Dumb Previous House Owner... AIBU?

[zingally]

First of all, I am happy to be told I'm being a cowbag. :)

A bit of relevant background
We moved into this house in September 2024. We purchased the house from a single woman named *Jane (widowed) in probably her late 50s/early 60s.
About a month after moving in, we received a "final demand" in the post for a small amount she owed to O2.

She hadn't left a forwarding address, so I enquired with the estate agent who handled the sale, and Jane begrudgingly gave them "permission" to give me her new address (a house on the other side of our large town). I dutifully re-posted it and thought no more of it.
Then in about December we received another "final demand", still for O2 and the same amount. I put this one in the post to her as well.
I've also sent on Christmas cards, and various mailings from different animal charities.

Fast forward to about September this year, we received a credit card from a reputable bank in the post, for her. We kept hold of it for a couple of weeks, expecting her to get in touch when she realised her error (after all, she knows where we live!) But she never did.
At this point, I was getting fed up of being her forwarding service, cut the card in half, and posted it BACK to her bank, with a covering letter.

Fast forward again to this week. We received ANOTHER credit card for her (same bank)! We roll our eyes and put it to one side - how on earth has she not changed her address on her BANK?!
Then today we received a "PIN reminder". Her ACTUAL PIN NUMBER.

In all honesty, I feel disinclined to put her new address on it... I've done it enough times now.
Would I but a total cowbag if I just returned it "Not known at this address"? Solely because I think she's stupid?

I had this for 5 years. I put it all in the bin. If they’ve had court summonses and have debts now it’s their issue

To be fair Vodafone chased the dead occupant of our house for 2 years after he died. Despite his family closing all accounts. In the end I had to start shouting about GDPR because they asked me for the account number and I had to open the post to do that and all sorts but it still took 3 angry calls on my part. So it might not be her. We got all our post redirected for 6 months and I've no idea does stuff still go to them- I hope not.

Hm..id be careful with bank cards. She could accuse you of all sorts if you have her card and pin. Give it back to the bank so there is a record.

If you do what you're meant to - Return to Sender and say Not Known at this Address, they will put a stop on her card. That may jolt her into action.

I know this because, having not received a statement for one of my cards last month I phoned up to check the balance I needed to pay and found out this had happened. Not because I've moved recently but because some 'dumb' neighbour in a nearby road with a similar name (eg I'm 1 Acacia Avenue, they're 1 Acacia Drive) had done this. (Instead of just bringing it round*, sticking it back in a post box or giving it back to the post person because, FFS, this isn't unusual and I DO live at the address the statement was sent to, it was just misdelivered 🙄)

*I've done this with their stuff coming to me in a similar misdelivered way.

I am sure it's illegal to open someone's else mail.

It's not if you have a reasonable excuse to do so. People recite the "It's ILLEGAL, you could go to prison!!!!1" without any knowledge of the actual law.

We've been in our house for five years and still get all sorts of their important mail, from credit cards to vehicle tax reminders, parking tickets, bank statements, money demands....this is all for a lady who has a huge presence online selling her books and lifestyle bits and bobs. She's clearly not an absolute idiot so 🤷‍♀️ I've even had a bailiff turn up at our door as she hadn't paid a parking fine...which I'm not surprised about as her bloody car is still registered to this address! I've sent post back, contacted companies, tried to find an address for her. Apparently she is in and out of the country. Massive pain in the arse. She has herself a CCJ now off the back of it so serves her right.

I think you’ll find it isn’t actually against the law unless you do it for malicious purposes. So if you used the card and pin yes, just opening a Christmas card, no.

I would just assume that she never uses the credit card, it's automatically renewed and that's why it's gone to the old house and she hasn't missed it.

I still sometimes get post for the previous occupants of my cottage and I've been here six years. I just shove it back in the box with 'not at this address' on it.

It is not against the law. The law is that you can't interefe with post intended for someone else if you intend to deprive them in some way. So if OP intends to use the card/PIN number then that would be illegal. The act of opening mail addressed to someone else is not.

This is the exact wording of the law:
"A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him."

So in this instance, the OP is not intending to act to the person's detriment, and she has a reasonable excuse (its been addressed and delivered to her house, where she lives).

