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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

that if you don't know someone well enough to hear they've moved ...

124 replies

PineappleDanish · 19/12/2019 08:35

That you don't need to send a Christmas card?

We've been in our house 12 years. Every Christmas we get a card for the previous residents, no return address. Opened it this year to see if there were more clues inside. Message reads: to from Claire, Niall, Eva, Sarah-Louise and Michael. Hope to catch up with you in 2020.

Yes I hope you catch up with them too Claire, so they can tell you that they moved house in 2008.

Similarly, we had a card through the door yesterday for an ex-neighbour who is now a close friend. They moved out 8 years ago, and don't live too far away. Their card was addressed to wrong house number - for example we're 87, they were 89 and the card was addressed to 81. Postie obviously realised they weren't at 81, so thought the 1 was possibly a 7.

So if you're a Claire living somewhere in the Republic of Ireland who is merrily buying cards each winter and wasting money on postage to Scotland, please stop. They've moved and haven't told you.

OP posts:
BasinHaircut · 19/12/2019 08:40

My DH said exactly the same thing yesterday when we got a card through for the previous owners. Although we’ve only been in our house for 5 years.

This sort of thing would happen to my mum as her Christmas card list includes friends of friends or people they met on holiday when we were kids, as their generation did that sort of shit. But the old owners of our house would only be about 40.

Original poster
PineappleDanish · 19/12/2019 08:42

The old owners of our house were a bit older than us. We had preschoolers when we moved in, their kids were early teenagers. So would be late 50s now probably.

OP posts:
ememem84 · 19/12/2019 08:42

We moved into our place last October. I’ve had cards this week for the previous previous owners. The people before us lived here for 3 years.

We’ve had cards for the pp and the previous owners. Surely it’s not hard to do a mail forward when you leave?! Or tell people you’ve moved?

The previous owners still haven’t got round to changing addresses on some things. I share the same pension provider as the previous owner. And accidentally opened their statement the other day. Was confused as to why I had less money in there than I thought. So have sent it back and let pension people know.

The best though was receiving a new credit card (again accidentally opened) for previous previous owner. Took that back to the bank...

Member984815 · 19/12/2019 09:02

We have the same situation , neighbour had same name as husband , they moved 12 years ago we lived next door , postman assumed cards were for us . I've now moved and the bloody card arrived at my new address 😁 as the postman brings us stuff posted to old address. Last year I readdressed the card to the actual intended persons address , I assumed that would be the end of it .

Notabadger · 19/12/2019 09:11

I think it's the equivalent of being Facebook friends with someone. A link from when you met them 10 years ago but haven't spoken since!

sayingno · 19/12/2019 09:11

My parents bought their home in 2003. They still get Christmas cards for the previous owners. In bloody 2019. It's so funny

Clymene · 19/12/2019 09:15

I get a card from upstate New York every year from a lady who tells me all about her dogs.

Well she thinks she's telling the people who used to live here but I enjoy reading her cards BlushGrin

Titsywoo · 19/12/2019 09:15

I said this to DH last night! Same couple have been sending the previous residents xmas cards for the last 7 years. So many people have a list that they just automatically send to. Very bizarre and wasteful.

kelper · 19/12/2019 09:18

We got a card for the house over the road the other day, the owners sadly passed away 10 years ago, and the house has been sold and completely renovated since then, this is the first time we've had a card for these people too, which made it even stranger!
We regularly get christmas cards for the house at the top of our road too, every year I take the cards round to her and she says Oh I must tell so and so we're number 2 instead of number 3.
This has been going on for 17 years.......

EggysMom · 19/12/2019 09:18

If you're a Joan Skidmore who doesn't live at no.36 but something similar, can you let me know? Smile

We've never received wrong cards before. This is our sixth Christmas in the house. Joan was not the person here before us. She is not either of our neighbours. A quick search on 192.com suggest Joan has lived in our postcode for over ten years. So she obviously has a new friend who has written down her address wrong ...

beautifulstranger101 · 19/12/2019 09:20

hehe! This is why I dont bother to send cards to anyone I dont have at least minimal contact with. Its such a fake, pointless thing to do. Hey- I dont care to contact you or see you once during the 12 years (you could be dead for all I know!) but here's a Christmas card gushing about how we should meet up.

