Post for Previous Owner

poppy10_2

zzzLazyDaisy wrote:

It is a criminal offence to open mail not addressed to you.

Write 'Please return to sender - No longer at this address - DECEASED' in big red letters and drop it in the letter box.

If your mother has a BT line, presumably it has been changed over to her name? In which case she may wish to telephone BT and explain the situation. They will cross match the address to her name, and should put a note on the file

Yep, this is the best thing to do. Don't leave it too long, you can damage your credit history if the house you live in has a history of CCJs etc.

thesaint

prudryden wrote:

Saint
Found the regulation in the Postal Code:

Section 84: Interfering with the mail: general

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127. Section 84(1) provides for it to be an offence if persons intentionally delay or open postal packets without reasonable excuse. It amalgamates the content of offences previously included in the Post Office Act 1953. 128. Subsection (3) makes it an offence for a person, intending to act to a person's detriment and without reasonable excuse, to open a postal packet which he knows or suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him.

Reading this, it would be OK to open any mail in order to get a return address in order to send it back. That would be a reasonable excuse. Also, accidently opening mail would pass the test as it would be next to impossible to prove otherwise unless you caused some intentional harm by doing so.

My interpetation of this in the case in question is this:

The person has not got reasonable excuse because a BT bill is quite clearly from BT and has a return address on the back, there is no need to open it.

The bill has not been incorrectly delivered.

Of course they would not go to court even if they admitted that they done it intentionally, not worth the time.

The point I made was that the O.P. was told to open the mail without a reason to do it, they could easily find themselves in trouble f they thought that they can open mail for someone else.

Bossyboots

To deal with this properly though they will need the account number. I would venture that is a good enough "reasonable excuse" to open it.

OP - the letter really needs to be forwarded to the solicitors who handled the sale of the property who are also likely to have been handling the deceased's estate. They should have arranged for this to be discharged on completion of the estate.

Simply returning it to sender with anything marked on it won't work because that is the oldest trick in the book and they simply won't believe it.

[Deleted User]

If your mother has the details of the deceased's solicitor, can she get in touch with them and ask them to inform the family that there is a mortascreen database that they can add their mothers details to. This is similar to the TPS and MPS databases, but companies tend to abide by this one due to the bad publicity if they send promotional material to the deceased.

It is easy to do, and TBH the family should have been given the details with the death certificate. Maybe a polite reminder would be the way to go.

In the meantime, send all mail unopened back to sender and contact BT and inform them of the situation.

zzzLazyDaisy

poppy10 wrote:

Yep, this is the best thing to do. Don't leave it too long, you can damage your credit history if the house you live in has a history of CCJs etc.

That used to be the case years ago, but nowadays it is unlawful to blacklist an address.

Even if someone who currently lives with you at the same address has a bad credit record, that cannot be taken into into account when assessing your own credit rating.