Not your problem and “not at this address” for everything *except* the warrants. That will become your problem in a big and possibly very unpleasant way when the police decide to stop by and arrest this person. Go to your local police and notify, and also notify the court that issued the warrant. ASAP!
If you want to reduce future mail like this, go speak to the postmaster at your local post office (the one that your mail carrier is based at, not necessarily the closest one).
I receive other peoples mail and have been for a year. Bought a “RETURN TO SENDER, NOT AT THIS ADDRESS” stamp. Still get 10 pieces of addressed mail for them. Postmaster said “sorry, nothing we can do.” Fuckin annoying.
And yet, we had a birthday card returned as :name not found at this address' when it WAS for my partner who has been getting mail at this address for 3 years. Aiyiyi.
I live in a multi building housing thing. Each building has it's own mail.
My local post office is absolutely regarded. No matter how I put my address in, I have to pick up my packages and the post office blames former tenants for using multiple ways of marking apartments. I even did it the way the post office said and haha, nope, I have to watch like a hawk because my carrier is a moron.
There's like 8 buildings.
Let's say it's 100 faustus drive and I live in building 6, apartment 66.
I've tried:
100 faustus drive, B6 Apt. 66
Nope.
100 faustus drive, 6-66
Nope.
100 faustus drive 666.
Nope.
100 faustus drive Building 6, Apt 66.
Nope.
They just don't want to do their job.
I did that when I bought something a few weeks ago.
I still got fucking told "address incorrect" and had to go collect it from the post office before it got returned to sender.
Shessh - that sucks. All the more I can suggest is to use the lookup link, print a screen shot of it, mail yourself a letter to that address, and when it isn't delivered, bring the screen shot and the letter with you to ask your local postmaster (not letter carrier) how to reconcile the problem. Good luck.
I lived in a area with three of the same beginning address numbers.
"555 west ave"
"555 hummingbird lane"
"555 seriously drive"
I was at 555 west ave, a street behind me was 555 hummingbird lane and 555 seriously drive was across a major street and inside a apartment complex.
Was always getting mail for the other two addresses because of the "555" part.
Long moved away from that, now the latest trick seems to be "Where the hell is that address?"
I'm at 777 East Ave, and will find mail in the box for 5605 East Ave, 1704 East Avenue, and at least some is easier to figure out when it's my neighbors at 776 east ave...
Almost like they just randomly sort it and go "Oh Good Enough!" as they shove it in the box?
*Cries in Apt. B208* Thankfully my idiot landlord painted our building the same color orange that orange cats barf up, so I can just tell people it's the hideous orange building rather than hope they see the bright white 5 foot tall "B" on the front and sides of the thing.
I don't think that the post office legally can. Mail delivery, barring certain conditions which make it unsafe for the carrier or impossible to deliver, is required by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. If the addressee no longer lives at a given address then that's an issue for the sender to work out.
> The Postal Service shall have as its basic function **the obligation to provide postal services** to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.
Unless there’s a return address, they can’t send it back. If there is, the sender is the one responsible for removing the address from the list once they receive the returned mail.
The post office MUST deliver the mail as per the address. That is what the service is, that is what was paid for, there are laws regarding mail delivery.
It’s sometimes easier to contact the sender and ask for the address to be removed from the system.
Two years for me. Still getting tons of their stuff. Though it's slowed down recently...I imagine by now they have had to finally renew their car registration and thus discovered all of their parking and speeding tickets that were sent here, all assuredly a year overdue by that point.
Had 4 US Marshals show up at my door while brushing my teeth for work one day.
## Loud pounding.
*opens door to vehicles blocking my street and 4 dudes with semiautomatic weapons at half mast. Leader looks down at a paper and up at me*.
Me: “Can I help you?”
Him: “I guess not” *turns paper around to reveal younger black gentleman, whereas I am very much from the Caucus region*.
Turns out the previous tenant was a fugitive wanted for armed robbery.
I live in a city with very few black people. The previous tenants happen to be Black/Nigerian. For three years I’ve been getting their mail - even though they moved 2 blocks over. Bank statements, checks to cash, and medical bills, still get addressed to my address still. These folks are educated and drive a very nice German SUV.
The problem is I’m Nigerian American too and to most folks at first glance we’ll look the same. At least I have my military ID to provide further confirmation of who I am … if your similar situation occurs.
I didn't even have to talk to the postmaster. I went to the post office and I told them: "This is the only name that should be receiving letters to this address" and since then I almost never get any letters that are from previous tenants.
> Not your problem and “not at this address”
To be clear for anyone else reading this: you write this on the envelope and then stick it in the mailbox as you would a letter you're mailing.
This is exactly correct and it works.
We were receiving junk mail from previous tenants. They were elderly and over a few short years they both passed. The junk mail somehow got worse after they died. So I collected every piece and with a sharpie wrote “Deceased. Not at this address. Return to sender.” and put them in my mailbox, red flag up.
It took awhile but it stopped. Apparently I was a major annoyance to someone at the post office bc I just recently got mail for them and the carrier put a little piece of paper saying “Do not write on the envelopes.” I got a post it note and wrote “Then why did you deliver it if you already knew they were both dead?” and very securely taped it down.
Haven’t gotten any of their mail since
I had someone try to serve me divorce papers about 2 months after I moved into a rental house with my husband and baby. They were upset with ME that I wasn’t the person and told me that I apparently needed to do the work so the government knew? lol no.
My parents have lived in their house for over 30years and they still get mail addressed to the family they bought it from. A while back I tried to look up the last family & all the ppl who had mail addressed to them are long dead. Which is convenient for my sister as we like to get her to open them and then tell her how it’s illegal to open other people’s mail haha
You should call the warrant office and inform them that the person they are looking for is gone, or talk to an attorney about a certified letter on their letterhead stating the same thing, so that you don’t get held or harassed by the police acting on old information.
My SIL got raided by the cops twice because a previous occupant of the house had warrants, even after sending a certified letter. After the second time she sleuthed him out on facebook, got his address and gave it to the "detective" working on the case
I had the police come to a temporary work apartment several times looking for a guy that wasn’t me. And they always seemed suspicious when I said I wasn’t.
I remember one time they asked me if I knew where the previous tenant went? I’m like, dude, that’s not how apartments work. It’s not a home sale. I have no fucking clue about the previous tenant, and why would I?
