what do i do with former tenants mail?

[meg-momto2]

we keep getting the former tenants mail. 3-4 pieces a week and it's not junk mail. there's a few bills and some statements. i even got a small package last week. i've been pilling it up in the corner of my kitchen. can i take it to the post office to forward to them? should i try to contact them?

[moondiapers]

write "not at this address" on them and put them back in the mail box with the flag up.

[kirstenb]

:

I return them back to the sender.

[laohaire]

Write RETURN TO SENDER / NO LONGER AT ADDRESS and take everything into the Post Office. You don't have to pay or anything.

[IvyAfire]

Mark return to sender, so they know they've moved.

It isn't your responsibility to find the tenant.

This way the sender knows to stop sending to your address and they can start trying to contact them another way.

[Noisette's_Maman]

Also, put up a note on your mailbox that says,
'mail for [your name] family only'

we did that and talked with our postal delivery person to get the stuff stopped

[Contrariety]

Originally Posted by kirstenb

:

I return them back to the sender.

Yup.

[Denvergirlie]

I cross out the address and write "no longer at this address"
next to it and then draw an arrow and write "return to sender" next to the return address and put it back in the outgoing mail.

[ashleyhaugh]

yeah i cross out the address and write "lo longer at this address" too... i was just writing, but then i was getting mail id returned back to me, lol. if you black out the address, they have no choice but to return it to the sender

[meg-momto2]

thanks everyone. i'm going to take the small pile i have down to the post office and let them deal with it. anything else we get from here on out will be getting crossed out and returned to sender.

[EviesMom]

Sometimes you end up with a crappy mail delivery person too. In Brooklyn, we would receive tons of stuff for many many other people, not just the last residents but I guess the last decades worth. At first, we would write "not at this address return to sender" and it would come back to us. Then we would black out the address. So the delivery man wouldn't take it out of our mailbox. Literally he just left it all there. And would just pile up any other mail around the mailbox. We blacked out the address and took it to the local post office... and they bundled it all up and wrote our address on it and redelivered it! :

So we trashed everything finally. I hated to do it, but if the local post office was so ridiculously bad...

[karne]

All of the above. Our home has an attached apartment and we get lots of mail for the former tenants. We have spoken to the post office because it was starting to appear that a former tenant was listing our home as his residence in order to have a street address, which can cause more problems than just the wrong mail.

[amma_mama]

We move around a lot so I have done the "return to sender"/"no longer at address" thing quite a bit. However, after about 6 months, I admit that I usually end up dumping stuff in the trash unless it looks important (a check or bill) - I figure if they have not taken 2 minutes to fill out the yellow change of address form at the post office, I should not waste my time either.

[Germaya]

We moved last month and still get things addressed to the prev owner - we know them though so i cross out our address and write their new address on there. In our old apt, when we would get stuff for prev tenants, i would write "no longer at this address". If they won't take it out of your mailbox, you could always black out the address and toss it in a public mailbox too.

[jeninejessica]

Originally Posted by EviesMom

Sometimes you end up with a crappy mail delivery person too. In Brooklyn, we would receive tons of stuff for many many other people, not just the last residents but I guess the last decades worth. At first, we would write "not at this address return to sender" and it would come back to us. Then we would black out the address. So the delivery man wouldn't take it out of our mailbox. Literally he just left it all there. And would just pile up any other mail around the mailbox. We blacked out the address and took it to the local post office... and they bundled it all up and wrote our address on it and redelivered it! :

So we trashed everything finally. I hated to do it, but if the local post office was so ridiculously bad...

Yeah that. We know the old owners of our house... so for the first SIX MONTHS, I faithfully brought them their mail, before finally realizing they had no intentions of ever switching their addresses, they were relying on us to keep bringing it to them. So after another few months of writing "return to sender: moved", we finally took them INTO our local canada post at the drug store. I watched the mail ladyput them on the back counter, and then as soon as I startd to leave, she turned around and threw them out-- no wonder the companies hadn't stopped sending the mail- they had probably never received anything back!

[Hazel]

so what would you all do about this one?
we received what looked like a personal letter in the mail but it didnt have a name it was addressed to. just the address. it had a return name and address for someone in Tx that we didn't know. but we do know people in Tx so we were wondering if there was some weird type of thing where someone got ahold of our address or something. Dh went ahead and opened it. It was a personal letter to a gal that used to live here. From her inmate boyfriend.
I thought we should put a little note inside apologizing for opening the letter and explaining that the reason we had opened it was because it was not addressed to anyones name, just our address. Then tape it back up and put a return to sender, this person no longer lives here on the envelope.
dh is worried that we opened a can of worms by opening the letter.

[moondiapers]

Originally Posted by Hazel

so what would you all do about this one?
we received what looked like a personal letter in the mail but it didnt have a name it was addressed to. just the address. it had a return name and address for someone in Tx that we didn't know. but we do know people in Tx so we were wondering if there was some weird type of thing where someone got ahold of our address or something. Dh went ahead and opened it. It was a personal letter to a gal that used to live here. From her inmate boyfriend.
I thought we should put a little note inside apologizing for opening the letter and explaining that the reason we had opened it was because it was not addressed to anyones name, just our address. Then tape it back up and put a return to sender, this person no longer lives here on the envelope.
dh is worried that we opened a can of worms by opening the letter.

rip it up and throw it in the trash. It didn't have a name on it, so it's to the resident, you. If the previous tenant had wanted this man to know where she was, she would have told him. She might even be hiding from him.

[jeninejessica]

I would hoenstly just trash it. rip it a few times, and throw it in your recycling. If you get another one, then stick return to sender/moved on it and send it back.

[earthmama369]

"Return to sender--addressee unknown" is the standard notation. Write it on the outside of the envelope and put it in your outgoing mail.

We did this after the women we bought our house from moved to Maine and neglected to file a change of address with the post office. We were getting her investment statements, bank statements, lawyers' communications, bills, all sorts of important stuff. If I had just shredded it, it never would have gotten rerouted to her and she would have been much more screwed in terms of her bills. At least by returning it to the sender, they knew she wasn't getting the mail they were sending her. (And we don't get anything for her now, so it worked for us, too.)

[oneKnight]

For the first couple of months I returned to sender.

It's been over a year now, we get occasional stuff. For example, we get 3-months past-due bills for this one chick. I have returned it once or twice. I KNOW she is just avoiding paying the bill by not changing her address, or the pedi clinic is too stupid to figure out what returned mail means. If they haven't changed their addy in over a year, that's their problem. I toss it.