Royal Mail Redirection

[Ezza1]

Has anyone used this service recently? Is it any good? How long is it best to book it for? Seems like a hell of a lot of money! My surname is ridiculously complicated and often gets misspelled, even by companies I've been with for years - will misspelled letters actually get to me? What other option is there?

Thanks in advance!

I'm using it - had a year's redirection from my old address. Seems to be working at the moment, as far as I can tell, but there were about two months where nothing got redirected and the people in our old house were having to forward stuff, and there was a period where stuff meant for them was coming to us and we were having to send it back. Kept meaning to complain but never got round to it.

So overall a bit crap really, given how much it costs, but probably a good idea as occasionally effective backup.

I've been using it for the past year and will continue to redirect for as long as possible. I'm only booking for 6 months at a time as I have had several temporary addresses. I think there's an option on the application form for giving things like misspellings but TBH I don't think the people dealing with redirected post look that hard, so if it looks like the name they're redirecting they'll probably redirect it.

It's mostly been OK. A few items for me have gone to the old address and one for the new owners got redirected here so obviously no one read the surname. I started getting post a few weeks ago for someone in the next street to my old home and a different house number and I returned each one to the redirection service with a note and paid postage on some of them and I thought I'd get an apology and a book of stamps but nothing at all so far...

If possible give your new address to the new occupants of your old home and ask them to forward anything that misses the redirection.

I thought it was quite cheap - £33 per surname for 6 months. Expensive if you have 3 or 4 different surnames in the household though.

moved twice last year, used it both times for 3 months. That is plenty to get all addresses changed - and I have a LOT of accounts.

you can add variations of a name at no extra charge.

also - print out a sheet or two of address labels 'please forward to...'. Leave at the old place (if you don't mind them knowing your new address) with a request to use them to forward any mail that slips through. This won't cost them or you as long as they don't open the envelopes. Adding a box of chocolates will also help. Do not use this instead of redirection though.

Thanks for your replies and advice tips! Invaluable as my brain appears to have ceased functioning!

General concensus appears that the Royal Mail service is pretty shoddy but worth doing?

it depends where you are. Redirection comes down to a chap in an office putting on stickers, and it depends how thorough he/she is.

but it worked fine for me both times.

We used it - no problems except for a few things that slipped through. I think we had it for a year, but be prepared for things that you only get once a year that you might just have missed (memberships and things).

We found the stickers they put on the envelopes usually covered the entire name and address so we had to guess whose post it was. No biggie though.

Before we moved I made a big list of all the organisations that sent us things so that I could update them all at once but it didn't work in all cases. The people who bought our house sent some things on - including bank statements for one account that we never managed to change the address for. It was a bit weird - we had other accounts (credit card and debit and savings) with the same bank and they all got changed but this one account didn't. They had no explanation for it and we eventually just closed the account.

I only stopped passing on the post for the previous occupant of our new house after 2 years (had to take it to Estate Agent because we didn't have her new address). Only kept doing it because they were such a pain to deal with and it made them do extra work to get in touch with her and pass it on.

We've had to move twice in two years and both times have had re-directions. Would never use the service again TBH, they've sent maybe 4 or 5 letters through this time (and not many more last time) and the vast majority went to the old address despite the re-direction.

Same happened to the previous tenants at our old house, they came back to visit and we passed on a huge pile of letters that should have been redirected.

Maybe just limited to Wandsworth though...

I used it but it isn't 100% reliable. I missed a very important letter that wasn't redirected and sat around in my old apartment building for six months until someone put it back in the postbox. I missed out on about £100k of funding that I'd applied for as a result (assumed as I hadn't heard anything that my application was unsuccessful). It still smarts...