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?

Yes it is

No it’s not - it’s perfectly lawful unless you do it with intent to defraud. It’s actually quite sensible if it’s final demands and you can head off a bailiff

How you read my comment is on you.

My point is that i dont generally call people dumb and stupid. That is just not who I am, and it is not something I can get on board with.

Hence i said “you lost me” and didn’t post anything further.

The widow part - yes, I do have empathy for that.

I said i lost interest at the dumb and stupid part.

DP got a letter recently as one bank has taken over another. They said they’ve used banking records with other banks to get his current address and need him to confirm it’s him. Apparently, this bank has been writing to him at an old address since 2002. He doesn’t even remember having a bank account with these people and when he called them to discuss, they couldn’t confirm anything and obviously he didn’t want to hand over any details. Also, I’ve changed addresses and still had stuff sent to old addresses

it’s likely she forgot she has this bank or has no idea.

I’d write her a letter saying you have received this and please can she go through her accounts etc to keep her safe and stop hassle for you. Say nothing else will be forwarded from this date.

you’re not at risk of her being linked to your address. Any bailiff etc will ask and your credit rating isn’t affected.

Have you actually called O2 and spoken to them to explain? I found this more effective than returning post. It's important because of course it'll be registered as an issue against your address. As for the other stuff I would just return it in the post.

I feel for you though - we are still returning mail from a guy that moved out 7 years ago! I went round to see him the other day about it, he was apologetic but clearly can't be bothered.

I suggest you read up on the law 🤦‍♀️

if mail is not addressed to your name it's illegal to open it even if you own the house. this is why there is a return address FYI.

i would just throw them in the bin if i was you

I wonder how many of your forwarded letters are getting to her. I think Royal Mail no longer undertakes to honour a crossed out and readdressed letter. And redirection, which has probably run out also is far from 100%.

But yes, bank card and PIN is too much!

Chuck them straight in the bin. It's her problem to sort out

I suggest you do

While it is her problem. I don't see why it isn't hard to shove all her post in a bag and send a reminder to her saying, look we have lots of your post here for collection you might want to think about redirecting your mail. It does take a while to stop. Or just return to sender everything.

RTS doesn’t work at all. My ex boyfriend didn’t pay a parking fine and it went all the way to a hand delivered letter from bailiffs despite me sending every letter back to the council and telling the debt collection company he didn’t live here. In the end I sent the council an email through Resolver and it was sorted within hours - wish I’d done that first instead of walking to the postbox to return each letter!

I would either send the lady a letter or go round to her house and tell her you’ve returned all cards, demands, PIN numbers to sender and she needs to change her address on everything for security. The wrong post is only an issue for her not you, but outstanding bills get sent to debt collection for your address. Or you could contact the estate agent and ask them to speak to her but I doubt they will want to get involved or see it as their problem

I have 😂 Obviously POA doesn't apply!

Happy to be proven wrong if you want to link it here.

I would have returned to sender long ago. the mail redirect that royal mail does works well so there's no excuse for not using it!

The key issues are opening without a reasonable excuse and to someone’s detriment. Perfectly reasonable to open something which might be a final demand / from debt collectors

It’s only illegal to open post if you are doing it to someone else’s detriment. Opening post to forward it on would not be illegal. Opening post to find out who to notify that it hasn’t been delivered would not be illegal.

But I would just be writing return to sender, not known at this address on everything that comes through and keeping it in a pile until you next walk past a post box.

Surely forwarding on final demands leaves you at more risk than notifying the sender that she doesn’t live there more, as otherwise how would they know not to send the bailiffs to your address.

Yes, I did try and contact O2, but it seemed like without having an account myself, it was hard to do.

I did the same with the bank the first time around. But couldn't get any further than the automated voice asking for her date of birth, which obviously I don't know.

You should not open or bin her mail just return to sender and stop being childish

Never mind "Jane", that's really poor of the bank to send a second credit card and PIN when you wrote explaining that she has moved.

Given the maximum penalty is 2 years, it’s absolutely not true and you’ve been lied to (and there certainly wouldn’t be any prison sentence for innocuously opening someone else’s post) - and actually it’d only be a 6 months max sentence unless there were other factors that made it an indictable offence…

We had this earlier this year

We bought our house in 2016 and the previous owner has been married but divorced him in 2000

We suddenly started getting parking fine letters saying x Smith owed £60 for parking too long in the car park attached to where I work

We didnt open the first few,just sent them back but then we started getting bailiff letters for him which we did open and contacted the bailiffs (who where useless) and we where getting at least one week

Dp finally got through to someone with a bit of sense and proved he wasn't x smith (driving licence and council tax letter)

Surely this guy has had more than one car in 25 years? (He moved out from our address in 2000) so God knows why he registers them at his old address

I hope they find him and give him a nudge to move everything to his new address-that should have been a £60 fine (£40 if he paid within a fortnight) is now closer to £500

After all his ex wife managed it with her post-weve had one for her and that was from sun holidays

He must know she moved as they have 3 dc together

It's not "childish" not to want an ongoing admin job because someone can't be bothered to update their details.

Its dangerous not to open post addressed to someone else at your address. Firstly, organisations dont take any notice of returned mail with return to sender on - they keep pursuing a debt regardless of this. Secondly, fraud using someone else's address is common. Ive been a victim twice; someone took out an expensive phone contract, and never paid; and I got a bill from British Gas for more than £4k from someone who owed it at a previous address and told BG that they had moved here. Both times the debt was pursued until I rang them up and sorted it out. It is an offence to open mail addressed to someone else according to the 2000 postal services act but only if you dont have a reasonable excuse or intend to do this to the owners detriment. OP, in answer to your query, I would say you are not being unreasonable but you do need to talk to the bank to stop future things being sent to you.

It's a weird law. Firstly, if you opened something like a bank card and used it for bank fraud, surely they would prosecute you for fraud which I would guess is a more serious charge.

If you opened it and didn't use it for fraud, then a) how would they prove you ever received it and b) even if they could prove you received it how could they prove you were actually intending to act maliciously without you actually doing so unless you had actually committed the act of fraud ?

I suppose the letter could contain cash, but if it did, how could they ever prove it was delivered ?

The whole thing comes across as a bit muddled to me.

Maybe a lawyer knows more.

The previous owner of our house was the same. And he wouldn’t share his forwarding address. We even got a cheque made payable to CASH for his wedding - which I dutifully ripped up and wrote a letter back to the sender to explain.