To get annoyed with being used as a postbox

[Hothammock]

About 2 months ago we started getting post for a name who doesn't live at my property, has never lived at my property. Conscious of the risk of fraud I kept a record of the company it was from and then did 'return to sender not at this address' and shoved it back in the postbox.

About a week later, a woman turned up to say she was a relative of a lady a few doors down and to ask if we were getting Mail for someone else. She got DH at the door who wasn't aware of the letter I had returned so he said no. She told DH that when the mail comes he should give it to their relative x neighbour and explained her own husband had set up a redirect and changed all his banking details etc to the wrong address-our house rather than their relatives house down the street.

I thought this was all a bit odd especially as the woman wasn't claiming to be the person on the letter, and it wasn't my neighbour coming to explain this, for all we knew it was a random stranger.

After this we started getting loads more post and some with redirected stickers on. Basically someone had set up a redirect with Royal mail to our house. It says it lasts to October 2021 on the envelopes!

We now get more mail for this person than for ourselves.

The woman hasn't been seen since and I haven't seen my neighbour either-she works shifts and hasn't made any effort to speak to me etc about this. She is a nice friendly lady and we chat maybe 2 or 3 times a year if we bump into each other on our street. She lives alone and is in the process of selling her house so the story of a relative redirecting post there until October doesn't add up anyway!

Aibu to shove it all back in the postbox as not at this address? I am really irritated about this random woman's husband using my address whether it's an accident or not, she doesn't seem to be doing anything to correct her mistake and surely I shouldn't just be handing over post addressed to x man to a random woman claiming to be connected to a neighbour. They do not even live at the neighbours house either.

Wow thanks for all your replies. I knew something was wrong about this but I couldn't put my finger on it!
When I looked at online royal mail say you have to pay again to change the address in a redirect so I assumed that might be an excuse for the person. It is very odd they are just leaving the mail here. It includes bank statements and pay statements from the employer. Council tax info on a previous address....

Some is redirection and some is actually direct mail. He has changed his details to my house address for the latter.

I would call Royal Mail or go down to the post office to tell them that you are receiving mail that has been mistakenly redirected to your house. They'll then be able to cancel the redirect and contact whoever arranged it to sort it out.

It's strange that it hasn't been cancelled already as they have obviously realised that they put the wrong address. I doubt there's anything sinister behind it though - they probably just don't want to pay again to get it redirected to the right address.

It's not OK for them to put you out like this and expect you to take their mail round for 6 months, so just cancel it yourself.

@DancesWithDaffodils

There is no point returning to sender - they dont have your address. You need to deal with Royal Mail redirection.

Yes exactly... I wouldn't return to sender as you won't know whether they actually sort out the redirection or not. You need to go to Royal Mail directly.

Well, let’s put it this way, if there wasn’t something dodgy going on, he wouldn’t be doing this. He is hiding from someone and that doesn’t bode well for the OP.

@BlackCatShadow

Well, let’s put it this way, if there wasn’t something dodgy going on, he wouldn’t be doing this. He is hiding from someone and that doesn’t bode well for the OP.

I think the only dodgy thing is that they don't want to fork out another £50 or whatever it is to get the mail redirected to the right place

The redirection staff are really helpful. There will be a code on the redirect sticker which is the number for the account. Ring the redirection team, tell them the number on the sticker and ask them to stop the redirect

Haven't you had any redirect paperwork from Royal Mail? I've set up a couple in the past and always get a slip that confirms the redirect agreement and gives contact numbers etc to call.

But it’s not just redirected mail, he is getting stuff sent to the house directly too. Important stuff like bank statements and council tax. Who does that?

Please go to Royal Mail with this, doesn’t sound right at all

Stop giving the post over, when they come over tell them to fix the wrong address issue. They will have correspondence from Royal Mail when setting it. Tell them to fix it or you will refuse the mail in future

It's Royal Mail, not the Post Office. 2 different companies.

Sounds super dodgy! Definitely don’t hand over any mail as they can then use that as proof of address for other things - just tell them nothing has arrived if they get shirty (make sure your DH knows this too!)

Report to Royal Mail and get the redirect sorted as a start.

Is the old address nearby? Can you do some sleuthing?

