Dear LPG,

Out of interest, I recently compared some of the online lists of the most stressful experiences that people encounter in life and, in nearly all of them, moving house is in the top ten.   But saying ‘yes’ to one particular friend’s request for help has caused me a fair share of anguish that perhaps most people would expect to come across at the end of that initial moving process and all but disappear after a month or two.  In spite of those facts, I have been living in my present home for well over 30 years with a similar problem that I caused for myself. When you move in you usually get mail which belongs to the previous house owner for a bit but, for most, the problem dissipates after a couple of months or so.

About twenty years ago a friend who was moving, told me that she was moving locally and asked me if she could give her doctor my address so that she would be sure to get her medical letters.  I was reluctant because I wondered if it is legal to do that but, she said it would only be for a little while until she was settled and, in the end, I agreed.

At the beginning she would turn up every couple of months to collect them and she did give me a mobile phone number so I kept them ready for her when she arrived.  During the next couple of years, the visits became less frequent and she must be quite ill because there were a lot of letters and most of them had NHS markings on the envelopes so I would call the mobile number she had given me and leave a message.  A year or so later the phone number stopped being answered and I found myself with no idea of where my friend was and a growing collection of mail that was not mine. 

This was when I started putting ‘not known’ or ‘wrong address’ on them and putting them back in the post-box.  Not many have come back over the years, but the new ones have continued to come through thick and fast and, always having thought accepting someone else’s mail illegal, I have never done more than that.  I suppose for me it is tantamount to lying about who lives in your home and, in these days of internet intrusiveness, I was worried about the powers that be working out that she never appears on my electoral role entries or even with the two census forms I have completed since this all started. 

Yet another letter arrived last week and, I don’t know why but I decided it was time to find out if what I did all those years ago was illegal.  But a weight has been lifted because I phoned the Royal Mail who told me that it is illegal to open such mail, but not illegal to accept it with the consent of the person who should be getting the letters. They added that they deliver to addresses rather than named people so they could not really help me when it comes to not receiving them. 

I suppose that there is one positive; all the mail I get seems to be medical, so I also phoned the GP practice that most of the envelopes show the mail to be coming from to inform them of the situation but they were very unhelpful.   These days so many of the letters that come to us are marked with some sort of advertisement on the outside that my next port of call has to be to make contact with some of the organisations who like to advertise to let them know that there is no point in sending further correspondence to my address.

I have always been aware of all the paper that I am sending back and amassing at times and if I am getting all this information my question is, is she.

But for all the complications I caused myself by saying ‘yes’ to her request all those years ago, it is good to know that I have not done anything illegal. 

I wonder if any other reader has done something similar?

VL, Brockley

LPG found a little related information…

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