Not known at my address - weird coincidence

[SteveyDee68]

Used to get quite a lot of post to the same numbered house but at “X Hollins Lane, Hollins” instead of “X Croft Lane, Hollins”

 

Fortunately the address was only the other side of the village, and so I was able to take the post around and drop it off at the house myself. The occupants were never in, until the one time that they were, when they thanked me and then handed me back quite a large stack of post meant for my address (all unopened) but which they had kept with the intention of ‘bringing around’…

 

I seem to remember that the oldest was nearly 2 years old!

 

Strangely enough, after that I stopped bothering taking mis-delivered letters around by hand and took to putting them back into the post with a big red ring around “Hollins Lane” instead.

 

Then we got a new postman (postperson?) who we’ve still got, and stuff got delivered correctly!

 

Steve S

[The Lurker]

At our last place we opened a few Christmas cards for the old owners as we had no forwarding address and it added to ours - very festive! Until we read one that said looking forward to seeing you for lunch on Christmas Day….

 

we did try the Estate Agents at that stage but got no further. I think that was our first Christmas and we planned to be at home. Fortunately no-one unexpected visitors turned up!

[Michael Hodgson]

6 hours ago, The White Rabbit said:

 

In the UK, I'm afraid that's wrong - you would be committing a criminal offence if you opened an item of post not addressed to you without 'reasonable excuse'. And I really wouldn't rely on you saying you had no malicious intent, it's the sort of nebulous definition which lawyers argue about in court - at your cost: 

 

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/part/V/crossheading/offences-of-interfering-with-the-mail 

 

https://www.postoffice.co.uk/mail/wrongly-delivered gives the official line on what to do. [Don't open it, put it back in the post.] 

 

 

 

That Act doesn't say it's an offence open an item of post not addressed to you. 

 

84(1) says it's an offence to open it in the course of its transmission by post - but if it's been delivered to you, it is no longer in the course of transmission.

84(3) says it's offence if intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him - but to be guilty of that you would have to be intending to act to the detriment of the real addressee (if there is one), which you're not, and if you reasonably suspect the sender is fraudluent then you also don't suspect misdelivery.

 

 

The post office link just gives reasonable advice on what you should normally do when someone else's post is misdelivered because of Post Office incompetence or the sender's ignorance.

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

21 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

Not here it isn't. Your area must be having issues. Sheffield and Donny areas are not.

Phil

 

That's interesting. Perhaps Royal Mail needs to get the managers from that area to take a look at others.

 

Plenty of reports in the press about people not receiving appointment letters from the NHS.

[4630]

2 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

 

Plenty of reports in the press about people not receiving appointment letters from the NHS.

To be fair, in this instance, to the Royal Mail, that could just as easily be attributed to issues at the NHS as some other recent press reports have confirmed. 

[Michael Hodgson]

21 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

That's interesting. Perhaps Royal Mail needs to get the managers from that area to take a look at others.

 

Plenty of reports in the press about people not receiving appointment letters from the NHS.

I've had NHS appointments recently where no letter had arrived, the first I have known I was expected to go for a scan being a text or email "reminder" of an imminent appointment.  I don't attribute that to my postman as mail from other organisations is certainly getting through.

[Jonboy]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

That's interesting. Perhaps Royal Mail needs to get the managers from that area to take a look at others.

 

Plenty of reports in the press about people not receiving appointment letters from the NHS.

We apparently have recruitment issues round here in Oxfordshire and appear to be getting it every other day, up from once a week recently (although we get very little these days anyway).

 

The only bit that bothers me is that various areas of the law work on the basis of timely delivery (service assumed second day after posting first class etc) and the local NHS depend heavily on it, and there seems to be no acknowledgement of this in the various discussions around it.

 

[spamcan61]

In terms of NHS letters specifically then there have been multiple instances where the company paid to generate and post the letters has failed to do so, on a large scale - hundreds of thousands of letters. So on that specific way the Royal Mail aren't on the frame.

 

Then there's shenanigans like this where the NHS's own systems fail to generate the letters:-

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66950204

Edited October 22, 2023 by spamcan61

[Jonboy]

This is locally generated, franked NHS letters from the John Radcliffes Post room rather than anything out-sourced.

