Mail forwarding etiquette.

tigertrio

Email the companies in question, but email their DPO officer, usually found in their privacy policy. State that they have a duty under the data protection act to update their records as the address is incorrect.

Unfortunately, you cannot pull the GDPR card as it's not your personal data, but the Data Protection duty to keep correct records claim usually works. 

user1977

YoungBlueEyes said:

So if a bailiff/whoever turns up, what do I do? Surely standing there saying "no that's not me, goodbye" isn't gonna satisfy them?

Why wouldn't it? Obviously they're used to people moving house! But in any event, I doubt they'll bother making the journey unless they're reasonably sure that it's worth their while (including whether the debtor is still there).

YoungBlueEyes

I've opened today's Vodafone one, it is about debt.

Ok I'll keep sending the proper stuff back 'til a year is up, junk being binned.

Thanks all
 

TheJP

YoungBlueEyes said:

Some of the bits -  clubcard, holiday brochures - I've started binning this year. It's the 'proper' stuff I'm on about really. Binning that seems wrong, but sending it back isn't working (you've more patience than me @vangirl!) 

So if a bailiff/whoever turns up, what do I do? Surely standing there saying "no that's not me, goodbye" isn't gonna satisfy them?

As its delivered to your address you can do what you want with it. RTS isn't working so just bin it. I still get mail for my seller 2 years on. Straight in the bin. Nothing will happen if a bailiff turns up because you show ID that you are not the person they are after and they will leave you alone. I doubt the bailiffs will show though because they will research what the current address of the debter may be.

Ramouth

I had trouble changing a couple of addresses having moved twice in a year and forgotten internet banking passwords etc.  I managed to resolve one recently and the very helpful person on the phone said that it helped that the people at our previous address had RTS so they new we no longer lived there and had stopped sending letters.  So I would say it is worth RTS.  We tend to collect ours up and do them every few months so not too much work.

YoungBlueEyes

Research the debtor's address - be good if they did that straight off.

It's a bit higgeldy piggeldy. The woman who sold to us used to live here. She rented it to her daughter while she herself moved into a rental. (This is info from my lovely neighbour.) Daughter and boyfriend broke up but he stayed here while she moved away. Seller has now possibly bought somewhere. So there are various names and addresses to hunt down and verify.

None of which is any of my business. I'm just fed up of (fruitlessly) sending letters back. So I just wondered what the standard procedure was.

ClaretHead

We had a bailiff turn up - previous occupant had changed their driving licence with the DVLA, but not the car registration documents (a mistake a lot of people make) - looked like they fell foul of a new council bus lane elsewhere - a stream of what looked like court documents turned up. We didn't have their new address, but court bailiffs aren't interested in RTS. Eventually he showed up, was very polite, we showed our council tax bill, he went away and we heard nothing more. 

Nothing to worry about.

EssexHebridean

YoungBlueEyes said:

Some of the bits -  clubcard, holiday brochures - I've started binning this year. It's the 'proper' stuff I'm on about really. Binning that seems wrong, but sending it back isn't working (you've more patience than me @vangirl!) 

So if a bailiff/whoever turns up, what do I do? Surely standing there saying "no that's not me, goodbye" isn't gonna satisfy them?

It might not, but that is literally all you need to/should do. And when you tell them you want them to leave your property, you have every right to expect them to follow that instruction. Chances are that no debt collectors WILL turn up - but if they do, they have precisely zero right to stay on your property once you have asked them to leave. If they do show reluctance to leave then you could threaten to call the police, but the problem with that is that it's very likely an empty threat as there is only a slim chance of the Police attending, I suspect. 

YoungBlueEyes

Aye I appreciate there's the slimmest chance of it happening. I just wondered how it would work.

Slinky

I had a baliff turn up (according to my neighbour, I was out at the time), looking for our tenant who had moved out before we moved in. I kept getting what I knew were debt letters as he'd struggled to pay us rent so it was obvious he would have other issues. In the end I opened one of the letters and called the debt collectors company, and gave them the tenants forwarding address (his mother), and I never heard anything else.