To wish the old owners of of house would change their sodding address?

[TerribleCustomerCervix]

We bought our house in September 2020. Very smooth sale, old owners very obliging and left the place so clean you could eat your dinner off the floor.

But we are STILL getting post for them- I’ve not been opening another, but by the stamps/logos on the envelopes I can see it’s loads of official stuff. Bank statements for their adult kids, HMRC and bank stuff for the self-employed builder ex-owner, parking fines. We just got a brown envelope letter which is clearly a reminder about last months unpaid parking fine.

I wanted to start returning them to sender, but DH doesn’t want to. He’s been giving them to another neighbour who is still in contact with old-owners to pass on, who is now understandably getting pissed off at having to play Postman Pat.

I’m also a bit worried about our address still being linked to the previous owners business, especially with HMRC.

Am I being unreasonable to say to DH he’s being soft, and from now on everything is going back to the sender?

Send me your address and I’ll start using it for official documents for a few months. If you can get them sent on to me that would be great
& treat yourslef to a handful of dodgy credit card applications while you're at it

I write on the envelope “return to sender - person no longer lives here - this is a GDPR issue” seems to work

I worked in a back for a few years. I remember a woman coming in and absolutely screaming at me because we had blocked her account.

After some investigation it has Happened because we had her old address on our system and she had never updated it and someone had returned mail to us.

She was so angry at them, loudly exclaiming that it was thoughtless and they knew she popped by every few months for her post.

I asked her when she moved and she said "oh six years ago, I didn't want to change the address cause my mum
Opens my post"

When we had this at our old address we started with ‘return to sender’. After 18 months of it, we just put it in the bin, unless we happened to be taking a parcel to the post office and we’d take a stray letter with us. I know someone in here will berate me but I bet it’s someone who’s irritating their old neighbour and I’m completely unrepentant.

Now, I’m the first owner of a new build so no ex-residents. Woo hoo!

Not illegal to open post addressed to previous occupier - and you definitely should if it's things like credit cards, bills, loans, mobiles, DVLA, court documents or registered company related stuff. And check your credit file.

@Pyri

Why would anyone open someone else’s post and phone up to say the address is wrong; just mark as “return to sender”!

Some of them (DVLA) say that you can't return to sender on the back. You have to send it to a different address so you have to open it.

Why does your DH think the current neighbours will be upset if you RTS?

Surely it's far more likely (if any of them care at all, which is unlikely) that they'll think you're imposing on the neighbour doing the forwarding - especially if they're making it clear they're pissed off!

I'd stick them all in my handbag and RTS when I next pass a postbox. He's being ridiculous.

@SheWoreYellow

I’ll be the lone voice with your DH

How hard is it to pass some letters to a neighbour every few weeks?

How hard is it to change your address with the bank etc?

I had this. The person who rented the flat I bought had a lot of correspondance from police, banks etc.
I just wrote “return to sender - moved away September 2020” (or whatever the date was).

It stopped after a few months

Write ‘not known at this address, return to sender’
We have had this twice. Vehicles, businesses and debt being associated with your address is not good. Had bailiffs turn up a couple of times too. Absolutely do not pass it on.

You really do have to be persistent. Return to sender. Next time the same company sends a letter. Return to sender, not at this address since 2020/whenever. Please update your system. At some point they do update their systems/take note you are serious, that this is not the correct address. The most persistent get the longest, craziest-looking scrawl. It's like dealing with a pest infestation. I was inundated with mail for previous occupants, random never-lived-theres, owners who'd moved out in the 1980s!, but ultimately with persistence and insistence it worked.

@Sh05

Don't just write return to sender, you'll just get another a few weeks down the line. You have to write 'addressee no longer at this address' or something along those lines

I write on letters still arriving after the last residents died THREE years ago: "no longer at this address - deceased". That information seems to help as we're getting less of their mail now. 🌹

Some of them (DVLA) say that you can't return to sender on the back. You have to send it to a different address so you have to open it.