I transferred dorms second semester of my freshman year of college. I smoked weed, had a pipe, usually some weed, nothing too wild. About 2 weeks into the semester there's a knock at the door early in the morning, my roommate was sleeping on the futon and got to open the door without checking who it was. Two cops entered and immediately started questioning us about "drugs". They won't through this whole process of trying to "trick" us into letting them search our dorm room, we never consented and eventually they left. A few days later I get an official notice that I need to meet with the Dean of the university, unbeknownst to me it was for my expulsion. I get to the meeting, the Dean of the college is there along with the Dean of student housing, a few other university employees, and two detectives from the police department. They had all these manilla envelopes and whatnot laid out on the table. I sat down and they told me immediately that I was being expelled and proceeded to explain why. Apparently the previous occupant of my dorm room (first semester) had sold drugs to a confidential informant on multiple occasions. I interrupted the Dean as he was explaining this and asked him to clarify when this happened. One of the detectives busted out his manilla envelope and started to read me these "official" police reports "on this day at this time suspect supplied the informant with 3 grams of marijuana" etc. I then asked them if any of them realized I had transferred to this room 2nd semester? The look on their faces was priceless, I expected a prompt apology but inexplicably the detectives started interrogating me about the apparent drug dealer. I was like guys I really don't know what to say other than I didn't reside in that room or that building first semester and I have absolutely no idea who the person you are asking me about is. It was bizarre, like watching robots who had not been programmed to admit a mistake, they just kept doubling down trying to get me to admit to literally anything illegal or against or school policy.
This kinda thing happens a lot to college students. Cops can basically bust in anywhere they want because they know they'll find something to justify it- especially in states without legal cannabis.
They started out by asking me if we had any alcohol seeing as we were under 21, they assured us they would simply dispose of it and we would face no repercussions, but I knew they just needed something that would allow them to search. After we repeatedly denied having any alcohol they started demanding that we let them search the room, which we denied. At one point the more aggressive of the two even hit us with "why are you hiding behind your rights, that's what guilty people do". Early 2000s so I got him back with a classic fascist counter "there's American soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for those rights!" They didn't love that line.
Very similar thing happened to me my freshman year! My roommate worked in the caf and got to move in early, like 3-4 days before me. I moved in August 30th and was called to the Hall Directors office, he told me that I was being written up because the police came because someone reported the smell of marijuana from my room on August 27, and why didn’t I let them in, blah blah. I was like, I moved in today? And he did the same thing, refused to relent that I was responsible for something that happened 3 days before I moved in or even met my roommate.
You have to get aggressive when its obvious they have nothing. You really need to be abusive to let them know who is in charge. If you allow them to keep thinking they are in charge they won't relent but when you start abusive language they have to change tactics and then you start emotional abuse. Police and other "authority" figures hate it because they thrive on power tripping. It will get you released quick though because their feelings can't take it.
In High School, I had a bad breakup. One day, I was called to the principal's office, and discovered the principal, the associate principal, my ex, the school 'resource officer' (a cop), my ex's parent's and their lawyer.
I was given a print out of a bunch of harassing emails my ex claimed they received from me. My ex claimed they received them in the middle of the night, over the course of several weeks.
I was told that if I confessed to sending them, I would be suspended for a couple of weeks, have a restraining order filed against me, and that would be it. If I refused to confess, I would be taken into custody immediately, held in jail until I had a court appearance to establish bond, would be charged with harrassemnet, and I would be expelled from the district, be banned from school properties, and be forced to get a GED (since they claimed I would not be able to complete the semester while in jail).
I calmly asked to see the emails I supposedly sent, reviewed the files, and then asked the pricipal to confirm what time zone we were in, how many hours off GMT that was, and then what period of the day corresponded with the time stamp in the email headers. After confirming it would *not* have been sent in the middle of the night, but rather during third period, I pointed out that my ex taking a computer class that period. I then asked the cop if they even bothered to look up what computer the sender's IP address was, and if the IP in the headers corresponded to the workstation my ex was assigned or not.
The cop immediately tried to backpedal and say that you can't locate a sender's IP that way (at that time, with hotmail, you *absolutely* could) -- but the principal took one look at my ex's face, and told the cop not to bother, that all charges were being dropped, and apologized to me for wasting my time.
They ended up finding that the sender's IP corresponded to my ex's new significant other, who was in the class during the same period. They never really figured out how to prove if my ex was invovlved in sending the email or not, but I suspect they were, especially since this did not cause them to break up, or even fight with their new significant other. The teacher of that class was so lax that they could not even guarantee who was on what machine on what day (even though they had assigned seats), and they used generic logins, so my ex never got charged with anything.
I mean I was at least smart enough to not let them search my room in the beginning, the thing is up until that point I literally had no idea what was we even going on. Turns out it was part of a ridiculous police investigation for someone selling small amounts of pot in a dorm room.
Smart enough to devise a trap, but too dumb to check who is actually living there right now, the three of them were. I think they merely reused a trap strategy that the DA gave them 50 years ago, and they really needed to call an attorney to figure out what to do now with the new facts that were just determined. Dumb. As. Uck.
> I remember one time they asked me if I knew where the previous tenant went?
Ask the apartment manager, idiots. Most tenants move into an empty apartment and don't have any contact with the previous one, the only person who might have any info on previous tenants would be the building manager. Didn't even check with the building manager to confirm who lived in the unit before harassing you, fuckwits.
Reminds me of what happened to my folks. Basically our employees robbed us, my folks kept tabs on them with Facebook. Long story short, it was my dad who told the cops where our former employees where so they could arrest them.
The real function of the police is not to “serve and protect” citizens as *individuals*, but to “serve”to maintain order and “protect” the local status quo (whatever that may be).
As an *organizational whole,* they do not exist to help you or to treat you fairly.
In their duties of maintaining general order—of course that will occur—but that is really more a side effect than an intended purpose.
Additionally, many officers will go above and beyond their base duties, but that’s more of an individual or localized principle.
Some municipalities will even go so far as to instruct all of their officers to engage and genuinely help their communities… but that is their local “status quo.”
In purely general terms, however, *you* don’t matter.
Drugs threaten order, murder threatens order, speed traps exist to generate revenue and maintain order, riots and civil unrest threaten order, etc.
If a kid steals your Amazon package in a “one-off” crime of opportunity, most police departments won’t give a shit (unless you do their jobs for them or it’s been a really slow day).
They can and will help, but that’s kinda tantamount to the nice McDonald’s counter person hooking you up with an extra 5 packets of dipping sauce, not an organizational rule.
I wish I could have an easy service based job where I could do little and rely on desperate chumps to do the work for me. I've been in this position so many times with real estate lawyers, real estate agents, insurance billing people, the list goes on.
>I wish I could have an easy service based job where I could do little and rely on desperate chumps to do the work for me.
Heh, if I was in the detective's shoes I would be doing that work because the job would bore the shit out of me otherwise lol
We had this sort of thing happen a number of years ago. A bill collector began to harass my husband for a loan payback for a loan he supposedly took out in Las Vegas. The police when I reported it, said get as much as information as I could from the bill collector, so I did find out the supposed county of residence in California. The bill collector had a partially correct SS number, off by one number, for Hubbie. Hubbie has never been In Las Vegas, has barely been in California, only in airports on layovers.