Fatted · 19/12/2019 09:24

A couple of years ago, my parents got a card or invitation sent to their house for the previous occupants. I can't quite remember what it was, but it was definitely something handwritten and my mum was laughing about it because my parents moved into their house in 1989.

greathat · 19/12/2019 09:32

I had several calls from USA of someone trying to wish someone a happy birthday on my answer phone once. They eventually decided they must be out having a fab bday and sang an awful rendition of happy birthday. Was highly entertaining

Blobby10 · 19/12/2019 09:36

I lived in my house for four years and every year got a Christmas card addressed to previous occupants but the handwriting was obviously an elderly person so I just put it through the correct letter box - they had only moved down the road! It made me quite sad and I wondered if this person just couldn't comprehend that the lady and her sons had moved Sad

Burlea · 19/12/2019 09:36

We moved in our home 2007 and every year we get a card from Bill, Jean, David and Susan, addressed to the previous owners. Funnily enough last week we saw the previous owners as they were back in the area. (they had moved over 100 miles away). Told them about this card as it had only come the day before. They can't remember who they were.

MzHz · 19/12/2019 09:38

Ooh! I have this too!

We moved in a year ago (today!) had cards last year for previous residents... previous to the bloke we bought from who’d lived here 10 years!

This year the card came but this time with a ROUND ROBIN!

Now... dilemma time...

This round robin is INSUFFERABLY smug, all about their little trips, the poor old dog kids (adult) achievements/groin strains (I’m not even kidding)

My ds was stunned at how anyone could think that their lives were sooo important to people with whom they clearly have no contact and haven’t done for over a decade that they’d feed them all this information unsolicited

So.... this round robin has an address

Do I drop them a note and bring them up to speed, or do I leave it and chortle and chuckle at their smugness

Perhaps I can include it in our family tradition? read it out at the Christmas table?

Reply... pretending to be the addressees ... no that could go vair vair wrong Xmas Grin

Howmanysleepsnow · 19/12/2019 09:48

@MzHz oooh! Please post a picture!

beautifulstranger101 · 19/12/2019 09:51

@MzHz YES! reply, but make it smugger than the smuggest person who ever smuggled. Brag and humble brag and when you think you haven't bragged enough, brag some more! Please do this- it sounds hilarious

AlunWynsKnee · 19/12/2019 09:57

We bought our old house from a woman who lived there with her partner. Every year for the following decade we got a card for her and her ex husband. The first year we forwarded it but the card was always 'To him and her' so I think it was his friend or relative. Probably elderly by the handwriting.
So in 13 years he hadn't told them he'd divorced and moved.

Hoppinggreen · 19/12/2019 10:00

One of our ex neighbours who moved about about 6 or 7 years ago always hand delivers a card, we don’t see them it just appears.
Two other families have lived in that house since they left and we were never very close to them in the first place! I don’t mind, it’s quite nice but it does baffle me somewhat.

TotheletterofthelawTHELETTER · 19/12/2019 10:02

I’ve only lived in my house for 2 years, we moved in January 2018.

The previous owner died. We got 2 or 3 Christmas cards for him last year through the post. It made me sad to think of some older person wondering why previous owner hadn’t sent them one.

twoshedsjackson · 19/12/2019 10:05

I had this for years, with no means of forwarding to the correct address. It became an annual game; how many times would I write "not known at this address" on the envelope and re-post it before the postman got bored? The all-time record was 6. The previous-owner-but-one of the house was an elderly man, so I can only guess that the sender was one of his friends, who then died......the lady who sold me the house had her mail forwarded, and all I had to pass on were some hand-delivered cards the first Christmas I was here. It's not difficult to have your mail redirected.
I also had some baffling phone messages for a while, when a mosque on the other side of London posted an incorrect contact number.(7 instead of 8 gives inner London instead of outer London) I gather from Google that they specialise in catering for their local Bengali community. If the messages had been in English, I could have warned them that their careful message had not reached the right person.

Petrichor11 · 19/12/2019 10:10

This is my fifth Christmas in my home and each year I receive a Christmas card for the previous tenant. I opened it to see if there was a return address but sadly not. Nice card though!

I help deliver scout post every year and the number of mis-addressed cards is crazy! And this is people who live within about an hour of each other at most!

ChocolateChipMuffin2016 · 19/12/2019 10:11

We still get cards addressed to the previous owner (Been here 5 years), but she’s passed away. I’d love to let the person know but people don’t put return addresses on Christmas cards.

bingoitsadingo · 19/12/2019 10:11

Sometimes stuff just gets confused.

Some relatives of ours moved house and my dad wrote the address down wrong. Sent them Christmas cards they obviously never received for years and years. Happily in regular contact in the mean time via email, and they visited us now and then (lived v far away so we never went to theirs to realise the address was wrong).
We didn't realise for years, could quite easily have never realised.

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