That’s really not your problem, DVLA have absolutely no come back on you if they receive the letter back that way, it’s dealt with in exactly the same way

I think you are overthinking this. Return to sender. And chill out.

I open it now and contact whatever firm or company is sending the mail. It is not illegal and it works. I've never had a company be sniffy about it

Return to sender doesn’t work if it’s debts! They just keep coming.

We had so much mail for a former owner - I knew he’d left without paying utility bills - so to avoid bailiffs I eventually had to start opening it and contacting whoever.

12 letters later, enclosing copies of my council tax bill, they finally stopped.
It was well over £20k’s worth of debt.

Before anyone says it’s illegal to open anyone else’s mail, not in such cases it isn’t. The former owner had left no forwarding address - it was thought that he’d returned to his country of origin.

My FIL died in 2020, I dealt with everything and notified all concerned. He usually only received a couple of items of post each week, so thinking I had informed everybody, I didn’t go to the expense of redirecting mail. About 3 months after selling house the new owners dropped off a large envelope of letters to the estate agent who called me to collect. When I got it, I couldn’t believe what the letters were. there were tax reminders despite selling his car and getting tax credit back, letters from insurance companies asking for feedback on his experience with him, despite ringing them to tell them he’d died. I put all letters back in post, with return to sender, died Feb 2020. Told estate agent to tell new owners to bin anything in future as it would be junk mail.

personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5156/

If you’ve received mail which has your address, but not your name, this is because we deliver to addresses rather than names. If this does happen, you can put a cross through the address and write 'Not known at this address' or 'No longer lives here' and put it back in a postbox. Where possible, we’ll return the item to the sender hopefully allowing them to update their records.

The old owners of our house did this. We moved in summer 2014 and by summer 2015, despite “returning to sender” because that’s what the previous owners asked us to do (apparently they weren’t sure where they were going?) the bastard Mail never stopped. So I started opening every single letter because it just felt dodgy by this point (tried their solicitors and everything). It was all red letters and they owed tens of thousands of pounds, probably close to 100k. I called every single debtor and asked them to check the land registry and stop sending them to me. The only one who got arsey about me opening Mail that wasn’t “mine” was NatWest but even they stopped sending after me calling. I still had to do it for a good 2 years after as debts were often sold on to new collection agencies but I’ve never regretted doing it.

It’s funny though, because when we moved to this house, I did a Mail redirection and one must have slipped through the net and went to the old house. New owner did return to sender and my card got blocked until o called as it flagged on their system. Always wondered how our old owners weren’t affected? But we think they skipped their mortgage and changed identity or something as it was all so strange.

Your DH has absolutely no business handing over someone else's mail to a third party!!

Return to Sender is not rude or wrong - in fact it is the right thing to do. Particularly after so many years.

I had this at an old house so badly I even bought a cheap 'Return to Sender - no longer at this address' rubber stamp thing off eBay for a couple of quid. For the first year I was returning at least 2-3 post items a day - and a decade later was still returning what looked like HMRC and financial letters from banks.

Just mark them rerurn to sender and stick in post box.

We are the only people who have ever lived in our current house (bought off plan) and yet we got post for other people. WTF is that about?!

My son found that writing Return to Sender' - n/k at this address since date he moved in did not stop further letters. After having bailiffs turn up at his door at 6.30am he started opening post and contacting senders direct - found multiple debt letters, court date re unpaid fines etc. He had 2 further bailiffs visits before it was all sorted. The bailiffs themselves were fine and easily satisfied with photo ID plus tenancy agreement but it was an unsettling experience wondering what else might be in store.

I wanted to start returning them to sender, but DH doesn’t want to

I would still do it even if he didn't.

MIL died 5yrs ago and the new owners of her house (next door to me) still get mail for her. Every time I call the companies and tell them she died, I sent them her death certificate, and speak to them and they assure me she has been removed from their lists and apologise for their insensitivity, and still they send her letters. It's bloody infuriating. One arrived this week which said 'as you haven't used this account in 5 yrs we are going to close it down' 🙄