Forwarding on mail

[Shazah]

How long are you supposed to forward on mail received by previous tenants or the landlord.

I get heaps of mail for the landlord and their family and I seem to be expected to forward it on.

[dazalock]

You are not, and never have been, legally bound to forward any mail to the landlord or old tenants, and in doing so have done the Land Lord a favour. You may wish to inform the Landlord that you now think that he should have informed any important senders of his forwarding address or setup a forwarding service with the Post Office at his own expense and you will throw away any further mail.

[Paul_f]

Phone him and tell him that he might have won the Australian Lottery and it's in amongst his post, and you will send it on to him by special same-day delivery for a fee of say £50 which should cure him! You'd be surprised how many people have received an e-mail about this and they actually believe it, even though they hadn't entered of course.

When you phone the (premium rate) number they want to know your e-mail, address, and funnily enough your bank account details so that the "money" can be paid in. A wise journalist phoned and said "just send me a cheque" but the guy was based in Spain, and got rather tetchy and annoyed when the journalist wouldn't give him the details he wanted.

My Mother-in-Law, bless her, is the wrong side of 80 and regularly phones me up asking if she should respond to these postal scams (she doesn't have a computer thank God!). She even sent something like £15 to the Post Office which was the cost of collecting a "parcel" only to find it just invited her to send more money - which she nearly did - to "claim" an even bigger "prize"! If she's that easily parted with her dosh then I ought to be more "on the ball" myself - perhaps I should just ask?

Whats' this to do with the "zone" - absolutely sod all!

[dazalock]

Re-arrange these words:

Bonnet Bee In

[Andy Parker]

Shazah - You don't have any responsibility to forward mail but you have to judge the situation for yourself.It is usually better to stay on good terms with the LL but he might agree to collect his mail whenever he needs it.

[oaktree]

When you phone the (premium rate) number they want to know your e-mail, address, and funnily enough your bank account details so that the "money" can be paid in. A wise journalist phoned and said "just send me a cheque" but the guy was based in Spain, and got rather tetchy and annoyed when the journalist wouldn't give him the details he wanted. Paul_f is mostly correct here - in fact you should always give them bank details - I usually favour the ones that can be found on a VAT return or Tax return ;) I hear the revenue and customs & excise can be quite entertaining towards people who try to scam their accounts :D

[Nora Kay]

Going back to the original question, although legally you don't have to forward any post on to previous occupiers, I am sure that you can't "legally" chuck it in the bin!
I usually forward stuff for a couple of weeks, then if it still comes, just write on it "Gone Away" and put it in the post box next time I'm near one. At least most of the senders will take the address off their mailing lists, and not send any more. If you keep forwarding it on, they don't know that the address has changed.
I had a case where my daughter let her house while she was abroad, and when the tenant left after 6 months, he just handed me 6 months worth of mail for her!! During the 6 months, she had received a speeding fine notification which of course she didn't answer, so her drivers licence was cancelled without her knowledge. So, either forward the mail, or let the sender know by sending it back. Don't just bin it!!

[Ericthelobster]

Drives me nuts too.

Now, if I have a forwarding address for someone, I tend to keep the incoming mail and then forward it all together - just a couple of rubber bands round the bundle - then you only have to put the forwarding address on the top envelope. It evidently works (ie the post office don't undo the bundle) because if they did, then all the letters would come straight back to me!

The second part of the game is to forward these batches of mail at ever increasing intervals, if the recipient fails to take the hint... if there's something important in a batch which has been delayed several weeks, I can hardly be blamed if they can't be bothered to set up a proper forwarding facility!

[Paul_f]

Nora states that you probably can't throw mail in the bin belonging to a previous occupant. I think you probably can. The Post Office have stated quite clearly that any business mail that doesn't have a return address on it if it cannot be delivered to the recipient will be destroyed! I don't know how they are supposed to find the sender for ordinary mail either!

[Jennifer_M]

The Post Office has a service to forward anyone's mail for set periods of time (going to 1 or more years if I'm not mistaken). If someone's too lazy to set it up then they shouldn't expect other people to forward mail on to them.

[Energise]

Enclose a Royal Mail re-direction form with the next ones you forward (you can download and print one off from the RM site).

[MrWoof]

Just a thought, have they done a Royal Mail redirection already? In my area it doesn't seem to matter, the previous owners of my house did, yet I was receiving their mail for more than a year after they had moved.

[Ericthelobster]

The Post Office has a service to forward anyone's mail for set periods of time (going to 1 or more years if I'm not mistaken). If someone's too lazy to set it up then they shouldn't expect other people to forward mail on to them.Not lazy, but cheapskate. You can keep the facilty going indefinitely AFAIK, but it does cost...

[MrWoof]

Not indefinitely, three years max.