Bailiff due to previous occupants.

hdh74

Three years on since moving house, we are still getting letters for the previous occupants. We mark the envelopes not at this address and return to sender. It was only when bailiffs knocked us up at 8:00 AM that we discovered a lot of the letters were related to parking fines. We showed the large uniformed man documentation to prove that we are the current house owners etc, but he mentioned that if she doesn't change it, the police might knock on our door if she has an accident. 

We continue to get more letters and are familiar enough with the return addresses to know that some of them are further parking issues. We have tried writing to some of the return addresses, but to no avail. Is there anything else we can do?

Thank you.

la531983

Nothing more than you are doing. Keep proof by the door you are the current owners/renters.

And if the Police do turn up you arent the person they are looking for so there is no issue.

Car1980

Private or council parking?

Show us a couple of the letters. You're allowed to open them.

Writing to return addresses won't do anything because they're just mailing houses.

Emailing these companies or the council would be more effective.

hdh74

Car1980 said:

Private or council parking?

Show us a couple of the letters. You're allowed to open them.

Writing to return addresses won't do anything because they're just mailing houses.

Emailing these companies or the council would be more effective.

I don't know. I only know they were parking problems because the bailiff told me so. I simply recognise the return addresses of the new letters as being the same. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to open someone else's mail.

Car1980

No, you'd have reasonable excuse under the Postal Services Act 2000.

Returning them just means they end up in someone else's bin instead of your own 

hdh74

ah. okay, thanks

prowla

hdh74 said:

Car1980 said:

Private or council parking?

Show us a couple of the letters. You're allowed to open them.

Writing to return addresses won't do anything because they're just mailing houses.

Emailing these companies or the council would be more effective.

I don't know. I only know they were parking problems because the bailiff told me so. I simply recognise the return addresses of the new letters as being the same. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to open someone else's mail.

It's not illegal to open someone else's mail which has been delivered to your address.

hdh74

Okay, the latest one is for  £100 owed to Parking Eye. This is definitely a different issue to the previous ones and was incurred in August and quite locally to me.  The others were in a town further away and at earlier dates. Further action is threatened including court proceedings and debt recovery. This woman seems to rack up parking fines all over the place, and I'm wondering if she is deliberately avoiding updating DVLC. There is a phone number and address for making payments but no other details for contact. I'm not sure if there's any point trying to contact them via those means.

Coupon-mad

She's unlikely to have done any of this deliberately. Nobody would deliberately risk HCEOs tracking them down.

Many people forget to update their V5C. That's all she has done.

Does she have an unusual name, such that you can find her on social media?

prowla

hdh74 said:

Okay, the latest one is for  £100 owed to Parking Eye. This is definitely a different issue to the previous ones and was incurred in August and quite locally to me.  The others were in a town further away and at earlier dates. Further action is threatened including court proceedings and debt recovery. This woman seems to rack up parking fines all over the place, and I'm wondering if she is deliberately avoiding updating DVLC. There is a phone number and address for making payments but no other details for contact. I'm not sure if there's any point trying to contact them via those means.

Well, if there are parking charges racking up and she's not informed DVLC of the change of address (or is using a fake one), then there may well be court cases being lost by default.

But debt collectors/bailiffs still can't steal someone else's property.

If they do turn up making demands for money, one option would be to call the police and say you're being threatened and intimidated at your doorstep.