AIBU to be fed up of receiving these letters?

[paddlemyowncanoe]

We moved into our new house about a year ago. Soon afterwards we had a letter from DVLA . We didn’t check carefully, and assumed it was about our change of address re the car/ driving licences. When we opened the letter we realised it wasn't for us after all. Even though the address was correct eg “29 Happy Valley” it was actually for “Crappy Car Sales” (name change). It was a change of ownership and based on the car registration we established it was for “79 Happy Valley” . We wrote on it “opened in error”, posted it though their letter box (as they didn’t open the door), and assumed it was a simple error.

Since then we have had:
Bailiffs knocking on the door about outstanding finance on a car belonging to “Crappy Car sales”, which was registered to this address.
4 further letters addressed to “Crappy Car sales” at No 29, all of which have been returned to DVLA with “not known at this address” written on them

I have checked the usual sources, and can find no details of “Crappy Car Sales” registered as a business at either 29 or 79 Happy Valley.

Out of interest (nosiness) , I also checked on the car detailed in the first letter we opened, and it was parked on the road for several months with no tax and no MOT.

Clearly it is no mistake that they are registering cars to my address at no 29 rather than theirs at 79. I don’t quite understand what advantage they gain by doing so, other than a slight delay in being traced by bailiffs. I don't think its to do with having difficulty in finding somewhere to park off road and registering a SORN as they have room for at least 3 cars on their driveway.

I’m reluctant to just bin the letters in case we are visited by the bailiffs again, but I’m getting fed up of trotting to the post box to redirect these letters.

AIBU to be fed up of receiving these letters? What reason could they have for registering cars at my address? And is there anything else I can do in addition to returning the letters to DVLA?

Have you called the dvla.. returning the letteres never work in mr experience

Would recommend not just redirecting to DVLA. Although there is a minor postage cost attached to it, add any into a new envelope and send it directly to the most appropriate department of the DVLA (research, and if necessary ask them what that is). I would also write a brief letter detailing your history with this (just moved, received X letters that have been redirected since April, etc).

Any 'Not known'/ 'Return to Sender' mail just gets sent to one dead letter office which I believe is in Ireland, to get dealt with, not to the place you think it should be returned to. With the state of the post as it is now, it will take its sweet time before anything happens that way.

I had this issue with a high outstanding bill for a rented address. No results from 'Not known...' post but issue stopped when I redirected deliberately to the actual intended company.

Some similar is happening to me OP. except it’s PCNs. But I did get a letter from the DVLA and wrote to them “not my vehicle, blah blah” and asked for a reply confirming this, which I did.
But it’s fraud. So following with interest

You’re doing the Crappy Car people a massive favour by redirecting these letters, and chances are you will have bailiffs on your doorstep once again. I had this in a flat i used to live in years ago: I actually opened one of the letters and contacted the firm direct on the telephone number given. That certainly stopped the letter is coming to me. You know where the people actually live: they don’t seem to have any problem with you being bothered by bailiffs, so do yourself a favour and tell the company where the Crappy Car people actually live.

Surely they are committing fraud if they have declared the wrong address several times over, rather than a one off mistake.
I would call DVLA and if it happens again or with other things then I would contact the police on 101 and get their advice.

Oh, added bit to the post above: if there is a name with signature, signing off on the letter/s that you opened (such as the Customer Services manager), also use that name and title as the addressee when you address the envelope of the stuff you send back.

We had similar letters for years after moving into our house.

After yet another one from a debt tracing solicitor, I rang her up and asked her very politely to stop sending letters to my address as Mr X hadn't lived there for over 10 years.

She got very snotty and said I'd committed an offence by opening mail addressed to someone else.

So I threatened to report her to the Law Society for not doing her job properly as a very simple search of the electoral roll would have confirmed that Mr X moved on years ago.

The letters stopped after that!

Hilly17, I did try to get advice from police/CAB. They were not much help - will say that you must redirect and absolutely should leave the letters sealed. At that point I did as much research as I could about what actually happens to 'Return To Sender' post.

Thank you all for your replies and helpful suggestions, especially @Ormally for your detailed info about what happens to "Return to sender" letters.

BTW I did call DVLA the first time it happened and gave them the address that I believed the car should have been registered to. I also provided these details to the bailiffs, who to be fair were happy to accept that I had no connection to "Crappy Cars" .

I naively assumed that was the end of the matter, but clearly it was not a one off.

Next time I receive such a letter from DVLA I will follow up these suggestions and hope that it does eventually bring an end to these unwanted letters.

Thanks again

About 2 years after I moved into my flat I began to receive letters for a name I didn't recognise including stuff from DVLA. I returned to sender and didn't think that much of it as the flat had been rented out for years and receiving post for former tenants wasn't that uncommon. However one day a letter marked 'urgent do not ignore' came through so I opened it and it was a debt recovery agent. Someone had registered their car to my address and had racked up a load of London congestion charge and parking fines. The debt recovery agent were great when I spoke to them but I moved out that week so I don't know if anything else arrived.

My flat was originally a house that had been split and we had a communal front door where the postman put all three flats post through so one of the tenants would then leave everyone's post on a side table to collect. Therefore it was easy to intercept anyone else post. The tenants from one flat were all from the same country and the name on the envelope matched that country so I think the tenant purposely used my address to avoid the charges but being able to access the important post she may need.

We've had this at both the houses we've owned.
First house - constant run of debt collection letters for the previous owners. In the end I opened one and called the company and gave them the forwarding address we had. Letters stopped for about a year, only to start up again as I think the debt was sold on to another company.
This house - whoo boy. We've had everything. Wage slips, bank statements, DVLA letters, even the police turned up one day. We have no forwarding address so we couldn't help them. It did die down, but the DVLA stuff keeps coming even though we've lived here for 8 years. We've also had debt collection letters too. It's all returned to sender.