Is Royal Mail redirection worth paying for when moving nearby?

[HettyMeg]

Is royal mail redirection worth it?

Moving house but only moving around the corner (literally). Royal mail redirection, which we have done for previous moves, is now over £100 for a year.

Is it worth it given we are so close by?

I did 12 months

Yes just do it for a year.

7 years on our postie still redelivers ours for free as we only moved round the corner, but we did pay for the first 12 months. We still get junk mail and HMRC were weirdly resistant to changing address despite being asked to multiple times

So, if you barely get any and are changing the addresses on anything you do get, why would you be asking this question? Of course you don’t need mail redirection.

It’s only if you have something that may go to the previous address that you need redirection as new owners won’t want to be bothered with that.

Yes, unless you are good friends with your buyers!

Our vendor didn't and it was a pain in the arse as we had to keep emailing her to come and get her post. She had had 3 adult DC living there as well so there was shedloads of it. After a year we started putting return to sender and chucking it back in the post.

Our previous house actually sold again within the first year after we sold it so glad we had put redirection in place for 12 months as a few bits came through late on in that year.

Yes we did it, don’t think it was for a full year though. Previous owners here didn’t so I just read through their stuff and binned it. And before the righteous pipe up about it being a criminal offence, I don’t really care. If something comes through my door addressed to my home address I’m opening in, and we moved in 18 years ago so I expect I got away with it.

I’d just throw it in the bin if it was pissing me off. I don’t understand why people think they’re responsible for getting peoples post to them

It's a myth that it's a criminal offence to open someone else's post. It's only an offence if you have opened the post maliciously/with intent to stop the post getting to it's rightful owner. Opening a random letter addressed to the previous owners to see if it's junk that can be binned or something that might need forwarding on (e.g. if there is no return address on the outside of the letter) is fine

Yea if don’t want Lovehoney mailings going astray

Depends who your buyers are. If they are friendly and responsive you could ask them if they mind handing over mail. If not best redirect it.

Yes worth it.

Yes, definitely. I moved to the next road and a bit further down but still redirected my mail to avoid inconveniencing the new owners of my property.

I wish the dimwits that I bought from had done the same though, I had no forwarding address and they asked me to keep their mail and they would drive over and collect it so I had mountains of their mail cluttering up my hallway for several months before it started to tail off.

For someone who has recently moved house and paid for the year redirection, I would say no, as my post continues to go to my old house and I've had to keep collecting it. I've complained 3 times and I'm now in a battle to get a refund for a service I never got (luckily our buyer is nice, although I'm sure she's getting fed up!)

What has moving 5 minutes away got to do with it? Whether you're 5 minutes away or 5 hours away, if something arrives for you at your old address the new resident can either return it to sender or throw it away. Unless they're a good friend of yours, they're not going to be popping round with your post - so it depends whether you are comfortable to have things not get to you if there are any records you forget to update or people you forget to pass your new address onto.

(When I moved into my current home, the previous owner got a Christmas card from the same person every year for about 4 years, who obviously had no idea he had moved - one way to stop correspondence with relatives you aren't keen on, I guess...)

Please don’t just drop round to your old house to collect your mail. The new owner may not like it.

We had the same problem last year, paid for redirection and some items of mail were still delivered to our previous address.
I gave up asking for a refund in the end. The responses I kept getting each time I complained were along the lines of ‘we’ll ensure it doesn’t happen again’.

Yep, the responses I've got have been we've put steps in place to stop it happening again but we won't give you compensation because it probably will happen again and that's too expensive for us if we kept having to give you compensation 🙄 I don't want compensation, I just want a refund lol.

Yes, 12 months should cover everything. I might have done longer as I’m scatter brained

Yes. I usually just do 3 months though.

Yes. By saying you are moving 5 minutes away, it suggests that you intend calling round to collect it, or even worse, expect the buyers to deliver. I would not like either of those options.

If I was asked that by sellers I would be getting the solicitors to stick a clause in the contract requiring the sellers to arrange redirection and providing proof they have done so upon completion😅

The alternative is to update your address details everywhere: bank, dvla, doctor, dentist, utilities,
It's hardly difficult.

You can pop round once a week to check if there's anything slipped through the net.

We done this as did the people who lived in the house we moved in to, they redirected the mail from our old flat to the new house of the previous owners that we had just moved into, total nightmare. Fortunately we knew the previous owners and they kindly brought us back our mail! But Royal Mail were a nightmare to deal with and it never really got sorted until the redirection ran out!

It is really rude to just ‘pop round’

It is good practice to redirect for 12 months, to ensure you catch all mail that comes only once a year (pension statements and suchlike are oft-forgotten culprits here)

But it's also just good manners to redirect so the people who actually live at your old address aren't expected to act as free labour for you. Even collecting your mail from them is rude and an imposition on their lives, while you think it is just saving you a few quid and stuff them.

Yes. Otherwise you could miss important post. New occupier might just bin it.