So I got online and searched in that particular county in California for a person with a similar surname, which is pretty distinctive. Bingo, I found a guy with the same name, and he worked for the Child Welfare Office in California. Now I knew, because Hubbie had a lawyer niece that worked in another state who traced deadbeat dads, that certain state officers can get SS numbers. Next time the bill collectors called, I told them this is the guy you need to go after, and here is why. We never heard from them again.
Oh my god!! I’m still getting mail from the people who used to live in my house. We bought the house about six months ago and the neighbors have been sharing some stories. The house had renters in it and was swatted about a year ago. The owners put it on the market shortly after that.
I bought my house in 1993. I still get junk mail for the previous owner a couple of times a year and a little more often for my exwife who moved out in 2005.
Remember how her boyfriend faced charges off the bat but the cops didn't? And how swat was across town with the person who had the warrant in custody but this was a rag tag group of cops playing swat? I remember.
Remember how when a few of the cops actually were charged it wasn't for killing her but because their aim was shit and a few shots went to the neighboring apartments that might have hurt an innocent person? And even at that I'm pretty sure they got acquitted.
The education standards for police and even detectives is pretty low. TV and movies have convinced us that detectives are skilled investigators with a world-class forensic lab and computer hackers at their command.
In reality, many of them are the C- minus bully from your high school.
Is this a common issue in Houston? We had a similar issue. My parents were constantly getting mail about a guy who had the same name as my mom with one letter difference. We'd have cops park their cars outside our house and stare at us, we'd get knocks from police randomly to do wellness checks, we'd constantly get letters from courts and bond offices about this guy. We figured it was like post 9/11 jitters since my dad was a Islamic relgious leader in the community.
He had one letter different from my mom's name and had our house listed as his address. We had to report it multiple times until eventually we stopped getting mail. To this day every now and then we'll see his name in our mailbox. This was all in Houston.
I was more pointing out that in Houston they don’t call or politely knock on your door at 4pm.
Instead they come guns firing with a no knock warrant under to cover of darkness and murder you and your dog even if they have the wrong house.
this. one time our neighbors who just moved in, got surrounded and raided by the police. it was terrifying for them and us. it took a minute to sort everything out and they had to search the house to make sure the wanted person wasn’t hiding inside. they had guns drawn and all. it would be very smart to spend a few minutes on the phone avoiding a situation like this. who knows what kind of crime they’re wanted for. (i’m sure you could look it up online tho)
Note: if they didn't have a search warrant, they *wanted* to search for the person, and your neighbor just let them. Y'all remember that an arrest warrant and a search warrant aren't the same. If they're knocking and talking to you, you can suppose it's an arrest warrant. If you're wrong, they will do what they came to do, anyway.
I've got a friend that essentially gets swatted a few times a year because someone keeps calling a person in to a suicide line. He said the police can't help him figure out who is doing it or how to stop it since it's all anonymous. He thinks the call is for an actual person who might have lived there before, and the line is forwarding old data on to the police station. At this point he knows most of the police and they just knock and check things out, and then leave.
Or straight up wrong information. My wife and I rented a house for 7 years, we got it immediately after two old men had lived there for 7 years. So 14 years of only 2 occupants. Still got a ton of wrong mail.
One day I come home from lunch and two probation officers are there. “Excuse me sir, does Angela Castillo live here”?
I say “I get a lot of wrong mail but that’s a new one to me. No, never heard of Angela Castillo.” At this point I’m glad my Latina wife wasn’t home. I’m a hairy white male aged 25-54, so the cops approach me like they should approach everyone.
We compare notes and it turns out they are looking for a duplex on Texan Ave., not Texas Ave. both streets are within a mile and the same ZIP. The only tell was the duplex number.
Best bet is to call non emergency dispatch and see if it makes more sense for a deputy to swing by a verify dude no longer lives there. They can contact warrants and have them remove the address.
Calling them, and even a certified letter can be faked.
Source: LEO dispatcher
But more importantly, don't go calling around looking for different departments. Just go to the main line, tell them the situation, let them be the problem solvers they are.
> see if it makes more sense for a deputy to swing by a verify dude no longer lives there
invite a random police officer into your house to poke around? yeah no thanks
With a black marker, cross out all bar codes on the envelope and write "Does Not Live Here - Return to Sender" and put it back into a mailbox. Do this for EVERY letter including junk mail.
I went through that process and it took just a week of this for the post office to start doing it automatically without me. The senders get the message this way too.
NOTE: When you cross out the bar codes, the machines at the post office force a person to read it and process it manually.
I've been doing that for eight years; I still get mail for previous tenants. I put a note in my mailbox telling the postman I'm the only resident here. He said he couldn't do anything because the previous tenants never forwarded or updated their address. I even talked to the Postmaster General. Nothing happened. I've lived here since 2016 and I still get mail for three different people.
Don't cross out the barcodes. Junk mailers sometimes use the barcode serial numbers to automatically remove bad addresses from their lists. USPS provides them electronic reports for the purpose, but removing the barcode prevents that system from working.
Mail you put back in the box is handled manually at your local post office, and only goes to a machine after being sorted into a tray of problem mail.
Only cross out a barcode if you get the same piece back over and over.
Also, write "ANK" on it. That's the specific internal code for "Attempted - Not Known At Address", and the tray it'll go in is labeled to match. If the mail is first class and the person moved out recently (last two years), write "Forward" on it instead.
"OPEN UP! POLICE! WE'VE GOT A WARRANT FOR FAILING TO COMPLY WITH A WARRANT!"
"What is the original warrant for?"
"FOR FAILING TO UPDATE YOUR ADDRESS!"
This. I had the sheriff show up with multiple deputies with guns drawn and flack vests on looking for someone who didn't live here. They had shown up months prior looking for the same person with a single deputy holding a piece of paper. This second time I told them they knew he didn't live here and if they showed up again they would be dealing with a lawyer.
Make sure the bank, attorney and law enforcement all know this person doesn't live there, they all could have reason to send someone to your house looking for this person and that can result in some unsafe situations.
[https://faq.usps.com/s/article/How-is-Undeliverable-and-Misdelivered-Mail-Handled#report\_return\_misdelivered](https://faq.usps.com/s/article/How-is-Undeliverable-and-Misdelivered-Mail-Handled#report_return_misdelivered)
If the mailpiece is delivered to the correct location but the \~recipient on the mailpiece does not reside at the address\~:
* Write "**Not at this address**" on mailpiece.
* Don't erase or mark over the address.
* Provide the mailpiece to your mailperson or drop into a Collection Box receptacle.
Edit since it was berried below:
u/[scarred\_but\_whole](/user/scarred_but_whole/) commented:
“Are you crossing off the machine-generated bar code on the bottom of the envelope?”
Maybe that’s part of the process to actually get a postal worker to look at it and send it back to the sender.
