Do you let guests receive mail?

[Huma0]

I have seen other threads on this subject, but dealing more with scams and fraudulent activity conducted by guests, e.g. regisering businesses, bank accounts, social security  etc. at the host's home. Of course, those are situations we all want to avoid (I have been the victim of a large identity fraud involving the postal service), but I want to talk about guests receiving mail in general.

Do you allow it? If not, how do you stop guests from doing it?

I have in my house rules (which I ask all guests to confirm they have read) that guest must NOT give out my address as a mailing address (but that long-term guests can ask permission first). I do understand that if someone is staying with me for months, they may need to receive some mail within reason, but I cannot allow short term guests ( I host around 150 people a year) to give out my home address.

Many companies will spam you forever regardless of how many times you return to sender. Only today, I got a letter addressed to a girl who stayed for two days in December 2016 and never asked permission to give out the address. When I emailed her asking her to get it removed from that mailing list, she first claimed that I had messaged the wrong person and then, when I confirmed her full name, that it still had nothing to do with her. How else did her full name + my full address get on the letter then?

I have had numerous guests receive mail at my house, often concert or football tickets, but also packages of varying descriptions. If they ask permission at all, they usually ask after placing the order, so they are not really asking, just letting me know so that I can be their concierge service! I have also had demands for payment sent by FedEx which the guest lied about and I had to sort out myself.

A current guest, who is staying a month, casually told me the first day that he would be getting his groceries delivered to the house. When I reminded him that he wasn't supposed to give out my address, he seemed shocked and asked what he was supposed to do about his Amazon orders. I reluctantly agreed he could order things from Amazon, but nowhere else (as Amazon don't tend to send spam mail). Since then, he's had numerous packages arrive from different companies. I can only imagine how many years I'll be receiving mail for him after he leaves. My other guest, who is staying six months, had six enormous boxes delivered after she arrived (I'm talking the size of suitcases). She did ask permission and said she would be sending them to China within one or two weeks. Two months later, I had to ask her to please have the boxes shipped back.

How can I stop this? I tell them no, but they do it anyway. I am thinking of adding to my rules: "Any unauthorised mail received will immediately be returned to sender or destroyed." Is that too harsh? And what if it still happens? It would be difficult to follow through on this without causing a big drama!

[Huma0]

@Debra300 

I know. It's crazy. She was out at the time, hence why the bailiffs kicked the door down. They didn't take any of her things though, which was lucky. 

Problem was, she got home that evening to find no front door on her apartment and couldn't find anyone to come and fix it that night (this friend is very handy by the way and even made a Murphy bed herself from scratch without ever having tried it before, so this door and frame must have been pretty messed up). 

So, she and her toddler (she was a single mum at the time) had to sleep in the apartment that night with no front door because she obviously couldn't go stay elsewhere and leave the apartment like that. She lived in a very nice neighbourhood (Kensington), but still... She was terrified.

All because of some *bleeps* who did not pay their bills years and years go.

[Drew128]

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[Mark116]

@Huma0 It has happened to us only a couple of times, and always with people who staying more than 2 weeks.  And yes, they usually will 'ask' in the form of 'I will be receiving a package from blah, blah, I hope that's okay'.  We usually tell them, that no, it's against our policy for liability reasons to allow receipt of any packages and to please not order anything else.  That usually does the trick, but most of our stays are only a few days, no long term guests.

I don't think adding that rule would be overly harsh, but you probably would end up not actually destroying anything, you could certainly have it returned to sender.

[Huma0]

@Mark116 

I have less of a problem with long term guests doing it occassionally (with permission). I don't like it, but I can see that it is difficult to stay somewhere for months and not be able to receive any mail.

Short-term guests on the otherhand, people staying just a couple of days, no, that's not okay.

Anything that arrives after a guest leaves, I would happily return to sender, but I find most companies ignore this (or perhaps they never receive the mail back). With the FedEx case, I had to call them and they agreed to have the case closed, but I don't have time to keep calling companies to get my address taken off a mailing list.

[Kathie21]

@Huma0  It is not a good idea to let any guest (or a friend for that matter) use your address, ever.

1.)  It can affect your credit rating - if they have bad debts and your address is listed as theirs on credit referencing services, you will be marked down too. 

2). If you are claiming a single person discount on your council tax and the council discovers another person has your addres, they can cancel your discount and demand you pay arrears. 

3). If a guest owes money and your address is listed as theirs, bailiffs may arrive with an order to recover the debt or take goods.  You would have to prove that you own your own possessions in order to prevent them from being seized.

I would refuse/return all items not addressed to me.  If your guests want to order football or concert tickets, they should have them addressed to you.  I don't accept long stay guests, partly for the above reasons.

[Michael5902]

Not to mention if they use your address to receive illegal packages or to abuse the system by using the mailing address with their name on it to gain residency.  

