Can you ask for someone else's credit report

Midas

Hi folks

I was wondering if you were allowed to request a credit report for someone other than yourself, or would this be a breach of data protection law? (this is presuming that you don't contact the person to ask their permission first).

I ask because a friend of mine has just moved into a new flat and she is concerned that the previous resident (who still gets lots a mail directed to the flat) may have left lots of bad debts behind when they moved out.

Thanks!

Luis

I presume you can't for reasons as you state.

When I moved into my house about 18 months ago, I used to get loads of mail for the previous resident. After a few months of doing the old 'return to sender, no longer resident at this address' I was still getting mail for her.

In the end I started opening it, and lo and behold it was demands etc.

All I did was ring the number on each letter and advise them she had gone back to France - if you have a forarding address, give them that.

trafalgar_2

Luis wrote:

In the end I started opening it, and lo and behold it was demands etc.

All I did was ring the number on each letter and advise them she had gone back to France - if you have a forarding address, give them that.

Isn't that against the law .................opening other peoples mail:D

Midas

Thanks for your reply Luis. I will pass this information on. As you say the 'return to sender' trick doesn't always seem to work, but she was concerned about phoning the companies as she did not want to have her name attached in any ways to this persons bad rating.

akh43

I had similar problems with receiving mail for previous occupants and I put all their names in the MPS to stop any future junk mail.

With regard to ones with addresses on the back I sent back with stickers saying that the named person no longer lived there.

With regard to ones with no return I address, I did as Luis and opened them. I either e-mailed or phoned the companies concerned and told them that they no longer lived here.

Hope this helps.

lynneinjapan

I think it IS illegal to open someone else's mail, but if its arrived without a return address then there's not much else you can do - I'm sure that most senders would prefer you to contact them and let them know rather that just throwing the mail in the bin (or the recycling). Sometimes I post a letter back with "return to sender" written on it even if there's no return address - then I've done my duty and it's up to the Royal Mail whether they open it to find out where it's come from. I suspect, though, that they don't bother!

When I lived in Germany about 13 years I got letters returned to me by the Bundespost if they were 1 gramme too heavy for the postage I'd put on them, and if I hadn't put my address on the outside they'd open the letter to find out where it had come from - so maybe it is OK to open someone else's mail (at least in Germany) if the sender omits to include a return address on the outside.

Midas

Thanks for the replies.

With regards to what to do with mail lacking a return to address; I remember hearing a while back that you could still put 'return to sender' on it and put it back in the mail, the Royal Mail had a team of people who would collect it up, open it and try to find the original sender to return it to. Alas I think this service was ended in order to 'improve efficiency'.

ashmit

I saw a magazine article about them not all that long ago so I think they are still trying to trace where lost items belong.