How do Royal Mail know I've sold my flat?!

hounslowfish

I'm selling my flat and am close to exchanging contracts. A few days ago I received a letter from Royal Mail addressed to "Home Mover" trying to convince me to sign up to their Mail redirect service when I move.

How on earth do Royal Mail know I'm moving? Does this mean my estate agent or solicitor has sold my details?

Sedge123

I think they may go by right move or similar. We had other letters from builders etc too.

davidmcn

hounslowfish wrote: »

How on earth do Royal Mail know I'm moving?

How on earth did anybody else know you were selling your flat?

Forwandert

Maybe the buyer had requested or enquired about redirecting mail.

hounslowfish

Rightmove doesn't list the house number. I wonder if that is information that can be bought from them though.

elljay

I do remember a postman friend telling me they received a bonus if they saw other companies delivering leaflets (pizza companies etc) so RM could then approach the leaflet suppliers to take on that work. It may be that posties receive a similar bonus if they are able to give information that enables RM to sell other services too. Posties are ideally placed to know about these things.

No surprise anyway, nothing's secret these days!

theartfullodger

It's all part of the government spying on you. You'd be amazed what else they know about you - ....

student100

Do you have a For Sale board outside? Postie probably saw that.

We did have a few leaflets/letters from removal companies within a week or two of the board going up.

NewHomeOwner_2

I can't tell if this is a serious question? But your buyer will have had their mail redirected to your property so Royal Mail will have used their amazing powers of deduction to work out that probably means the existing occupier is probably moving out

custardy

NewHomeOwner wrote: »

I can't tell if this is a serious question? But your buyer will have had their mail redirected to your property so Royal Mail will have used their amazing powers of deduction to work out that probably means the existing occupier is probably moving out

Bang on the money.
For others,there is no incentive scheme to promote redirections for posties.
The 'Watch & Win' is more aimed at business collections etc.

gingercordial

I am about to rent a new flat and the blurb from the letting agent includes a clause that they will be giving my details to a service which alerts companies of a change of address, which I'm then free to not use (I'm slightly annoyed at this but not worth arguing). They are also an estate agent so presumably this is also a "service" they provide to buyers and sellers. I expect yours has done something similar.

Otherwise I wouldn't have expected your buyer to redirect yet if you haven't exchanged, so it can't be that method unless they've jumped the gun.