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've had this at, ooh, every house I’ve lived in since I left home. Threats from bailiffs, appointments for debt collectors, final demands...I’ve seen the lot.

Letters for someone who doesn’t live here are sent back with “Return to sender, [recipient] moved out [date]” on it. Any further correspondence is opened and more detail written on before returning to sender. If there’s a number I might call. Ultimately, if it carries on I return correspondence with a covering letter that reiterates the situation (moved out/not known etc), that any further correspondence for the original addressee will be put in the bin, and any attempt to contact me directly will be treated as harassment. No company has ever continued to contact me after that.

If debt collectors turn up, refuse to let them in and explain the situation to them. I believe they are not allowed to enter your property without your permission. Most of the ones I’ve spoken to have been quite polite and accepted that I’m not who they’re after. Keep a copy of some ID by the door if necessary with a copy of your council tax bill to prove the property’s occupants.

many years ago, I was running a lot of testing on an insurance system. It was fed with a lot of made-up data which was passed on to insurers test systems for evaluation.

It amused me when some of the test names and addresses started receiving post from all over the place. Clearly someone, somewhere has played very fast and loose with data protection and flogged our test data as a real mailing list.

One of the reasons I knew was our team used our real postcodes, but completely fictitious names - so we got to see the letters.

Even now - 11 years on, I get the occasional one.

And people wonder why I have no faith in any database.