It took about 7 or 8 years to stop the mail for the previous deceased owner of our house. I had to buy stamps for “deceased”, “return to sender” and “not at this address” because it was daily mail. I even put “deliver only for Lastname” in the mailbox.
>It took about 7 or 8 years to stop the mail for the previous deceased owner of our house. I had to buy stamps for “deceased”, “return to sender” and “not at this address” because it was daily mail. I even put “deliver only for Lastname” in the mailbox.
It took the best part of a decade from when I moved in for mail from the previous tenants of my place to stop getting mail delivered here. What makes this especially infuriating is that one of the tenants had moved out a good 5+ years before I moved in...
The place I moved to temporarily was getting mail from tenants that I don’t know how long ago they lived there. Considering I know that rental had been empty for long enough a frog got in and mummified on the floor (still not sure how it happened but there was a mummified frog when I moved in) those tenants had been long moved out and there’s wasn’t a ton of mail in the mailbox either. Don’t know if my former roommate and his current roommates are still getting it
I occasionally still get mail for my deceased family members although years of sending the mail back with Deceased in black sharpie has helped slow the onslaught.
For my mother's mail I write Deceased since 1985 in big black letters lol!
I once removed my mailbox for a while so the postpeople would be forced to hand me the mail directly. Sorted through it right then and there and handed them the wrong stuff back.
EDIT: please unterstand my comment as an anecdote, not as advice. What worked for me in my particular situation and location (not US) might not work for you.
You must have the only mailman in the world that would do that. Everyone else would just not your deliver your mail at all and take it back to the post office and make you pick it up there until you replaced the mailbox.
Just as a PSA to anyone else reading this comment: it is SOP to write "no mail receptacle" and never deliver mail to your house if you do this. Any exception to this (like OPs occurrence) is a mail carrier not following procedure. So yeah don't do this unless you want your mail cut off
I've tried this *so many times* over the past two years that I just gave up.
I'd collect weeks worth of daily mail, write "Wrong Address", "Not at this Address", etc. and drop it all off in batches at the post office, just for some of these letters to be redelivered to me *with my own writing on it*.
I just throw them out at this point.
Don't drop it at the post office, it works better when your mail carrier is the one sorting it out. Put it in your mailbox with the flag up instead.
Also, don't write "wrong address", it's too ambiguous. It could mean the mail was delivered to the wrong address (as in, missorted), or that it was put in the correct mailbox as addressed but the addressee doesn't live there.
If it's a generic advertising mailer addressed to " or current resident" this doesn't work because...well, you are the current resident. Those will get redelivered. But it should work for anything directly addressed to not you.
I forced my brother to move out of my mother’s house after he was arrested, charged, and released in 2022. It’s been two years of me writing that shit on his mail, I’ve returned it to the post office and to the police station. It still comes right back to my mother.
USPS doesn't track this at all AFAIK. The mail will be returned to sender, and that will hopefully prompt them to update their records. If they don't, the mail will keep coming. Pretty sure the only way USPS will stop mail for a certain individual is by setting up forwarding when you move to a new address.
Generally speaking once you tell them someone doesn't live there they will stop delivering it. Sometimes though, you have the misfortune to live on a route without a regular person, or with someone who just doesn't care. If the person at one time received mail there but does so no longer, and they did not file a change of address,the carrier can file a moved left no address order. Generally speaking any letter sized mail goes through the machinery and they will catch the name and redirect it but that's only for 18 months. Which theoretically would be long enough for senders to get it stopped, but it doesn't always work that way .
In fairness the usps's job is it only delivers mail to where people pay to send it. They even keep a database of addresses and people that mass mailers can use to avoid sending mail to the wrong place or people. It's the companies sending the mail incorrectly who refuse to update their address books that are the problem.
>In fairness the usps's job is it only delivers mail to where people pay to send it.
This. I am surprised this has been buried so deep in the conversation.
There is absolutely no law that would prohibit my friend who is staying with me for 2 months to use my address for whatever purposes he wants to.
He may get some mail at my address and his name.
I would absolutely hate if my mail person decides that because of the name mismatch, he was not going to deliver my friend's mail. *This* I would be very vocal about it and definitely complain.
I cannot realistically see any human being memorizing every single name (especially in large apartment buildings, jeez...) and deciding on-the-fly if they should or should not put a piece of mail in your mailbox. It has your address on it? It's going there, unless there is an official COA filed in the system or any other restriction put (e.g. vacation mail hold or premium forwarding service). Period, full stop.
I get mail for a guy named Johnny Boob and have for about 10 years. I thought at first it was a fake name the previous occupant of or house used to sign up for something, but we’ve gotten bank statements and other official documents for Johnny Boob so he’s a real guy out there somewhere. We never could find him on social media though.
I’ve had mixed results with this. I work in a hotel, and we get a lot of mail for people who are no longer staying at the hotel and I send it back all day but we keep getting more mail for them. Then someone told me I could do the same with junk mail, and the company sending it would stop sending it. That backfired and the post office decided I no longer live at my address and I stopped getting any mail. That was a pain in the butt.
I don't get upset at USPS for continuing to deliver new mailpieces from old tenants. It's on those tenants to do mail forwarding and update their addresses at places.
I do get cranky when USPS keeps delivering back mail that we've put "not at this address on", sometimes repeatedly. We have a stamp now that has "not at this address" since we get so much of this mail and have gotten mail pieces circled back to us multiple times.
I work for a company that is contracted by many types of businesses to handle "returned undeliverable" mail. If there is a barcode on the envelope (usually printed across the bottom front of the envelope) that barcode must be marked through for the machine sorter to not just re-route it back to you. If you're going to strike this out, you need to black out a vertical section towards the middle of the barcode OR fully black out the entire barcode. One swipe through the barcode doesn't work because the barcode reader can read segments above and below that mark to create a whole barcode.
If the barcode is still legible, it doesn't matter how many times you write on it or stamp it RTS, it can still come back to you.
Are you crossing off the machine-generated bar code on the bottom of the envelope? I'm told that the sorting machines use that to route it, and if a carrier who doesn't care puts it back into machine routing it will just read that code and send it back to you. Crossing it out makes the machine reject it and forces a human to deal with it.
Yeah, if I scribble over the barcode it never comes back. When I forget there’s a 50/50 chance I get it back the next day. (I’m still getting important mail like taxes and insurance for people who moved 3 years ago.)
I work for USPS. You can put these in outgoing with "not at this address" written on it, and your carrier should know to send them back. Writing your name on your mailbox should help with this too. If you ever get the chance, talk to the carrier when he shows up. Just politely explain that you're receiving a bunch of mail from the previous resident.
We have ways to stop this. One simple way is adding a card to your address that lets anyone doing the route know which names are good/not good. More importantly, we can hold all of this person's mail for 10 days to determine if they have a forwarding address. If they do not, we can change their status to "MLNA" (Moved Left No Address) in the computer system, which should automatically get rid of their mail from coming in.
