Misdelivered items / possible theft - should I keep out, or ...? 24 December 2022 at 12:07PM in Consumer rights 19 replies 1.3K views

TELLIT01

born_again said:

TBH. If the new people living at the house, do not know the previous owner. Best bet is to send back to retailer. Could be anyone turning up at door saying they have ordered something to wrong address.

As I said in a previous post, returning items left by a courier isn't simple.  The latest package I received (it is for me) only had the name of the courier company and the name of the vendor on it.  No addresses.  In the position of the current occupant of the OP's previous home, why should I have to go searching for address and/or phone numbers to return an item I hadn't ordered?  The OP has had months to sort things out.

RensterGB

Hi all, many thanks for the thoughts. 

Regarding the package, I agree it's best to leave the seller to it. 

Regarding post, I should clarify the new owner is claiming we never set up a redirect. This is simply not true. We did the very best we could with a 12 month redirect. Everything that got redirected in that time got updated. Unfortunately some things slip through, eg stuff addressed to "the parent or guardian of ... "... My frustration comes from the fact she claims to have binned a steady amount of mail from day 1, leaving us oblivious to the fact there was a problem. When we moved I went to great lengths to help her with a number of issues when moving in, and did my best to be helpful.  She had my mobile and email. Had she said something early, we could have solved things early.... but when you don't know something is wrong, you can't fix it!

We've now collected 4 bits of post, which would have arrived over the last 3 weeks approx (she was away for a couple of weeks), so it seems the problem is nowhere near the scale she suggests. Anyway, we'll fix what we can during this month of her putting stuff out, but beyond that, I've no idea what'll still be going there still, so.....

WhiskersTheWonderCat

RensterGB said:

We've now collected 4 bits of post, which would have arrived over the last 3 weeks approx (she was away for a couple of weeks), so it seems the problem is nowhere near the scale she suggests. Anyway, we'll fix what we can during this month of her putting stuff out, but beyond that, I've no idea what'll still be going there still, so.....

I would say that receiving 4 pieces of post over 3 weeks, 18 months after you moved, is still quite a significant amount. I can fully understand the new owner's frustration if she is being told it is her responsibility to get this mail to you. 

TELLIT01

The new occupant shouldn't bin post which isn't for them.  They should be putting it back in the post box with 'Not at this address' or similar on it.

user1977

RensterGB said:

She had my mobile and email. 

Did she have your forwarding address? Because the simplest thing to do with such mail (assuming letter-sized) is just to write the new address on it and put it back in the post.

And as above, mail still regularly arriving after 18 months suggests to me that you’re not doing that well at advising correspondents of your new address. Why do you have “no idea” who might write to you?

TELLIT01

user1977 said:

RensterGB said:

She had my mobile and email. 

Did she have your forwarding address? Because the simplest thing to do with such mail (assuming letter-sized) is just to write the new address on it and put it back in the post.

After 18 months of still receiving mail for the previous occupant the simplest thing to, do other than binning it, is to put 'Not known at this address' and put it back in the post.  The OP could have printed labels with the new address and given those to the current occupant.  That might have at least made it look as if they were making an effort.

Manxman_in_exile

WhiskersTheWonderCat said:

RensterGB said:

We've now collected 4 bits of post, which would have arrived over the last 3 weeks approx (she was away for a couple of weeks), so it seems the problem is nowhere near the scale she suggests. Anyway, we'll fix what we can during this month of her putting stuff out, but beyond that, I've no idea what'll still be going there still, so.....

I would say that receiving 4 pieces of post over 3 weeks, 18 months after you moved, is still quite a significant amount. I can fully understand the new owner's frustration if she is being told it is her responsibility to get this mail to you. 

I agree 100%

TELLIT01 said:

The new occupant shouldn't bin post which isn't for them.  They should be putting it back in the post box with 'Not at this address' or similar on it.

 True.  But if the new occupant is still (after 18 months!) receiving post at the rate of 4 items over 3 weeks I can fully understand why they are putting them straight in the bin. 

They probably think if the OP can't be bothered to sort their address out then neither can they.RensterGB said:

... Unfortunately some things slip through, eg stuff addressed to "the parent or guardian of ... "... 

Apologies if that's just meant to be illustrative of the problem, but it seems a strange example to give.  Who would be writing to your child or ward who didn't know that they had moved 18 months ago?

Ditzy_Mitzy

TELLIT01 said:

The new occupant shouldn't bin post which isn't for them.  They should be putting it back in the post box with 'Not at this address' or similar on it.

I know the new occupant shouldn't bin things but I can understand why she is, having been in the same situation.  The previous owners of a flat I have lived in simply didn't bother to appraise all sorts of entities of the fact they had moved, which resulted in me receiving inordinate amounts of their mail.  I sent letters back 'Return to Sender', but that didn't always work; certain firms - there was a lot of junk mail - appeared not to care and carried on writing to the previous owners at my address regardless.  Returning ten to twenty letters a week 'Return to Sender' quickly became tedious; it's not the most difficult task in the world but does require one to either walk to the pillar box in the cold or stop the car on the way home.  Eventually I thought '*** it' and started putting the previous owners' mail in the bin.  I was still receiving things years later, when I moved out.  

born_again

All depends on what the items are. You can end up with stuff from the likes of Damart & other direct marketing co's etc, that no matter what you do, they still seem to send out.