Loads of mail, they ignored all return to sender. I looked up the company and it was debt collection. I rang the company and said they’d moved out and we didn’t have a forwarding address (it was a couple who split up and we only had her new address, not his, letters were to him). They said thanks for letting them know and the letters stopped.

I did it once. I just said that i automatically opened letters without looking at them.

A search on the electoral role, council tax etc would show them the occupiers. Bailiffs are supposed to do that before coming to an address, under their code of practice.

They wouldn't get a Court order to enter the property without those checks.

Ah great - thanks all! I will contact the company that hold the debt 🙂

I had this and when I phoned the collection company they were very unpleasant. I found the previous tenants on Google and 192.com and got their new address.

From then onwards I included a note with the new address inside and the date they moved when returning to sender. I also turned the letters round and wrote the return address on the envelope so they had to open them to see where they had been sent, and also see the note.

It was a last resort but it worked.

We had this as well, eventually from chatting to the neighbours got an approximate address from one of the brothers and a work address for the other so whenever letters arrived sent them back with a note on saying that they no longer lived here and giving the address the neighbours had given us. The letters stopped and I do wonder if they caught up with them.

I've also been in this situation. Sent back to sender for months and nothing changed, so eventually we opened everything and called them all saying they no longer lived there. Only then did it stop.

How stressful, I bet the past owners knew what they were doing.

We had this and called up, they asked if we were sure that the previous tenant wasn’t there.

“Oh hang on, yeah they were hiding in the fridge for the past 3 years. I did wonder why there were footprints in the butter. I’ll just pass you over.”

we had this very same thing when we moved into our last property - we called the relevant companies & it stopped.

Some demands are not even for former Tennant's. People somehow manage to use other addresses. Once our landlord who owned the house for 20 years ended up scratching their head because even she didn't know who the heck is that debt collector looking for😂

It's not illegal to open mail, better to do that then end up with bailiffs at your door

I had mail to some odd name at my address, got a spidey sense with the second one so opened it. Someone had tried to open a bank account at my address...I was the only one to of lived there

We had this recently (MORTIFIED)- we had forgotten when moving to update the DVLA so unbeknownst to us we had being chased by Bailiffs for an unpaid parking ticket at our old flat. New owners gave letter to estate agents who contacted us and we could sort it out (after a HUGE bill sob sob). I would contact your estate agents and ask them to phone the old tenants/owners.

I just did the return to sender bit but also wrote ‘not at this address since ...’. That seemed to do the trick.

We had to open letters too and call several company's, several times and we still had a debt collector at the front door. They finally seem to have stopped now.

Yesterday we received an official looking letter, so I opened it (yes I know this is against the law ....

Actually in this case it isn't.

Personally anything that comes through my letterbox gets opened.

I echo what some others have said. I had the same when we moved in. I rang them and they just accepted my word that they didn't live there anymore.

We had similar issue in our old property - most concerning was a letter from their child's school sent about 3 or 4 years after they left! A year after they had moved we got a letter like yours from a bailiff company and opened it too. We were worried as it came days before we left on holiday and we worried they would come and break in and steal our stuff.

It took a number of years to stop but eventually these companies got the drift that these people didn't live here anymore.