Old home owners contacting me

[honeyandbee12]

I moved into my new house about 2 months ago and the sellers keep ringing me. First I had to arrange for collection of items that they said the delivery company left. Now a parcel turned up and they asked me to forward it on which I've done. But now it continues, there are items they think they left in the house that they want and also a shelving unit that's screwed to the wall. Where does it end.

You could have told them as soon as you moved in you got rid of everything they left behind because it belongs to you now. How did they have your number.

We did a forward post thing that Royal Mail operated which was around £45 for 3 months. We intended to alert any of the companies/organisations that were revealed as not having our forwarding address but both forgot.

When I moved I paid for mail forwarding for a couple of years to catch any things I’d forgotten to change, as did the people we bought from (as most people do presumably). A couple of things have still turned up and I’ve gladly dropped them round or they have collected, as they still live locally. If not local, we would have made other arrangements.

However, the things left in the house would be very different - the shelf seems more like they realised they need one in the new place and are chancing their arm. If it was not specified in the fixtures and fittings list as going with them and is clearly built in it seems odd. Surely they’d have noticed when packing the items that were on it @honeyandbee12 🧐

Pretty sure there's a royal mail redelivery thing they can sign up for, Idk how it works and frankly it's not your problem - they should have sorted this out ages ago. It sounds like they are quite disorganised and probably underestimated how long it takes to prep, inventory and pack when moving, now they are fannying around thinking of random things they missed. I'd send a polite message advising it's been two months and time to draw a line under it, and pop an email to your conveyancing solicitor just in case they throw a strop - no doubt even their own solicitors would tell them to stop this nonsense anyway! And do block/make yourself unavailable moving forwards as well.

They are taking the piss and you've already been super patient and accommodating. In their shoes I'd have only contacted you if there was something I REALLY needed like unreplacable old family photos perhaps and I would have apologised profusely for bothering you, whereas they keep on with requests as if you are old friends. They are very cheeky and disorganised.

So they didn't clear out the house before you exchanged? Then tough poop going forward!
As the others say, just don't answer anything anymore. You've been kind, no more!

I would send them a message saying I am not taking delivery for any more parcels and please refrain from contacting me again.

I dont think forwarding post is too onerous. It can take companies several goes to change address properly and it is easy to forget annual stuff. As a pp said autofill is also a possibility for parcels. How many parcels have you had to forward?

Agreed. All fixtures and fittings belong to you now. Ignore them and block. If they turn up just say no and close the door.

this.

8 months after we moved the buyer sent her teenage daughter to our new address to complain that the immersion heater ( hot water tank ) was making a funny noise and she wanted us to pay to have it replaced . ( In 1987 so less nitpicking generally then ) Estate agent told us ( and her ) it's a second hand house sold as seen / wear and tear. Her problem not ours

I would just refuse from now on. Imam another one wanting to know how much stuff they left behind

Yes I would block them now. CF behaviour.

X

Agree you need to block them now as they're taking the piss now @honeyandbee12 !

We organised mail redirection when we moved most recently (2024), and I changed our contact details/address on my eBay account on completion day as I knew there would be stuff to order. A couple of weeks later I bought two books from an eBay seller and wondered why I received notifications they'd been delivered when they hadn't.

Turned out eBay hadn't updated the address so they'd gone to our old house 🤨 We actually had a call from our estate agent saying our buyers had been in touch about it. The EA wondered if it was OK to give them our new address as they wanted to forward it to me. We couldn't easily pick up from the house as we'd moved almost 200 miles!

I had this but unfortunately my partner answered the door. She'd left piles of crap but came back for the nice plant pots. We should have said, you can take it but you have to take all of the other shit too.

If they've left a bunch of crap tell them that.

I had my seller ask a neighbour for me to pass over a government document for them to pick up, that had been accidentally delivered to me. This was 10 months after they moved. They’d lied about lots of things to do with the house and left me with burnt out mattresses in the front yard with no explanation when I moved in. So not surprised he didn’t want to see me face to face and asked the neighbour to be intermediary. I just said it hadn’t been delivered (it had, I’d already thrown it out).

Once you’ve completed, it’s done. Though it if was a really nice seller I’d pass on some post etc for a few weeks. Definitely wouldn’t be giving any property they thought they had left behind, they should have given vacant possession in the first place.

Tell them to fuck off you own EVERYTHING in the house and did the moment the money transferred to their solicitors! They can’t come back and collect anything! Tell them any mail or parcels arriving to your house will also go in the bin that you won’t be forwarding them on! They have had months to organise the mail redirection from Royal Mail etc!

I think the letters / parcels is different from the rest.

Trying to retrieve things they have left in the house, at any point, let alone 2 months on is ridiculous. Some sympathy if I came across something on moving in day, and had their number and I might say "did you mean to leave .....?" as I can envisage scenarios where they were rushing to clear the house and missed something but nothing beyond that.

Post I'd have more sympathy for - mainly because it doesn't take any trouble for me to leave it on the side and drop them a text, but also, if you have lived in a house for decades, I think it would be fairly easy to have missed somebody when you were thinking about who had your address over all that time.

Parcel, again, it would be easier to drop a text to tell them a parcel arrived if they wanted to collect it, than to send it back.

I’d send them one last message saying

• all fixtures and fittings were part of the house sale
• items left behind have been disposed of as apparently not required by you as you didn’t take them when you left
• you need to set up mail redirection
• parcels will not be accepted
• do not contact me again

Then block!

I had a previous owner knock my door 2 YEARS after we moved in, because he'd found a key to his hidden safe and wanted to check what was in there.

We'd actually pulled it out the wall and thrown it in a skip about a week after moving in. He looked horrified when I told him.

I reassured him that I had shook it, and if it had sounded like it was full of cash or diamonds, I would have got my angle grinder out 😉

I paid for royal mail to redirect my letters. After changing my address online with several companies there are always things that slip through the net, i thought it was the best thing to do.

My Sellers however had letters coming through for ages including road tax reminders ( it was printed on the envelope). It did become a nuisance but I always posted them back with return to sender on the envelope.

It's a bloody cheek asking for items they've left.

Where does it end.
It ends where you set the boundary. You have indulged them so far, so they keep intruding. When you say "no more, this should have been sorted before you moved out", they will also stop contacting you. Why do they evne have your contact details to begin with?

You can also ask your solicitor to write to their solicitor asking them to stop if they do keep trying to contact you.

Block them. End of

A friend of mine moved into a house and found a load of cash. She kept it. But it was never mentioned nor asked for by the seller.

Just dont contact them, you did the right thing assisting them, they should get mail redirected.
I would not answer any calls anymore