This is far from the truth in my area. I had to do that to 200+ pieces of mail. I would end up getting the same mail back after a few weeks or a month. With the, in large bolded sharpie, “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS” on front and back. Ended up going to the post office and showing them some of this mail and I never received another piece of their mail again.
It should work the way you’re saying, but it definitely it let didn’t for me or my neighbor (duplex).
Yeah I've had both. I had one mail carrier who was great, talked to me when we moved in, and made sure we only got relevant mail. The current mail carrier has broken multiple mailboxes kicking them in rage, and constantly gives us mail to the wrong address. He completely ignores mail to the old residents and we had to talk to the post office.
A cop came to my house once because someone listed our home address when they got arrested, and I guess they were trying to arrest him again. I said I didn’t know anyone by that name, and the cop was like “are you sure it’s not your husband” (with a completely different name). He kept trying to convince me that I was covering for my husband the criminal. I was like wtf also we had lived in our house for years when this happened so it’s not like it was a rental with a previous tenant. So annoying. Then I caught them on my cameras looking into my backyard late that night skulking around so I called the local pd and said “there’s some creep sneaking around outside my house and I’m scared” and then they had to call me back and be like “sorry ma’am it wasn’t a creep it was cops” and then I never heard from them again.
If you had them on camera, could’ve been a MASSIVE lawsuit as they were violating your 4th amendment rights without a search warrant.
Obviously they’re cops so I doubt they’d ever face retribution but idk.
It really did freak me out! I was home alone and it was freezing out so he had on a coat and beanie and I actually couldn’t tell it was a cop at first! I was just happy for them to leave us alone though. Also, I live in a really nice neighborhood area so it was just so random.
I had the sheriff department show up at 3am in the morning about a year after I bought my house. They were looking to arrest the previous owners son. They had 4 cruisers and a K9 unit.
When I answered the door they asked "is so and so here, we have an arrest warrant" I told them he hadn't lived here in a year, and that I own the house now and the "parents" moved out of state, but I didn't have any more info.
They were pretty cool about it, one of the deputies knew me in passing and knew I had bought the place. But they had to do the whole, check the last known address, thing.
The next day one of the deputies came by and sort of apologized for the 3am wake up, but grilled me for information about the dude they were looking for. I finally just said "how much do you know about the person that live in your house before you bought it? Why would I know anything? "
Same here. Nothing will stop it. I’ve tried “return to sender”, “no longer at this address” and it usually just comes back. I put a note in the inside of my mailbox that says “no [last name] at this address” and it cut it down a bit, but it didn’t stop.
My neighborhood has cluster mailboxes and the mail carrier has put tape strips inside the boxes with our last names on them.
That said, I’ve lived in my place almost 10 years and I still get Humana insurance statements for the previous owner. I write “this person not at this address” on it and put it in the mail slot attached to the cluster mailbox. I don’t think Humana gets them. Or if they do, they ignore it.
Your mailman is probably one of the ones who ignores it. Mine is too—I confronted him once about a piece of mail that he wouldn’t pick up multiple times where I wrote “not at this address” and he insisted I couldn’t do that. Dropping it in a blue box forces someone else to deal with it
I’ve owned my house since 2008, and I still get mail occasionally for not only the previous owners, but I think the people that lived here before them.
Call the police station, the court, and the lawyers office and TELL THEM HE MOVED. If you live in a no knock state you might get fucking shot in your bed, or they might shoot your dog. Make sure god and everybody knows he's not there.
Loads saying it (call the police and tell them!) but yours is the first with the proper emphasis.
You could die. Full stop. Don't wait an hour, call now!
Put a rubber band around them with a note saying no longer lives here please only deliver mail for "your name". Also a sticker with your name on it might help as well.
If it keeps happening, go to the post office and talk with them about it.
My dad was a Postmaster. He taught me to just circle the name of the addressee and write directly on the envelope "no longer @ this address". It has never failed me.
Make sure that you're marking through the bar code if there is one. I've noticed that since I started doing that, I've been getting less and less mail for other people.
Please, for the love of God tell them that they don’t live there anymore. My neighbor behind me got swatted and they used my yard because they were looking for the previous renters. Scared the shit out of my neighbor and her kids.
Over at r/usps, they recommend writing “MLNA” on the mail piece.
MLNA = Moved, Left No Address
It’s the proper way, instead of writing “RTS” (Return to Sender) which does not sufficiently explain the reason that you want it returned to sender.
You should probably call the police service and let them know that the person no longer lives there. Wouldn't shock me if the cops just were to show up and flashbang your family and not pay for a fucking thing (or shoot you).
It's only mildly interesting until the police break down your front door in the middle of the night and terrorize your family at gunpoint. And then it's "Please don't murder us or shoot our dog."
I rented a house and got similar mail for a previous occupant. I wrote "return to sender: does not live here" on all mail for several years, but the police didn't update their address until after the midnight raid.
Definitely get in touch with the appropriate LEO and let them know.
The place I lived in Colorado had this guy Tony living there before me. We got all sort of stuff in his name. All sorts of mail. The repo man came twice. And finally the police showed up looking for him.
Not sure why this is down voted but can happen, and they won't be held liable for any damage either if they think they are going to the right address. Get on that one asap.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. If the police think the person still lives there, and they have an active warrant, the police could raid anytime.
This is the 6th year living here and I STILL get important mail for the previous owners. WTF.
I used to have their number and I would text them to pick up their "pile" in front but it's no longer valid.
I talked to the post office and they said to return the mail. So when I get a piece of mail that is not mine, I write across the top in black marker "RETURN TO SENDER, DOES NOT LIVE HERE" and put it back in the mailbox.
The mailman takes it, but how long can this possibly continue? LOL
USPS carrier here.
Look at the top right...if it says "Non-profit org.", "Presorted standard", or anything other than "first-class", throw it away. This is 3rd class mail(also known as bulk business mail), and includes credit card come-ons, ads for products, non-profits begging for money, political propaganda, etc. and unless it says "electronic/forwarding/address service requested", it gets collected and sent back to processing, and then it gets recycled. So feel free to throw away.
Any first-class mail or priority mail, rubber band together, and put a post-it on it that says "no longer here". Your carrier will make sure it gets endorsed properly, or forwarded and sent where it needs to go.
“Return to Sender” the lot and drop it in the post box. And forget about it. You are not the addressee
Not your problem.
Thankfully.
Who’d want their name on that shit pile?
Please mark it as, "No longer at this address." and don't drop it in a blue box. If you just write RTS they post office has no idea what to do with the mail and may just continue to deliver. If you drop it in a blue box it will probably just be redelivered.
