Received a taxed vehicle notifcation to my address - do not recognised the name or car

seatbeltnoob

Hello 

Received a letter to a name I dont recognised to my address. 

The font, enevelope and colour of the paper was unmistakably a DVLA letter. So I opened it, letter was "private and confidential" marked on the inside, not the outside. And in it was a registration for road tax. 

Have I broken any laws by opening the letter? Can I still tape it up and do return to sender? or do I need to pay for postage?

I live in an area where there are residents permits which get exponentially more expensive the more vehicles you have. If this scammer is using the road tax to register a residents permit in our address it could be quite expensive for us because it will mean we have 3 cars registered here. This area has a lot of cars that are a mix of car free properties and ours whcih is legacy property that can have up to 3 cars registered to it. 

I am also concered about the speeding/parking fine implications and potential for bailiffs to come at our addres. We had run ins with baliffs on a privatrely rented property. The previous occupants was chased by debtors, after we moved bailiff go their foot in the door and entered the propwert with my wife alone with two young kids wanting to see the rental agreement to prove were not the debtor. She was not able to find it as I put it away in my stacks of paperwork. 

edit: I know this is going to be asked - no this is not the landlords car, landlord is a relative of ours and they live down the road with their car registered to their address. 

user1977

seatbeltnoob said:

Have I broken any laws by opening the letter? Can I still tape it up and do return to sender? or do I need to pay for postage?

No, nothing illegal about opening mail addressed to your address. You can return to sender without paying anything (how would anybody make you pay?).

MyRealNameToo

seatbeltnoob said:

Received a letter to a name I dont recognised to my address. 

The font, enevelope and colour of the paper was unmistakably a DVLA letter. So I opened it, letter was "private and confidential" marked on the inside, not the outside. And in it was a registration for road tax. 

Have I broken any laws by opening the letter? Can I still tape it up and do return to sender? or do I need to pay for postage?

I live in an area where there are residents permits which get exponentially more expensive the more vehicles you have. If this scammer is using the road tax to register a residents permit in our address it could be quite expensive for us because it will mean we have 3 cars registered here. This area has a lot of cars that are a mix of car free properties and ours whcih is legacy property that can have up to 3 cars registered to it. 

I am also concered about the speeding/parking fine implications and potential for bailiffs to come at our addres. We had run ins with baliffs on a privatrely rented property. The previous occupants was chased by debtors, after we moved bailiff go their foot in the door and entered the propwert with my wife alone with two young kids wanting to see the rental agreement to prove were not the debtor. She was not able to find it as I put it away in my stacks of paperwork. 

edit: I know this is going to be asked - no this is not the landlords car, landlord is a relative of ours and they live down the road with their car registered to their address. 

Some have previously stated you always have a right to open post delivered to your address even if addressed to someone else. I dont recall them quoting legislation though and personally was always taught not to open other's mail. 

At the end of the day if you tape it up the DVLA arent going to know if someone at your address did that or if it got damaged in transit and Royal Mail or UK Mail (or whoever they use) didnt do a temporary repair job.  Stick it back in the postbox with the delivery address crossed out and "Return to Sender - Addressee Unknown" written on the front. 

Doesnt always work on the first try but it should trigger processes in the DVLA. 

As long as you have ID that shows you arent the addressee then bailiff are just an annoyance. 

Have you looked on the street to see if you can see a car with the registration? A distant neighbour used to get a lot of our post as we had a weird address any systems using the RM PAF file seemed to struggle so things got addressed to 5 Main Street rather than 5 Little Row, Main Street and delivered to the guy at the far end of Main Street rather than us. (they'd replaced a big house that was 154 Main Street with a row of 8 houses but had dropped the old number and inserted a rarely used subsidiary street name of "little row")

born_again

Chuck letter in bin..

No one will ever know you opened it..🤷‍♀️ Not that it makes any difference that you did.

Nasqueron

MyRealNameToo said:

seatbeltnoob said:

Received a letter to a name I dont recognised to my address. 

The font, enevelope and colour of the paper was unmistakably a DVLA letter. So I opened it, letter was "private and confidential" marked on the inside, not the outside. And in it was a registration for road tax. 

Have I broken any laws by opening the letter? Can I still tape it up and do return to sender? or do I need to pay for postage?

I live in an area where there are residents permits which get exponentially more expensive the more vehicles you have. If this scammer is using the road tax to register a residents permit in our address it could be quite expensive for us because it will mean we have 3 cars registered here. This area has a lot of cars that are a mix of car free properties and ours whcih is legacy property that can have up to 3 cars registered to it. 

