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!

[Anna9170]

@Rajan2  @Huma0 
I perfectly understand the reasons why you don't want to do this, and I agree with you!
Of course, I only write about my experience when I rent a separate apartment, of course I don't live there. And if the guest wants his parcel, then he sits all day as a Concierge and waits for his delivery.

About opening Bank cards to your address is very unpleasant, if not much worse. In Spain, it is not possible to open an bank account by specifying any address, you need to confirm the registration of the address, this can not be done without the owner or host.

[Rajan2]

@Anna9170 completely agree. At some point you would think these systems would have gotten simpler with the internet and iPhone, but we can keep on Airbnb to help us sort this out and make it a better system for hosts.

@Huma0 @Anna9170  you both spend a lot of time with your guests and I hope they appreciate what you do for them and give you 5 stars for all the time you spend. 

We enjoy hosting great guests and enjoy it even better when those guests are very supportive of our efforts to make their experience the best.

[Huma0]

@Anna9170 

I find it very odd too. As far as I understood, someone has to provide at least two official proofs of address, e.g. lease or tenancy agreement, utility bills etc. to open a bank or credit card account, so I was pretty surprised that a guest was able to do both with none of these. All she had was the Airbnb booking.

Likewise, I couldn't understand how a guest could give my address to Fedex not only as the delivery address, but as the billing address, and place an order. They told me that the only contact details they had for her were my address! Luckily, they were understanding and agreed to write off the debt (the guest said she would contact, and that was only after I threatened to report her to Airbnb, them but didn't) but the situation could have been quite different.

It seems to me that banks and other companies don't always do their due diligence when opening accounts, which is why I never assume that a guest can't get away with fraud. I have experienced first hand how easy identity fraud is.

[Sophie1105]

Absolutely no access to the USPS mailbox. They can receive packages sent via private carriers that get delivered to the front door if they so choose. Receiving mail can be used as proof of residency, with all sorts of negative consequences for the homeowner. Basically, if they refuse to leave, you now have to evict them. 

[Rajan2]

@Sophie1105 This is great to see so many hosts supporting each other.  I agree with you 100%.

[Dave52]

I'm not sure a scammer would ask anyway....and I would never open someone else's mail.

[Huma0]

@Dave52 

Yes, some scammers do ask, as per the example I gave earlier, the one that I reported to Airbnb. Turns out that 'guest' was trying to scam thousands of hosts but, surprisingly, I was the only one to report it at the time. Sorry to say it, but there are a lot of hosts out there that are too trusing in these circumstances...

[Rajan2]

I read this recent post from another host and wanted to share it with others who feel that that questions about receiving mail are not potentially dangerous. Here is the thread. I hope she will join us on this thread to discuss with others and answer questions: https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Recent-scam-09-2020/m-p/1354880#M322916

[Huma0]

@Rajan2 

Thanks for drawing our attention to this post. It's certainly food for thought and especially a warning for live out hosts who can't easily keep track of numerous amounts of mail arriving with different names etc.

Personally, I think one should always be wary of a guest who insists they must have mail sent to the Airbnb when there are convenient, local places they can collect it from instead. I understand this is an inconvenience if someone is staying for months, but if it's only for a month or less, how much mail do they reasonably expect to receive? 

[Skopje-Boutique-Apartments0]

We want to return the funds to the guests because we have a flood in the apartment, and the other apartments are not free for us to accommodate the guests.
We did not receive a message to approve the booking as it was before
Until now we always received a reservation so we approved it, but we did not approve this reservation and we do not know how this happened. We want to return the amount to the guests.

[Huma0]

@Skopje-Boutique-Apartments0 

You are posting about this in the wrong place. This thread is a discussion about whether or not hosts let guests receive mail at their listings.

If you have an issue with a reservation which you need to cancel, you need to contact Airbnb support about it and ask if they will process a penalty free cancellation for you due to extenuating circumstances. If you did not approve the reservation, are you sure you don't have Instant Booking turned on? 

[Alex8588]

Hello fellow hosts, 

You know it upsets me also because I am a first buyer of my house, it's a brand new house and i am getting tenant mails here it's just pathetic. I try speaking to the postal office to have only my mails there but they are not helpful at all so I usually take a pen with me to the mailbox and just write "RTS please - This person does not live here" and hopefully everyone gets an idea to not to sent non-alex mails to my address. This is like a stubborn weight loss program, just keep going until you get to your goal. It takes time but don't give up. Take care you all

[Huma0]

@Alex8588 

Yes, I also return the mail to sender and put it in the post box, but some companies just ignore that. I still receive letters from a bank for a tenant who left more than a decade ago. I am not joking. I send every one back marked "Return to sender. This person moved out in January 2011," and I have also called the bank to tell them, but they said there was an "issue with the account" so they could not delete the address.

With any mail that arrives for guests, I also return to sender, but if it looks like something important like bills, demands for payment, bank/credit card statements, anything official e.g. to do with national insurance/social security - all the things that they should never have used my address for - I will contact the guest and ask them to have my address removed ASAP. They will often ask me to open the mail to see what it is. Also, even if it's just marketing mail, but is coming over and over again, I will contact the guest and ask them to have my address removed. It doesn't always work, but often does, eventually...

[Bubba-Lee0]

Put this in your House Rules:  No mail to be received at this address.

If a guest needs to receive mail, advise them to send it General Delivery to the nearest Post Office.
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery

[Lana7]

All of my guests receive food deliveries and amazon deliveries.  Also, I live in a flat in a house conversion.  Letters, packages etc that arrive, arrive in a shared corridor .  There's every chance that a guest could give my address out to anyone at all, and I'd never know about it unless I waited every day by the door when the post arrives.

So..  I have no issues with guests getting post here, whether or not they ask in advance.. I don't care.  Many of my guests are relocating to London from another country!  They are staying for a month or more in my flat while they look for their own place, and get settled .  

I think if I had a guest staying for less than a week getting mail, I would be very suspicious and I would probably refuse mail, return it to sender if they hadn't cleared it with me first with a very good reason.

I may look into requesting guests use the Royal Mail's https://www.postoffice.co.uk/mail/poste-restante Poste Restante service .

That my guests order food deliveries, well.. as someone who DOES food deliveries.. I could hardly be against it. 🙂   

I've only ever had one guest in 5 years get mail and packages sent to me AFTER he left.  One of them (who lived with me for 3.5months) messaged me on whatsapp 2 months later, to say "this company is sending me something, and they used your address instead of my new one, would you mind accepting it and my friend will come collect".  I said... ok..  but 3 weeks later what I got was a note from Royal Mail saying there was postage due.  So .. I just ignored the card,  2 weeks later my ex-guest asked if his friend could come and I said "? nothing's arrived? "  .. he looked into it and found out it was at the depot..  and sent his friend there.  End of story.  Though how his friend managed without ID who knows.