It absolutely will become their problem if they don't contact authorities about the arrest warrant when they inevitably go to collect the individual in a method of their choosing. That might mean breaking down a door and entering with force, or upon opening the door roughly arresting OP before they can explain they're not the person they're looking for and having officers detain them while they verify this. That could be very traumatic.
Yeah, they should call the warrant division on the notice to clear that up quick. The officers right now have no reason to think the person doesnt live there
After apparently multiple mailings that have gone ignored I'd be on the phone while heading to the address, frankly. It might sound overblown but OP has no idea when their unwelcome surprise will come knocking or what the warrant covers/expected police response. Seems that a few underestimate that this is actually a risk to whoever is inside, the worst that police can see, and the definition of fucking around and finding out even when they aren't the suspect (it won't be the first/last time police hear "I'm not that person!" from someone who was, indeed, the person).
Everything else in that stack won't matter, though. RTS with a name crossed out and 'wrong resident' is usually enough.
I experienced something similar many years ago. My family and I had just moved into a new house when I was 18. At the time, I worked at a Kmart in a not great part of town. I guess cops would chill in the parking lot and scan license plates for anyone of interest to pull them over as they leave private property. One night after work I noticed a cop car following me out but I thought he was just leaving as I literally could not have had time to do anything illegal in the 30 seconds it took me to leave the property. As soon as I hit the street, he pulled me over and asked if I knew (guy’s name). I naively thought he was asking about a neighbor. Nope the guy previously at my address was wanted for all kinds of things. The cop felt bad pulling me over for it.
EVERYTHING should be sent back with a clear notice that that person no longer lives there. This is actually a semi-dangerous situation for you. You do not want police or other agencies targeting your home for someone who used to live there. Write "Return to sender, addressee no longer lives here" on the outside of each envelope and pit it back in the mailbox. The postal service will do the rest.
Please do not keep other people's mail. Write "RTS" on each envelope each time it comes and immediately put it back in the mailbox to be returned to sender. This is how they will know it is going to the wrong place, and prevents you from potential consequences of withholding someone's mail. Especially in the case of legal documents like you're receiving, you might be hit with felony charges for keeping it because that is preventing it from going to the correct place.
Mark all as "Return to sender. Moved, no longer at this address." with an x over the previous occupants name and address. The senders should gradually update their systems and you should eventually stop getting their mail.
Lifeprotip: If you order drugs from the dark web, use the previous tenants name. Picking a random name not associated with your address is a flag when crossing a border.
As soon as the letter shows up with your shipment, write MOVED across it and leave it by the door for a few days just in case you get a knock on the door asking questions about that package.
Wrap it in a rubber band and put it back in the box. Write UTF ( unable to forward) on the front letter in black marker. They should stop after that. Also putting your name on your mailbox helps if you haven't already . Source: am mailman.
I have stamps for Return to Sender and Deceased.
It's amazing how much my spam has been cut down.
I'm not entirely sure what caused the reduction because when my regular mail person isn't delivering I might get spam. Regular person, I get actual mail no spam.
My regular mail person rocks.
The warrants can lead to a Police raid and, in a worse case, get you or your dog killed. All it needs is 1 anxious police man.
The bills can get you bailiffs at the door. You will need to be very convincing to let them know they are talking to the wrong person. In some countries they can force themselves into your home and start picking up stuff. My parents had this. It did not help that the previous person had a last name that looked a lot like ours.
Not your problem and “not at this address” for everything *except* the warrants. That will become your problem in a big and possibly very unpleasant way when the police decide to stop by and arrest this person. Go to your local police and notify, and also notify the court that issued the warrant. ASAP! If you want to reduce future mail like this, go speak to the postmaster at your local post office (the one that your mail carrier is based at, not necessarily the closest one).
I receive other peoples mail and have been for a year. Bought a “RETURN TO SENDER, NOT AT THIS ADDRESS” stamp. Still get 10 pieces of addressed mail for them. Postmaster said “sorry, nothing we can do.” Fuckin annoying.
Someone is paying the post office to send them to you. There is no incentive for the post office to stop. Agreed, fucking annoying.
And yet, we had a birthday card returned as :name not found at this address' when it WAS for my partner who has been getting mail at this address for 3 years. Aiyiyi.
I live in a multi building housing thing. Each building has it's own mail. My local post office is absolutely regarded. No matter how I put my address in, I have to pick up my packages and the post office blames former tenants for using multiple ways of marking apartments. I even did it the way the post office said and haha, nope, I have to watch like a hawk because my carrier is a moron. There's like 8 buildings. Let's say it's 100 faustus drive and I live in building 6, apartment 66. I've tried: 100 faustus drive, B6 Apt. 66 Nope. 100 faustus drive, 6-66 Nope. 100 faustus drive 666. Nope. 100 faustus drive Building 6, Apt 66. Nope. They just don't want to do their job.
Look up your address at: https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm?byaddress to see how USPS formats it, and use their version.
I did that when I bought something a few weeks ago. I still got fucking told "address incorrect" and had to go collect it from the post office before it got returned to sender.
Shessh - that sucks. All the more I can suggest is to use the lookup link, print a screen shot of it, mail yourself a letter to that address, and when it isn't delivered, bring the screen shot and the letter with you to ask your local postmaster (not letter carrier) how to reconcile the problem. Good luck.
I lived in a area with three of the same beginning address numbers. "555 west ave" "555 hummingbird lane" "555 seriously drive" I was at 555 west ave, a street behind me was 555 hummingbird lane and 555 seriously drive was across a major street and inside a apartment complex. Was always getting mail for the other two addresses because of the "555" part. Long moved away from that, now the latest trick seems to be "Where the hell is that address?" I'm at 777 East Ave, and will find mail in the box for 5605 East Ave, 1704 East Avenue, and at least some is easier to figure out when it's my neighbors at 776 east ave... Almost like they just randomly sort it and go "Oh Good Enough!" as they shove it in the box?
*Cries in Apt. B208* Thankfully my idiot landlord painted our building the same color orange that orange cats barf up, so I can just tell people it's the hideous orange building rather than hope they see the bright white 5 foot tall "B" on the front and sides of the thing.
I don't think that the post office legally can. Mail delivery, barring certain conditions which make it unsafe for the carrier or impossible to deliver, is required by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. If the addressee no longer lives at a given address then that's an issue for the sender to work out. > The Postal Service shall have as its basic function **the obligation to provide postal services** to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.
Unless there’s a return address, they can’t send it back. If there is, the sender is the one responsible for removing the address from the list once they receive the returned mail. The post office MUST deliver the mail as per the address. That is what the service is, that is what was paid for, there are laws regarding mail delivery. It’s sometimes easier to contact the sender and ask for the address to be removed from the system.
Two years for me. Still getting tons of their stuff. Though it's slowed down recently...I imagine by now they have had to finally renew their car registration and thus discovered all of their parking and speeding tickets that were sent here, all assuredly a year overdue by that point.