I am also concered about the speeding/parking fine implications and potential for bailiffs to come at our addres. We had run ins with baliffs on a privatrely rented property. The previous occupants was chased by debtors, after we moved bailiff go their foot in the door and entered the propwert with my wife alone with two young kids wanting to see the rental agreement to prove were not the debtor. She was not able to find it as I put it away in my stacks of paperwork. 

edit: I know this is going to be asked - no this is not the landlords car, landlord is a relative of ours and they live down the road with their car registered to their address. 

Some have previously stated you always have a right to open post delivered to your address even if addressed to someone else. I dont recall them quoting legislation though and personally was always taught not to open other's mail. 

At the end of the day if you tape it up the DVLA arent going to know if someone at your address did that or if it got damaged in transit and Royal Mail or UK Mail (or whoever they use) didnt do a temporary repair job.  Stick it back in the postbox with the delivery address crossed out and "Return to Sender - Addressee Unknown" written on the front. 

Doesnt always work on the first try but it should trigger processes in the DVLA. 

As long as you have ID that shows you arent the addressee then bailiff are just an annoyance. 

Have you looked on the street to see if you can see a car with the registration? A distant neighbour used to get a lot of our post as we had a weird address any systems using the RM PAF file seemed to struggle so things got addressed to 5 Main Street rather than 5 Little Row, Main Street and delivered to the guy at the far end of Main Street rather than us. (they'd replaced a big house that was 154 Main Street with a row of 8 houses but had dropped the old number and inserted a rarely used subsidiary street name of "little row")

It is only an offence to open mail if you intend to use the data to the detriment of others e.g. stealing or ID theft. In this case, OP opened the mail, confirmed it was not related to them, they can seal it back up and send back to the DVLA as "not known at this address" and that is the end of it.

Why bother playing detective, I wouldn't think twice of simply returning it

MyRealNameToo

Nasqueron said:
Why bother playing detective, I wouldn't think twice of simply returning it

Because it can also be a genuine error and if you live at 9 and the cars parked on the driveway at 8 it can be a simple case of sloppy handwriting being misread. Personally would think it more neighbourly to let your neighbour know... personally with out immediate neighbours I'd much more suspect an error than something underhanded but guess this just reinforces how broken society is becoming. I wasnt suggesting driving all over town looking for the car. 

jimjames

Nasqueron said:

MyRealNameToo said:

seatbeltnoob said:

Received a letter to a name I dont recognised to my address. 

The font, enevelope and colour of the paper was unmistakably a DVLA letter. So I opened it, letter was "private and confidential" marked on the inside, not the outside. And in it was a registration for road tax. 

Have I broken any laws by opening the letter? Can I still tape it up and do return to sender? or do I need to pay for postage?

I live in an area where there are residents permits which get exponentially more expensive the more vehicles you have. If this scammer is using the road tax to register a residents permit in our address it could be quite expensive for us because it will mean we have 3 cars registered here. This area has a lot of cars that are a mix of car free properties and ours whcih is legacy property that can have up to 3 cars registered to it. 

I am also concered about the speeding/parking fine implications and potential for bailiffs to come at our addres. We had run ins with baliffs on a privatrely rented property. The previous occupants was chased by debtors, after we moved bailiff go their foot in the door and entered the propwert with my wife alone with two young kids wanting to see the rental agreement to prove were not the debtor. She was not able to find it as I put it away in my stacks of paperwork. 

edit: I know this is going to be asked - no this is not the landlords car, landlord is a relative of ours and they live down the road with their car registered to their address. 

Some have previously stated you always have a right to open post delivered to your address even if addressed to someone else. I dont recall them quoting legislation though and personally was always taught not to open other's mail. 

At the end of the day if you tape it up the DVLA arent going to know if someone at your address did that or if it got damaged in transit and Royal Mail or UK Mail (or whoever they use) didnt do a temporary repair job.  Stick it back in the postbox with the delivery address crossed out and "Return to Sender - Addressee Unknown" written on the front. 

Doesnt always work on the first try but it should trigger processes in the DVLA. 

As long as you have ID that shows you arent the addressee then bailiff are just an annoyance. 

