With the increasing use of email and social media, the post is becoming less relevant to people’s lives. However its not dead yet and important things are often sent by mail. So whats the best approach to take about forwarding mail?
There are two questions here – mail addressed to the landlord sent to the property while the tenant is in occupation, and mail arriving for tenants after they have vacated.
Landlords mail
If there is any chance that your mail will be sent to the rented property, I would strongly advise all landlords to arrange for a postal re-direct so that their post never gets into the hands of their tenants. If only to avoid the possibility of identity theft, if you have been unlucky enough to have a dishonest tenant.
If you think mail arriving for you at the property is a pretty remote possibility, then maybe a postal re-direct is a bit excessive. However make sure that any organisation which IS likely to write there, is given your proper address (for example the Land Registry – see this scam here).
If you are the tenant and are not sure what to do with mail that arrives for your landlord, tell them about it and ask what they want done with it. Then either forward it or hold it for them to collect as they ask.
Tenants mail
Tenants too are strongly advised to arrange for a postal re-direct when they leave a rented property. As this will only be for a limited time though, make sure you give your landlord a forwarding address.
However as it will generally not be your landlord himself who received your mail but the next tenants, it is best to make a concerted effort to ensure that everyone who is likely to write to you at that address is told of your new one.
Generally
You should NOT open someone else’s mail. If you know where they are then write ‘Forward to’ and then the address on the envelope and re-post it.
If you do not know their address, then post it back marked ‘Not known at this address’ or ‘gone away’ and leave the postal authorities to deal with it.
You may also want to consider doing this if you get fed up with being used as an unpaid postal forwarding service. If post is returned to the sender they will be made aware that the person they are writing to is no longer at that address and will (hopefully) stop writing to them there.
Nice article, Tessa.
I have to add that as a Managing Agent, many Tenants think that we will act as their postal re-direct service. If we did this for every tenant that asked us to, we would be collecting post and forwarding it on all the time rather than doing our actual jobs! So, it is nice to see someone else remind Tenants and Landlords that it is their responsibility to ensure their mail gets to them, not the Agent’s or next Tenants’.
If you write ‘forward to’ and the new address, on the envelope, the Post Office will ignore this and return it to the sender, or destroy it. I’m not sure of the criteria but it seems arbitrary. The only way to get it sent on to a different address (be it the Landlord or former tenant) is to put it in a fresh envelope and pay the postage.
I found this out after the former owner of a house I bought gave me her new address. I religiously forwarded on loads of stuff by writing ‘please forward to new address … ‘ on the envelopes. When I saw her some time later, she told me that she had received not one item.
In my job, I frequently go to vacant rental properties.
Often, there is a huge pile of mail.
But most of it is junk, either that, or bills.
To expect someone to forward these on is expecting too much.
The post office cannot be expected to do a job twice but only be paid once. It’d be like taking a 50% pay cut.