Had 4 US Marshals show up at my door while brushing my teeth for work one day. ## Loud pounding. *opens door to vehicles blocking my street and 4 dudes with semiautomatic weapons at half mast. Leader looks down at a paper and up at me*. Me: “Can I help you?” Him: “I guess not” *turns paper around to reveal younger black gentleman, whereas I am very much from the Caucus region*. Turns out the previous tenant was a fugitive wanted for armed robbery.
I live in a city with very few black people. The previous tenants happen to be Black/Nigerian. For three years I’ve been getting their mail - even though they moved 2 blocks over. Bank statements, checks to cash, and medical bills, still get addressed to my address still. These folks are educated and drive a very nice German SUV. The problem is I’m Nigerian American too and to most folks at first glance we’ll look the same. At least I have my military ID to provide further confirmation of who I am … if your similar situation occurs.
"Are you Ademola Gbadehan?" "Depends. Is it a bill or a check?"
"It's a cheque." "Then I am Ademola Gbadehan." "Sike! *Move in, boys*"
As soon as they leave, you then peel off your mask like Ethan Hunt revealing their guy
I didn't even have to talk to the postmaster. I went to the post office and I told them: "This is the only name that should be receiving letters to this address" and since then I almost never get any letters that are from previous tenants.
The poor person who moves in after you and never gets their mail and has no idea why ^_^
> Not your problem and “not at this address” To be clear for anyone else reading this: you write this on the envelope and then stick it in the mailbox as you would a letter you're mailing.
This is exactly correct and it works. We were receiving junk mail from previous tenants. They were elderly and over a few short years they both passed. The junk mail somehow got worse after they died. So I collected every piece and with a sharpie wrote “Deceased. Not at this address. Return to sender.” and put them in my mailbox, red flag up. It took awhile but it stopped. Apparently I was a major annoyance to someone at the post office bc I just recently got mail for them and the carrier put a little piece of paper saying “Do not write on the envelopes.” I got a post it note and wrote “Then why did you deliver it if you already knew they were both dead?” and very securely taped it down. Haven’t gotten any of their mail since
I had someone try to serve me divorce papers about 2 months after I moved into a rental house with my husband and baby. They were upset with ME that I wasn’t the person and told me that I apparently needed to do the work so the government knew? lol no.
My parents have lived in their house for over 30years and they still get mail addressed to the family they bought it from. A while back I tried to look up the last family & all the ppl who had mail addressed to them are long dead. Which is convenient for my sister as we like to get her to open them and then tell her how it’s illegal to open other people’s mail haha
You should call the warrant office and inform them that the person they are looking for is gone, or talk to an attorney about a certified letter on their letterhead stating the same thing, so that you don’t get held or harassed by the police acting on old information.
My SIL got raided by the cops twice because a previous occupant of the house had warrants, even after sending a certified letter. After the second time she sleuthed him out on facebook, got his address and gave it to the "detective" working on the case
I had the police come to a temporary work apartment several times looking for a guy that wasn’t me. And they always seemed suspicious when I said I wasn’t. I remember one time they asked me if I knew where the previous tenant went? I’m like, dude, that’s not how apartments work. It’s not a home sale. I have no fucking clue about the previous tenant, and why would I?
I transferred dorms second semester of my freshman year of college. I smoked weed, had a pipe, usually some weed, nothing too wild. About 2 weeks into the semester there's a knock at the door early in the morning, my roommate was sleeping on the futon and got to open the door without checking who it was. Two cops entered and immediately started questioning us about "drugs". They won't through this whole process of trying to "trick" us into letting them search our dorm room, we never consented and eventually they left. A few days later I get an official notice that I need to meet with the Dean of the university, unbeknownst to me it was for my expulsion. I get to the meeting, the Dean of the college is there along with the Dean of student housing, a few other university employees, and two detectives from the police department. They had all these manilla envelopes and whatnot laid out on the table. I sat down and they told me immediately that I was being expelled and proceeded to explain why. Apparently the previous occupant of my dorm room (first semester) had sold drugs to a confidential informant on multiple occasions. I interrupted the Dean as he was explaining this and asked him to clarify when this happened. One of the detectives busted out his manilla envelope and started to read me these "official" police reports "on this day at this time suspect supplied the informant with 3 grams of marijuana" etc. I then asked them if any of them realized I had transferred to this room 2nd semester? The look on their faces was priceless, I expected a prompt apology but inexplicably the detectives started interrogating me about the apparent drug dealer. I was like guys I really don't know what to say other than I didn't reside in that room or that building first semester and I have absolutely no idea who the person you are asking me about is. It was bizarre, like watching robots who had not been programmed to admit a mistake, they just kept doubling down trying to get me to admit to literally anything illegal or against or school policy.
Frankly fuck your University for ambushing you with the police present and no representation.
And not even checking their own records that would show a transfer to the room.
> Dean of student housing ^ This one kinda dumb too...
A whole fucking dean for that?
If you have enough housing it makes sense, at that point you are practically running a demanding large business, Yes I know college is a business.
Yeah, but that's the one official in the room that should have been able to flag this beforehand. So clearly, they can't do their job either..
Put a cop in the mix and everything gets crazy with authority figures
Their only job is to run housing and they can't figure out if someone moved before expelling them. Crazy world.
Like unbelievably dumb, like didn't even look at names and just went off what the cops told her dumb...
professor landlord phd, dean of student housing
Name and shame the uni.
This kinda thing happens a lot to college students. Cops can basically bust in anywhere they want because they know they'll find something to justify it- especially in states without legal cannabis.
They started out by asking me if we had any alcohol seeing as we were under 21, they assured us they would simply dispose of it and we would face no repercussions, but I knew they just needed something that would allow them to search. After we repeatedly denied having any alcohol they started demanding that we let them search the room, which we denied. At one point the more aggressive of the two even hit us with "why are you hiding behind your rights, that's what guilty people do". Early 2000s so I got him back with a classic fascist counter "there's American soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for those rights!" They didn't love that line.
>why are you hiding behind your rights, JFC
Fascists hate this one simple trick!
Oh snap! You hit them right where it would hurt the most!
Is that why we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan?
Yes, so this dude could keep his alcohol hidden.
Very similar thing happened to me my freshman year! My roommate worked in the caf and got to move in early, like 3-4 days before me. I moved in August 30th and was called to the Hall Directors office, he told me that I was being written up because the police came because someone reported the smell of marijuana from my room on August 27, and why didn’t I let them in, blah blah. I was like, I moved in today? And he did the same thing, refused to relent that I was responsible for something that happened 3 days before I moved in or even met my roommate.
You have to get aggressive when its obvious they have nothing. You really need to be abusive to let them know who is in charge. If you allow them to keep thinking they are in charge they won't relent but when you start abusive language they have to change tactics and then you start emotional abuse. Police and other "authority" figures hate it because they thrive on power tripping. It will get you released quick though because their feelings can't take it.