[Huma0]

@Kathie21 

You make some valid points and I totally agree with you.

1.) This is not something I had thought about. I didn't realise that credit ratings can be linked by address. That is another very good reason not to let guests receive mail. I just had a new mortgage offer today (yay!) so I guess it's not currently a problem, but I'd hate it to be in the future. I think I will have to change the rule for long-termers too in light of that. 

2.) Again, I hadn't thought about that. I am not claiming the discount because I used to have lodgers. However, technically I am the only resident here now. So, on another subject, do you know if I can claim the discount, even though I'm doing Airbnb? I wouldn't want to do it and then get into trouble with the Council and don't really want to bring up the whole subject of Airbnb with them as there is no info about it on their website and I could be opening up a can of worms. My local council are useless and it took me three years to get a refund for the £3,000 they overcharged me, so I don't want to complicate matters!

3.) Yes, my friend had this experience, not with guests, but with the previous tenants of the flat she was renting, even though she had lived there for years. They hand unpaid utility bills and one night she came home to find her door had been completely kicked off by bailiffs. They hadn't taken anything, but I think she was lucky in that respect. She and her todler had to spend the night with no front door or leave the flat open and unattended.

That is a good suggestion to have tickets addressed to me. I don't want my name + address to be linked to any payments though and, yes, guests have given out my address as the payment as well as postal address before. The other problem is they usually only ask, AKA tell, me once the mail is already on the way.

[Kathie21]

@Huma0  I don't kow about the council tax, sorry - it seems to be a bit of a grey area.  You really would have to ask your local council (and get an answer in writing).  Or get a friend who doesn't do Airbnb to ask it as a hypothetical question (I'm thinking of doing Airbnb and I wondered....").

[Huma0]

@Kathie21 

Good idea. I might get a friend who doesn't even live in the borough to call them to enquiry. Wouldn't want them to have any hassles because of it.

[Ben551]

@Huma0 A great discussion! I think you’ve covered all the sides of this,  particularly with @Kathie21 ‘s good list.

It’s certainly true about credit rating implications. If someone racks up debt linked to your address it will show up on your credit report, usually within a section showing you are “linked” to others with overdue debt. This in turn lowers your score. This issue is no joke for my wife, with her position in the Forces. If her credit rating is impacted, she could lose her clearance and her job.  

Since we cant entirely stop a guest using our address, we stay on top of this actively by monitoring our credit rating, using a credit monitoring service.

The national security service also advised my wife to have a Google Alert setup to monitor uses of her name or address (separate alerts), to monitor against address or identity theft. Since outstanding debt is often published online, it’s a good warning system to have in place. If anyone posts on the internet (where Google can crawl) with these details, we receive a notification.

Thought I’d share in case hosts want to take these kinds of extra steps.

[Huma0]

@Ben551 

Thank you. That's really useful. I don't usually go in for credit reports as I'm a good girl and (apart from my mortgage) stay well clear of debt! However, I had no idea until now that anyone using your address could affect that credit rating.

Also very interesting about the Google Alert. That sounds very useful. I wonder, do you receive the alert as soon as someone uses your address online?

You really are very tech savvy!

[Susan151]

@Huma0 . Here in the states "mail" doesn't include anything delivered by anyone but a United States Postal employee. I have never had a guest try to send mail to my house. I would not give permission for them to use this address by mail.

I have, however, on ocassion allowed people to have packages delivered. These boxes have included promotional materials for a conference, chargers since they left one behind, and shoes. An astonishing number of shoes; all delivered for Chinese guests to take home with them.

I don't worry about delivery services. I have never received mail from any company that has delivered items to guests. Since the credit card address used to purchase the items must match the billing address they submit when ordering, my address doesn't get added to the marketing database.

[Michael5902]

But how can you tell a guest your NOT allowed to receive mail specially if they staying long term? 

[Huma0]

Hi @Susan151  that’s a good point. I agreed that my current guest could receive packages from Amazon because I have never received spam mail from them.

i don’t know if it’s different here, but a delivery address which is different from the credit card address can and does get added to marketing databases. I have received enough spam mail for guests to know this. You can get added to these databases just by giving an address even if you are not making a purchase.

also, it seems it is possible to give a different address for billing than the card address because when I called Fedex about the payment demands they specifically told me the guest (who was American by the way) had only given my address both for shipping and for billing. Seems strange, but they said they had no other contact details for her. I have no idea how she booked the delivery in the first place, but it wasn’t by card because she’d left hers at home. The new card was what she was having delivered!

I had already messaged her but she didn’t answer until I told her I would have to report it to Airbnb. Then she said she had called Fedex and asked them to send the letters to her. Fedex told me she had not contacted them, let alone given them another address. I messaged the guest again but never heard back from her. She clearly had no intention of paying. 

[Susan151]

@Huma0 . Ugh.