[craneman]

After about 10 years in my home I started getting letters correctly addressed to a non-existent person. "Not known at this address - return to sender" didn't stop them, however " Deceased - return to sender" eventually did.

[Michael Hodgson]

18 minutes ago, craneman said:

After about 10 years in my home I started getting letters correctly addressed to a non-existent person. "Not known at this address - return to sender" didn't stop them, however " Deceased - return to sender" eventually did.

How do you know he didn't exist? 

Was it because you had buried his body in the back garden? 

If so, full marks for getting a death certificate !😉

[Michael Hodgson]

42 minutes ago, Jonboy said:

 

The only bit that bothers me is that various areas of the law work on the basis of timely delivery (service assumed second day after posting first class etc)

 

 

Yeah, that's the powdered wig brigade being decades behind the times as usual. 

 

In the days of empire, within town you might have five deliveries a day, you could send a postcard in the morning saying I'm coming to tea this afternoon and rely on it having arrived before lunchtime.  The TPOs would get badly hand-written and poorly addressed letters to the other end of the country reliably within 24 hours, and you didn't have to use a postcode which won't work if it the sender has made a single character error.

 

Nowadays last collection from most of the pillar boxes round here is 9am, so if you send a letter during the working day it won't even be collected till tomorrow.  That's seen as a sound business decision, because they would miss their statistical targets by a higher percentage if they still emptied letterboxes in the early evening.  I no longer see any meaningful advantage of 1st class over 2nd, as they both seem to arrive at the same time.  So the next bright  idea will be to deliberately add a totally unnecessary delay to second class to presuade people to upgrade, thus increasing revenue.

 

But long term, they won't exist - business does everything electronically these days.  Letter post is no longer economically viable, which is why parcels traffic is their future.

[kevinlms]

11 hours ago, The Lurker said:

At our last place we opened a few Christmas cards for the old owners as we had no forwarding address and it added to ours - very festive! Until we read one that said looking forward to seeing you for lunch on Christmas Day….

 

we did try the Estate Agents at that stage but got no further. I think that was our first Christmas and we planned to be at home. Fortunately no-one unexpected visitors turned up!

Obviously YOU were meant to go to their place. They would have been disappointed that you stood them up! Christmas lunch all cooked up and no one to eat it!

[kevinlms]

In Australia at our old address, we received a series of letters from our local friendly speed camera office! The sending address is well known.

The strange thing was that the address was not ours, but a similar, but non existent address. The postie, must have decided that ours must be the intended adress.

 

I sent the first few back as 'Not known this address', as never heard of the named person. But still they kept coming!

Eventually I got sick of them and opened one, as I was curious as to what stage off the legal procedures, they had got to.

It was their last chance to come forward, for missing court appearances, for not paying the speeding and other fines, before referring to the Sheriff's Office (basically the government debt collector).

 

So in the recycle bin with it. I think one more arrived, then they stopped. So either the Sheriff or the police caught up with them by other means.

[John Isherwood]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

So the next bright  idea will be to deliberately add a totally unnecessary delay to second class to persuade people to upgrade, thus increasing revenue.

 

I have reason to believe that this happens already.

 

CJI.

[craneman]

I know for a fact it was happening in the '50s or '60s. My grandfather was a magistrate and someone appearing before him gave his occupation under oath as "Post Office delayer" and explained that it was his job to ensure 2nd class mail took longer than 1st.

 

I imagine that his job is now automated.

[Welchester]

36 minutes ago, craneman said:

I know for a fact it was happening in the '50s or '60s. My grandfather was a magistrate and someone appearing before him gave his occupation under oath as "Post Office delayer" and explained that it was his job to ensure 2nd class mail took longer than 1st.

 

I imagine that his job is now automated.

 

It must have been late sixties, as second class post wasn't introduced until 1968.

 

I used to know a family called Vince, who lived at the Old School House in Driffield, Gloucestershire. They would often receive mail for the Vincents, who lived at the Old School House, Driffield, Yorkshire.

[craneman]

Very likely, I was relatively young at the time!

[MJI]

I have had post take 2 weeks to get here, including transfers.

 

I just check posted then wait.