Royal Mail redirection - home moving.

benjo

A cautionary tale.

I moved into my current house in April this year - didnt use the redirection service from my old house as it wasnt needed. The previous owner of my new house did use Royal Mails redirection service and so I havent been bothered with mail addressed to him - it all seemed to be working as intended....

Over this period of time a few letters I had been expecting never arrived, nothing too important but annoying none the less - I wrote it off as postal strikes etc until today....

Two letters arrived from banks where I have accounts, they had been redirected to the old owners, tampered with (I dont know by who), written on to redeliver to my address and NOT redirect to the old owners new address. These letters are both clearly in my name and both have redirection labels on them to the old owners new address.

I rang Royal Mail to complain, ooooo they were very sorry, they would ensure it didnt happen again but were unable to tell me why it had happened or how they would ensure it didnt happen again. Given that their site advertises this service as a way of preventing identity fraud, I can tell you I was bl&&dy annoyed that they sent at least two letters, containing my bank details for two separate accounts to someone else!!!!!

Grrrr just had to have a grumble about it! Many thanks for listening and if your mail goes mising shortly after a house move, please consider the possibility of Royal Mail kindly redirecting the wrong mail to the wrong person!

laughingcow81

That sounds very annoying, I always worry about post being redirected as you obviously don't know it's gone missing until someone tells you or you eventually receive it (somehow).

We are (hopefully) moving soon and I am going to make sure that everything is redirected / addresses changed in plenty of time!

poppysarah

Never ever rely on the royal mail to redirect. Get addresses changed within hours of you getting the new place.

johnson293

There was an item on Watchdog about Royal Mail redirection a few weeks ago, not quite the same situation, but people (including TV presenter John Inverdale) hadn't recevied any post for a period of time, and when they challenged their posty about it, they were told their post had been redirected.

The full story is here...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2009/10/has_your_post_gone_missing.html

They hadn't set this up, and it seems that someone had gotten their address and was able to do this at a post office by filling in a form, and using a utility bill (from rubbish) as proof of ID.

Ironically however, the Royal Mail couldn't tell the victims the addresses where their post was redirected to, because of the 'Data Protections Act'.

I set this up when we moved house back in July, and I did mine online, where I needed to give my Credit/Debit Card details as proof of ID. I think (hope) i've managed to change all necessary addresses over now.

_Andy_

Sounds about right.
Recently my Mum paid for the 'Keepsafe' service as she was going on holiday.
Naturally whilst she was away some muppet posted ten items of post along with an internal Keepsafe card that said "do not post this card." Genius.

benjo

poppysarah wrote: »

Never ever rely on the royal mail to redirect. Get addresses changed within hours of you getting the new place.

Oh I didnt rely on them, I didnt even use them, the old owner used them and they redirected my mail (with bank details) to the old owner.

I wrote to all my contacts 4 weeks before moving informing them of the address change and the date of the change - nothing went wrong with my system (old fashioned as it is).

keith969

I've had no problems with redirection, a month after moving. I did give a forwarding address to the new owners as the redirection wasn't due to start until a couple of days after the move (I did not give enough notice apparently)but since then everything expected has been redirected OK.

clutton_2

i have had no problems with royal mail redirect for teh past year

cheepskate_2

Royal Mail are a complete shambles.
I was away for 2 weeks recently and used their keepsave as a stranger of sorts was feeding the cat.
Got home and 6 letters lying there one a visa card one other had all my other visa details.
When i called them to complain they actually thought they were doing me a fovour and returned my keepsave payment,

PJackson_2

I agree that the old way is best but sometimes you don't have time to tell everyone you are moving (our last house move was done in 3 weeks!) and let's face it, companies can sometimes be a bit slow at actually changing everything over!!

We had a case about 5 years ago where we moved, told all we needed to, but our bank took longer to change their details than they should have. In the lapsed time, my DH's new credit card was issued and he didn't realise the old one had expired as barely used it (DH isn't exactly great with money or credit - hence no credit cards now!!!). It was sent to our old address and 'somehow' he then became (very quickly) a victim of identity theft/fraud - to the tune of around £9k :eek: We were only alerted to the fact when the bank rang to ask if he'd just spent £4.5k in an electrical shop in London :eek: It took a while to sort it all out but in the end it was the bank's error for not acting on our change of address earlier - plus we had royal mail redirection on so I never quite worked out why it didn't get redirected - seems very suspicious doesn't it

custardy

PJackson wrote: »

I agree that the old way is best but sometimes you don't have time to tell everyone you are moving (our last house move was done in 3 weeks!) and let's face it, companies can sometimes be a bit slow at actually changing everything over!!

We had a case about 5 years ago where we moved, told all we needed to, but our bank took longer to change their details than they should have. In the lapsed time, my DH's new credit card was issued and he didn't realise the old one had expired as barely used it (DH isn't exactly great with money or credit - hence no credit cards now!!!). It was sent to our old address and 'somehow' he then became (very quickly) a victim of identity theft/fraud - to the tune of around £9k :eek: We were only alerted to the fact when the bank rang to ask if he'd just spent £4.5k in an electrical shop in London :eek: It took a while to sort it all out but in the end it was the bank's error for not acting on our change of address earlier - plus we had royal mail redirection on so I never quite worked out why it didn't get redirected - seems very suspicious doesn't it

often credit cards are sent out in 'do not redirect' envelopes