Have you looked on the street to see if you can see a car with the registration? A distant neighbour used to get a lot of our post as we had a weird address any systems using the RM PAF file seemed to struggle so things got addressed to 5 Main Street rather than 5 Little Row, Main Street and delivered to the guy at the far end of Main Street rather than us. (they'd replaced a big house that was 154 Main Street with a row of 8 houses but had dropped the old number and inserted a rarely used subsidiary street name of "little row")

Why bother playing detective, I wouldn't think twice of simply returning it

As someone that has been on the receiving end of DVLA incompetence it would be useful to have the recipient help identify the correct keeper details. In my instance the DVLA mistyped the postcode by transposing 2 letters which meant the V5C was sent to a house a couple of streets away that was the same house number. It was only quite a few weeks later when I realised I'd not got the documents that I contacted the DVLA again and they started to investigate. Not such an issue anymore as I now register changes online myself but would have helped if the person had checked.

Ectophile

born_again said:

Chuck letter in bin..

No one will ever know you opened it..🤷‍♀️ Not that it makes any difference that you did.

I never throw things in the bin that might be required as evidence in the future.

user1977

Nasqueron said:

MyRealNameToo said:

seatbeltnoob said:

Received a letter to a name I dont recognised to my address. 

The font, enevelope and colour of the paper was unmistakably a DVLA letter. So I opened it, letter was "private and confidential" marked on the inside, not the outside. And in it was a registration for road tax. 

Have I broken any laws by opening the letter? Can I still tape it up and do return to sender? or do I need to pay for postage?

I live in an area where there are residents permits which get exponentially more expensive the more vehicles you have. If this scammer is using the road tax to register a residents permit in our address it could be quite expensive for us because it will mean we have 3 cars registered here. This area has a lot of cars that are a mix of car free properties and ours whcih is legacy property that can have up to 3 cars registered to it. 

I am also concered about the speeding/parking fine implications and potential for bailiffs to come at our addres. We had run ins with baliffs on a privatrely rented property. The previous occupants was chased by debtors, after we moved bailiff go their foot in the door and entered the propwert with my wife alone with two young kids wanting to see the rental agreement to prove were not the debtor. She was not able to find it as I put it away in my stacks of paperwork. 

edit: I know this is going to be asked - no this is not the landlords car, landlord is a relative of ours and they live down the road with their car registered to their address. 

Some have previously stated you always have a right to open post delivered to your address even if addressed to someone else. I dont recall them quoting legislation though and personally was always taught not to open other's mail. 

At the end of the day if you tape it up the DVLA arent going to know if someone at your address did that or if it got damaged in transit and Royal Mail or UK Mail (or whoever they use) didnt do a temporary repair job.  Stick it back in the postbox with the delivery address crossed out and "Return to Sender - Addressee Unknown" written on the front. 

Doesnt always work on the first try but it should trigger processes in the DVLA. 

As long as you have ID that shows you arent the addressee then bailiff are just an annoyance. 

Have you looked on the street to see if you can see a car with the registration? A distant neighbour used to get a lot of our post as we had a weird address any systems using the RM PAF file seemed to struggle so things got addressed to 5 Main Street rather than 5 Little Row, Main Street and delivered to the guy at the far end of Main Street rather than us. (they'd replaced a big house that was 154 Main Street with a row of 8 houses but had dropped the old number and inserted a rarely used subsidiary street name of "little row")

It is only an offence to open mail if you intend to use the data to the detriment of others

That only applies to "incorrectly delivered" items. This is a correctly delivered item because the Royal Mail has delivered to the address on the envelope (see s.125(3) of the Postal Services Act 2000). So opening it is not an offence.

Going on to commit theft, fraud etc would of course still be an offence.

Brie

seatbeltnoob said:

I live in an area where there are residents permits which get exponentially more expensive the more vehicles you have. If this scammer is using the road tax to register a residents permit in our address it could be quite expensive for us because it will mean we have 3 cars registered here. This area has a lot of cars that are a mix of car free properties and ours whcih is legacy property that can have up to 3 cars registered to it. 

This is the bit that would concern me.  How would someone prove that a car should not be registered at an address if they are being charged extra because DVLA thinks someone else's car is theirs?

Nasqueron

MyRealNameToo said:

Nasqueron said:
Why bother playing detective, I wouldn't think twice of simply returning it

Because it can also be a genuine error and if you live at 9 and the cars parked on the driveway at 8 it can be a simple case of sloppy handwriting being misread. Personally would think it more neighbourly to let your neighbour know... personally with out immediate neighbours I'd much more suspect an error than something underhanded but guess this just reinforces how broken society is becoming. I wasnt suggesting driving all over town looking for the car. 

You don't know if it's theirs, you don't know if there is some funny business going on that the neighbour doesn't want you to know about etc. If it was misdelivered, I would redeliver it, I'm not hunting around the road on the off chance someone has registered their car at my address.