Post and bailiffs from previous owners

[Leftmyshoesoutside]

I moved into my current home two years ago. Still receiving all the previous owners post, no problem initially I thought some people are just lax with their life admin. No forwarding address and a neighbour asked me to leave any letters for them to pass on.

Then the PCN, HMRC, DVLA letters started (I can see from the envelopes / return addreses). Then even had a bailiff come to my door looking for them which was not a nice experience.

AIBU for being sick to the back teeth of this and what should I do?

Obviously I just send back all the letters now as "return to sender, person not at this address" but what could I do to actually stop the letters coming?

I've had this, with letters and debt collectors. One of the debt collectors understood that it was nothing to do with me and phoned his company to get our house off the list and her name removed. They advised me to open her letters and if they were from a debt collector, or creditor, to explain and ask to have her removed, on the grounds that she no longer lived at our address.

The letters petered out and eventually stopped, after a few months.

Have you got a tenancy agreement? That is strong proof that you took occupation after the debtor had taken on the loans, or whatever. If not, ask your conveyancing solicitor for a letter, or copy of your sale contract.

I would keep on doing return to sender on all and post it back

If she does that, they won't give up, because they will assume that the debtor is still at that address. They'll end up sending debt collectors, or court summonses.

It's a PITA, but she does need to contact the agencies.

We had this and were advised to open all their post and contact the companies. In most cases I was able to email a copy of our council tax bill which was enough to show they no longer lived there and it stopped very quickly key after that. Return to sender did nothing.

Thanks, I have written on the front of a few of the letters explaining the situation. However I think I will need to go ahead and open the next lot of letters and do a raft of emails as suggested with evidence of my purchase of the property. I can see one is a letter from a county court!

The bailiff experience was a bit of a shock. Thankfully I had my own council tax and completion letter easily to hand and he seemed satisfied.

I'm just sick of it all.

Return to sender does nothing, sorry.
Open, find the number of the company, call them. We've had this most houses we move into. I think once I emailed a copy of the council tax bill to prove I D, but generally my word seemed enough (weirdly) when I called. No one was rude or difficult.

I just think it's terrible people have the brass neck to do this sort of thing. From what I have gleaned there are unpaid tax and business debts, penalty charge notices, all sorts.

Maybe, but it's all hallmarks of a chaotic and unhappy existence.

Being in debt to the extent bailiffs are turning up is utter misery, you have no way of knowing if/why/when their lives fell apart.

I get it's inconvenient, but there's no point imagining what the background may be.

We had this under several business names as well as personal names. Return to sender did nothing so in the end wrote a cover letter stating the following companies and people no longer live at this house and printed many copies of it and copies of our deeds to show this sale, I opened the letters and then sent my cover letter, the deeds showing the sale, and the original letter back to the sender using their address (rather than return to sender). For DVLA I had to contact them and tell them the only two cars registered at our house were ours and they logged this as we were getting speeding tickets etc. They then unregistered all the other cars to our house to stop this. HMRC we contacted by phoning. We tried to get companies house to remove them but they said the company had to do it themselves so technically we still have registered company that is not ours at our house. 🙄The bailiffs turned up once (a few days after I'd had a c section at 6am in the morning so it was pretty stressfugood onl!!) We showed a copy of our deeds to show them and we've not had any since. The bailiffs said alot of debt collector companies use same data recording so once they update the records. We still get some post now 5 years later. The previous owners left the country and owed £100,000 in income tax through their companies. No idea whether HMRC ever caught up with them.

Some really helpful tips thanks.

@Penguinfeetteal Sure sounds stressful! Did the letters stop after that, as it sounds like a very comprehensive approach.