Old owners post

n.hussain03

I got the keys to my new home back in August 2019, I have been doing a little bit of redecorating and had a few changes done. When I first got the house all the mail for the old owners was being send still, it took them till November before they setup a re-direct however there is still small amounts of mail arriving for the old owners. For all the mail have received I have written "Not know at address" and then posted it back. None of that mail is coming back however is there any other way that I can completely stop it. I mean few letter a month would be OK however this is more like 5 pieces of post per week.

diggingdude

nothing you can do. return or bin

davidmcn

No, you can't stop it. Royal Mail will deliver everything addressed to your address (unless there's a relevant redirection in place).

"Gone away" might be a more useful response than "not known", obviously you do know who they are!

welwynrose

anything I’ve ever got I’ve always marked it No Longer at this address

coachman12

It's a rotten attitude by previous owners , and I have come across this annoying phenomenon before. The late mail redirection you mentioned has expired (previous owners can pay Royal Mail for 3, 6 or 12 months and I suspect the redirection by these irresponsible people you mention just did a 3 month package----belatedly ) so you are now getting unwanted mail again and  it will go on for years, even if it eventually just turns to dribbles of junk. 
When it happened to me, I politely forwarded mail for a while, then wrote to previous residents telling them I would no longer do so and that I would throw away all the mail unless a redirection order was set up----they set up a redirection order and all mail stopped coming to me. When it started again, though less than previously, I knew their redirection order had expired and they had not paid to extend it. So, after sending back a few of them again, I wrote asking whether they wanted to update their redirection or whether I could merely throw away the mail. They didn't bother replying to me on that second occasion, and mail ( though reducing in number ) kept coming to me. I threw them away and, occasionally, I was still getting their old mail when I moved with my career to another area a couple of years later( having of course set up my own redirection order for 12 months, as all folk should do). 
The bad manners you have encountered should not be allowed -----but I can't think of mandatory measures to stop it happening.
Blimey, that was a stupidly long posting to say what diggingdude said in 7 words 

Gers

I currently have my mail redirected.  When an important piece of mail (jury service citation) wasn't redirected I queried this with Royal Mail, the explanation was that 'government' mail isn't redirected as it's not allowed. I'm not convinced about this however I've stopped receiving Capita's TV licence letters.  On the other hand my postal vote letters arrived OK as do DWP / HMRC letters, so I'm confused.  Now I have a neighbour at my home checking the mail box for me for anything from the government.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that it may not be the fault of the previous owner, only the vagaries of RM.

davidmcn

Gers said:

I currently have my mail redirected.  When an important piece of mail (jury service citation) wasn't redirected I queried this with Royal Mail, the explanation was that 'government' mail isn't redirected as it's not allowed. I'm not convinced about this

Bit of an over-generalisation but certainly true in relation to some types of court papers and benefits correspondence.

newsgroupmonkey_

What Royal Mail said is rubbish Gers.

I've got a forward on and because we had a period where we were running both houses, I noticed that stuff was still coming to our old address. And none of it was Government - Waitrose, Costco, that kind of thing. It's been useful in some ways, because it reminded me to change the address. I'd say around 50% gets forwarded. In fairness, I must be doing something right, because we haven't had anything forwarded for a couple of weeks.

I've also had Government stuff forwarded to me (including a letter where they deliberately sent a letter to the old address foor security reasons).

Crumble2018

coachman12 said:

It's a rotten attitude by previous owner

Not entirely fair - there's not a lot you can do about junk mail.  I do a lot of online shopping, and companies sell on mailing lists, so I get a lot of catalogues through the post.  We moved in December and currently have a mail re-direction in place.  But it expires next month, and I'm not paying just to get junk mail re-directed!

pinkteapot

coachman12 said:

It's a rotten attitude by previous owners , 

If people have signed up to junk mail, and ticked the box that allows the company to sell their address on, it's pretty much impossible for the previous owners to put a stop to all the post. 

hb2

We moved a few years ago and set up a 3 month redirect, thinking this would give us enough time to notify the relevant people and get them to change our details. Some things weren't redirected in the first place, other things we simply forget to do (especially if we hadn't heard from them in the 3 months). The people who moved into our old place had our new address, email and phone numbers (they were quick enough to contact us during the buying process) so I was less than impressed when we discovered they were simply putting stuff into the postbox with 'return to sender' on from the start! Courtesy works both ways.