@zingallyyou are handling this wrong! You don’t forward it to her and you certainly don’t open the post /cut cards in half etc! You cross over the address on the envelope and write “not known at this address” on it and put it back in a post box.

This then goes back to the company who have procedures for updating their mailing lists that she’s not at that address. You are going to cause more problems with bailiffs by keeping her linked to your address the way you are.

Don’t forward post, don’t open post - return all unopened.

Did you have council elections since you moved in? Did you get a polling card for her if you did? Because if not, she’s probably registered to vote at her new address which will mean those chasing her for debts will be able to find her- but they won’t look for a new address if you keep failing to follow the standard procedure of returning the post to them.

Same here just had a card arrive - we’ve lived here over 5 years

In the past year I’ve had stuff from DVLA and the Inland Revenue

The people we bought this house off were nasty bullies

From experience, ‘Not known at this address’ doesn’t work! We had the same stuff coming again and again. So in the end I had to start opening it - it was all bills/unpaid fines, etc. and as far as we knew, the previous owner had buggered off back to his country of origin. Certainly no forwarding address.

In the end, to prevent bailiffs coming round, I had to write to all the creditors to explain, and then again with a copy of my council tax bill. They did then all back off.

Exactly the same here. It doesn't work at all, the post still arrives. Had to provide my council tax bill and my driving license many times now!!!

exactly, it would only be illegal if OP acted on the PIN and used the bill in the ex owner’s name. All she’s done is check on would could affect her.

But the OP doesn’t have a reasonable reason to do so, she should just mark it return to sender, not known at this address”. It don’t matter what the post is, if it’s got a return address on it and is clearly named for the previous owner she’s got no reasonable excuse to open it.

unlikely she’ll get in trouble for it, but she’s making her own life harder by not just returning so they stop sending things to this address.

Opening someone else's mail is not automatically an offence in the UK.
That's an urban myth. HTH.

If you suspect Identity Fraud you may have to open the mail to deal with it.
Financial institutions, and especially loan companies will often take no notice of RTS or of phone calls without the identifiers you can only get from the inside of the letter. In fact often you cannot even tell who to call without opening the letter.

Debt and unpaid bills are linked to the person, not the address.

If you were ever to have a bailiff come round, you just need to explain that this person doesn't live at your address and hasn't since X date, you can show them your council tax bill to show that you are now the occupant of the property.

IT'S NOT ILLEGAL TO OPEN SOMEONE'S MAIL

But OP you really should have been doing "not at this address" for quite some time now, not just forwarding it on

I don't think it is stupid.

When people do not redirect their mail, it's often more out of extreme laziness, or in many cases, they do it for unscrupulous purposes.

Such as thinking that they are going to be able to avoid paying bills by trying to keep their new address secret from the people they owe money to.

Which is stupid, because these days finding out peoples new addresses is not hard.

If you want to have your mail redirected without telling the new occupant then it is easy and relatively cheap to do so, so there is little motivation for not doing this.

I have been in a place 6 years and I still get mail marked as "important/private" addressed to the previous occupant.

Yeah, just put 'RTS not at this address.'

She clearly isn't paying the bills you're forwarding onto her new address as they keep coming back to you. So it's not like what you're doing is stopping things from being delivered to your house for her.

As it is a bank card and pin , does the Banks address or PO Box number appear on the back of the respective envelopes ?

Might not do for security , but I got a new card recently and I'm sure mine had .

( I'd be inclined to go into the Bank and hand the envelope to them , give them the date she moved out and that you want their Branch Manager to amend this )
Because ignoring or returning isn't working here

We had similar experiences with our vendors - it went on for several years. They had not left a forwarding address so we kept doing 'return to sender', etc.

Then, one wonderful December (I think it was 4 full years after we'd moved in), a selection box of various beers arrived, with a gift card - an Xmas gift from some rellie who was close enough to send a present (after 4 years of apparently not doing so) but no so close that they knew their rellies had moved 4 years ago.

Reader, we drank the beer ourselves.

We purchased the house from a single woman named Jane (widowed) in probably her late 50s/early 60s.*
Was this relevant?

It's not against the law to open mail not addressed to your address!

We had a massive bunch of flowers and a bottle of champagne turn up for someone that lived here over 10 years ago..! Sadly had to reject the delivery when I realised they weren’t for me 🙁