Definitely dodgy. Contact Royal Mail and tell them, as the sender won't have your new address.

If it continues it may be worthwhile reporting to the police as some sort of fraud may being committed.

We had this issue and received post including child’s school report. Transpired that the school, and the mother, were told that the father lived at our address.
Couldn’t be an error as house was a newly converted barn and we were the first to live there, and all properties had names, not numbers.
We eventually found that this person had looked around the barn when it was for sale and just decided to use the address; bizarre!

@LadyPenelope68

Go to the Post Office and lodge an objection to the Re-direction. This happened to my sister and it massively impacted her credit rating and she had issues with parking tickets turning up that weren’t hers etc, etc. It was an absolute nightmare.

This is a misconception - credit ratings are attached to a person, not an address. So if your name is Brown and the letters are in the name of Smith, this will not impact you

From Experian:

Can previous house owners affect my credit score? No – credit checks are done on people, not addresses. Your address is simply used alongside other information to help confirm your identity. You can be linked to other people on your credit report if you share finances with them, such as a joint mortgage.

www.experian.co.uk/consumer/guides/location-and-address

Doghead’s reply reminded me of the AIBU thread - ‘To think that most people aren’t very nice’.

Just another who evidently enjoys having a safe, anonymous, and entirely unwarranted go at someone else.

OP, as pps have said, this has ‘dodgy’ written all over it. You have been given very good advice, and I say that as someone who was bombarded with debt-collectors’ mail for the former resident.

Call up royal mail and talk to them.

"She told DH that when the mail comes he should give it to their relative x neighbour and explained her own husband had set up a redirect and changed all his banking details etc to the wrong address-our house rather than their relatives house down the street."

And what did your husband say?

That you wouldn't be doing it & the wrong redirect needed to be sorted out?

Sounds very dodgy. It is one thing to put the wrong address on the redirection information but to also be changing it on other stuff is very odd. I would contact the redirection people and maybe speak to your neighbour and ask her what she knows? They must be confused if they are expecting mail and none is coming.

Extremely dodgy! But when I set up a redirect recently, I got a letter sent to my new address that said something like ‘a redirect has been set up for This Person at this address, if this has been done in error please contact us...’ so there will definitely be a mechanism in place to stop the redirected mail. People can’t just get their mail redirected anywhere and everywhere.

The fact that he’s changed his bank details etc to your address is more worrying, though, and shows it isn’t a simple mistake. I’d definitely be returning those to sender as ‘Not at this address’. Once the bank start getting post back they should note it on his account. I once had an old student bank account that I had forgotten all about, and when I remembered and chased it up they had marked my account as dormant because the post they’d been sending to my old address had been returned.

Something is dodgy. Whoever that visitor was, I wouldn't be handing anything over to her.

Remember, letters, utility bills etc addressed to a person can be used to set up bank accounts and so forth. I'd just keep bunging them back in the post with "Not known at this address - return to sender" on them if you can't get it resolved by Royal Mail.

What an annoying hassle!

It’s a good idea to check electoral roll and go to Royal Mail about it. However it looks like a genuine mistake to me so I would ask your neighbour first. If this person wrongly assumed the house number, filled everything in and then went abroad he now can’t do anything from abroad.

“This is a misconception - credit ratings are attached to a person, not an address. So if your name is Brown and the letters are in the name of Smith, this will not impact you”

But in reality it does, because all the debt collectors look up the address on the credit reference database and bombard your house with letters threatening court action and visits in person.

I am speaking from experience on this one. My nightmare started with one bank statement to someone who had never lived at my house and snowballed from there.

@ThumbWitchesAbroad

"Have a standard letter ready and send to all of the official organisations that are writing to you - something like Mr X does not live here and has never lived here, please correct your records and advise me when you have done this.” Don’t just reply on Return to Sender for financial stuff."

This won't work if the mail is on re-direct - the companies still have the old address, it's Royal Mail who are directing it to the OP's address.

OP has stated that some of the letters are now coming to her direct.

Royal Mail and The Post Office are two completely separate private companies. Nothing to do with the post office, they have no control over the Mail once it leaves the post room. It's Royal Mail that you need to contact. Send them an email, they are usually very good at responding.