Confused about the address of the flat

TranceNRG

Hi guys, since you have been so helpful, was hoping you could help me with another query.

I've just bought a ground floor flat and it's address is supposed to be 162A (I won't reveal the full address for obvious reasons). This is what's on the title. There are 2 flats in the building and I believe the 1st floor flat is 162B.

Today I rang a company to find out my electricity supplier. When I supplied the postcode, the 2 available addresses for the building they gave me were 162 and 162A. So where's 162B? It's as if my flat is 162 according to their database.

Had a similar result when I went to Virgin broadband site. When I entered the postcode the 2 addresses available for the building were 162 and 162A.

I asked my solicitor to confirm the address and she said it's 162A as that's what appears on the titles. She also said it's quite common for service providers to get the address wrong. She said I could ask them to change the address on their system.

Since a lot of service providers have automate web systems, how do I go about changing the address on their system? Is there a master address database that all these service providers use?

Many thanks.

molerat

They should use this http://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode, what does that show? What do the council tax people have ?

You need to take your meter serial number and ask where that is linked to and go from there. You are in for a lot of pain trying to sort this, the whole industry is broken and none of them want to take responsibility and try to fix things like this.

TranceNRG

molerat wrote: »

They should use this http://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode, what does that show? What do the council tax people have ?

You need to take your meter serial number and ask where that is linked to and go from there. You are in for a lot of pain trying to sort this, the whole industry is broken and none of them want to take responsibility and try to fix things like this.

On the royal mail site, it has

162
First floor flat, 162

Do I need to ring Royal mail and ask them to update it?

cheers.

Paully232000

Good luck with that, I feel your pain.

Many years ago I used to live in a rented flat which was, depending on who you asked,

Top Floor flat, A
Top floor right
Flat A
Flat 6

cloo

Our flat didn't seem to be officially recorded anywhere, although the house had been split for 40 years. It was variously A or Ground Floor, but annoyingly officially the Royal Mail and thus those automatic address filling in things only had the house number. This discrepancy once prevented me from buying a mobile phone because the system didn't like it!

At that juncture, we approached the freeholder (who owned the upstairs flat) about whether we could get it recorded as two flats by the Mail (who, I think told us we'd need the freeholder permission to change it) but they were curiously reticent about doing so. I think it was because they had a thing about the building not looking like two flats for some reason (they always politely asked us not to put a clear A or B label by the door) so they didn't want to rock the boat.

So you may need to check with your Freeholder if you can change it with the Mail.

Fortunately we now live at a house that just has the number... although the new problem is that, seeing as it's the same road and post code as our flat, the mail redirect doesn't work half the time!

camptownraces

TranceNRG said

"On the royal mail site, it has

162
First floor flat, 162

Do I need to ring Royal mail and ask them to update it?

cheers."

Royal Mail will have different addresses if they need to deliver the post to different places. This will only happen if each flat has a letter-box in its front door, and if the postman can go to each one (no locked main door then). A relative is in a similar situation: anything addressed to 63A, 63B, or 63C is just put through the letterbox in the main door and the occupants sort it out between themselves.

Whatever you do, be very careful about the gas and electricity meters: you need to know which meter is assigned to each flat.

You might be better to use the address as per Royal Mail. Up to you.

Jhoney_2

Why not send something to your flat (addressed to the occupier for example )at 162A as per the title and see what happens?

Usually with a house conversion split into 2 flats, the ground floor is A and the upstairs B. It may be that the 162 xxxx flat is theirs and noone bothered about the accuracy of that Title.

I suspect it will come to you. Either way it's a starting point.

Jhoney_2

PS I wouldn't bet money on the metre for which flat is which. If it is external it is potentially vulnerable to other resident who could easily swap the key over imo.

The legals say 162A, so get everything sent/registered to that after the SAE test and instruct C.Tax etc to do the same. presumably you redirected your post to 162A , so that should be enough to retro correct it at the p/office? I cant imagine that they simply insist you keep any old address just because it says so. If really necessary, send solicitor proof to a named person further up the HQ chain.

I would also introduce yourself to the postman so he puts a face to your name/162A number, but I like to do buckles and braces!