Mail of guests

Josephine70
Level 3
Everett, WA

Mail of guests

My house is being used by a previous guest as her address.

 

What should I do when I don’t even know where to forward the guest’s  address? Should I just return yhem to sender?

 

7 Replies 7
Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

@Josephine70 just a couple of things to check before answering : can you tell who the sender of the mail is? Is it a credit card statement or from another lender?

 

I ask because you may find the guest has used your address to commit fraud, so if it’s lender mail then I would contact them directly and let them know. I had this happen to me at a previous property and it turned out a woman had used my address to clock up over $15,000 in debts to various places. It then began showing up on my credit rating, as a “known person of poor credit” was tagged as living with me at my address. I had to get onto this quickly and once I did, it was easily solved.

 

If it’s just standard mail then I’d say you’re safe to return to sender.

Gerry-And-Rashid0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Josephine70

 

I agree with @Ben551

 

Rather than just returning to sender - open some and see if they are demands for payment. If so, you can expect debt collectors letters and then the baliffs. We made the mistake about 8 years ago of just returning to sending and ended up having to deal with debt collectors  after about a year - their response was, we should have contacted them sooner...


@Gerry-And-Rashid0 wrote:

@Josephine70

 

I agree with @Ben551

 

open some


This is against Federal law in the USA. Do not mark "Return to Sender;" instead mark the envelope "Addressee Unknown." Then it is up to the Post Office to determine what should be done.

Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

@Gerry-And-Rashid0@Susan151 I wasn’t suggesting you open the mail to check who it’s from.

 

I mean looking on the outside of the envelope to check who it’s from. I don’t know how it is in your parts of the world, but here I find companies will print their sender info on the back of an envelope. Reading that is all you need to be able to lookup the contact details of the company, to check whether they are a lending institution, tax agent, lawyer.... etc. You can then write to them to ask why they sending mail to the person named on the envelope and explain they don’t live at your address. 

 

I do this all the time and there is usually no need to open mail to solve this sort of mystery 🙂

I guess the test is: are you continuously getting letters addressed to this individual which are clearly not junk mail - if so you do have a right to open them. We waited way too long - once debt collectors and bailiffs are involved you go through hoops and loops to prove it is not you. Good luck! 

@Gerry-And-Rashid0. No. Really. This is against the law in our country. You may NOT open mail that is not addressed to you.

 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1702

@Susan151'

Well that's a pity - in Europe we have something called 'reasonable excuse' - eg: suspect a crime, suspect stolen identity, etc... So the principle is the same - it's an offence, except where there is reasonable excuse.