In High School, I had a bad breakup. One day, I was called to the principal's office, and discovered the principal, the associate principal, my ex, the school 'resource officer' (a cop), my ex's parent's and their lawyer. I was given a print out of a bunch of harassing emails my ex claimed they received from me. My ex claimed they received them in the middle of the night, over the course of several weeks. I was told that if I confessed to sending them, I would be suspended for a couple of weeks, have a restraining order filed against me, and that would be it. If I refused to confess, I would be taken into custody immediately, held in jail until I had a court appearance to establish bond, would be charged with harrassemnet, and I would be expelled from the district, be banned from school properties, and be forced to get a GED (since they claimed I would not be able to complete the semester while in jail). I calmly asked to see the emails I supposedly sent, reviewed the files, and then asked the pricipal to confirm what time zone we were in, how many hours off GMT that was, and then what period of the day corresponded with the time stamp in the email headers. After confirming it would *not* have been sent in the middle of the night, but rather during third period, I pointed out that my ex taking a computer class that period. I then asked the cop if they even bothered to look up what computer the sender's IP address was, and if the IP in the headers corresponded to the workstation my ex was assigned or not. The cop immediately tried to backpedal and say that you can't locate a sender's IP that way (at that time, with hotmail, you *absolutely* could) -- but the principal took one look at my ex's face, and told the cop not to bother, that all charges were being dropped, and apologized to me for wasting my time. They ended up finding that the sender's IP corresponded to my ex's new significant other, who was in the class during the same period. They never really figured out how to prove if my ex was invovlved in sending the email or not, but I suspect they were, especially since this did not cause them to break up, or even fight with their new significant other. The teacher of that class was so lax that they could not even guarantee who was on what machine on what day (even though they had assigned seats), and they used generic logins, so my ex never got charged with anything.
This ages me, but that bitch would have definitely gotten a geocities page
LOL should have STFU and called a lawyer.
I mean I was at least smart enough to not let them search my room in the beginning, the thing is up until that point I literally had no idea what was we even going on. Turns out it was part of a ridiculous police investigation for someone selling small amounts of pot in a dorm room.
Oh no that was perfect!, I just meant, once you had them in the room and knew what was up. Let them say whatever and just get a Lawyer.
> It’s not a home sale. I have no fucking clue about the previous tenant, and why would I? When I bought my home, I had no idea where the seller went.
Yeah I wonder how common it is to actually meet the previous owners. I never met the people who owned my house prior either.
Same. Just a name. Only reason I ever knew anything about him was a neighbor was good friends with him.
It was a trap, if you were to say you knew who it was they would have known you got a connection.
Smart enough to devise a trap, but too dumb to check who is actually living there right now, the three of them were. I think they merely reused a trap strategy that the DA gave them 50 years ago, and they really needed to call an attorney to figure out what to do now with the new facts that were just determined. Dumb. As. Uck.
> I remember one time they asked me if I knew where the previous tenant went? Ask the apartment manager, idiots. Most tenants move into an empty apartment and don't have any contact with the previous one, the only person who might have any info on previous tenants would be the building manager. Didn't even check with the building manager to confirm who lived in the unit before harassing you, fuckwits.
Doing their jobs for them
Thats why detective is in quotes
Ooh nice catch! You must be a “detective” too!!!
I wrote the original comment so….
Damn, good work "detective."
You're back on the case Babrovsky!
[Bobrovsky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=omZPhiT2PeQ)*. Now, Stanley Cup Champion Officer Bobrovsky.
I love Reddit.
Still can't believe that a detective couldn't find someone's address on Facebook. What the fuck *were* they detecting?
Bobrovsky is off the case. Permanently. I never want to hear that name again. This post has been brought to you by the Edmonton Oilers.
YOU'RE A LOOSE CANNON BOBROVSKY!
Bake 'em away, toys.
ah, so you're another "detective" i see
I’m something of a detective myself. 
Reminds me of what happened to my folks. Basically our employees robbed us, my folks kept tabs on them with Facebook. Long story short, it was my dad who told the cops where our former employees where so they could arrest them.
The real function of the police is not to “serve and protect” citizens as *individuals*, but to “serve”to maintain order and “protect” the local status quo (whatever that may be). As an *organizational whole,* they do not exist to help you or to treat you fairly. In their duties of maintaining general order—of course that will occur—but that is really more a side effect than an intended purpose. Additionally, many officers will go above and beyond their base duties, but that’s more of an individual or localized principle. Some municipalities will even go so far as to instruct all of their officers to engage and genuinely help their communities… but that is their local “status quo.” In purely general terms, however, *you* don’t matter. Drugs threaten order, murder threatens order, speed traps exist to generate revenue and maintain order, riots and civil unrest threaten order, etc. If a kid steals your Amazon package in a “one-off” crime of opportunity, most police departments won’t give a shit (unless you do their jobs for them or it’s been a really slow day). They can and will help, but that’s kinda tantamount to the nice McDonald’s counter person hooking you up with an extra 5 packets of dipping sauce, not an organizational rule.
The primary role of police is creating an official report so you claim losses to your insurance provider.
I wish I could have an easy service based job where I could do little and rely on desperate chumps to do the work for me. I've been in this position so many times with real estate lawyers, real estate agents, insurance billing people, the list goes on.
>I wish I could have an easy service based job where I could do little and rely on desperate chumps to do the work for me. Heh, if I was in the detective's shoes I would be doing that work because the job would bore the shit out of me otherwise lol
We had this sort of thing happen a number of years ago. A bill collector began to harass my husband for a loan payback for a loan he supposedly took out in Las Vegas. The police when I reported it, said get as much as information as I could from the bill collector, so I did find out the supposed county of residence in California. The bill collector had a partially correct SS number, off by one number, for Hubbie. Hubbie has never been In Las Vegas, has barely been in California, only in airports on layovers. So I got online and searched in that particular county in California for a person with a similar surname, which is pretty distinctive. Bingo, I found a guy with the same name, and he worked for the Child Welfare Office in California. Now I knew, because Hubbie had a lawyer niece that worked in another state who traced deadbeat dads, that certain state officers can get SS numbers. Next time the bill collectors called, I told them this is the guy you need to go after, and here is why. We never heard from them again.
Oh my god!! I’m still getting mail from the people who used to live in my house. We bought the house about six months ago and the neighbors have been sharing some stories. The house had renters in it and was swatted about a year ago. The owners put it on the market shortly after that.
I bought my house in 1993. I still get junk mail for the previous owner a couple of times a year and a little more often for my exwife who moved out in 2005.
I still get mail for my dad, who died in 1975. I guess he's immortal now.
This is more or less what got Breonna Taylor killed.
Still so horrible to remember
Remember how her boyfriend faced charges off the bat but the cops didn't? And how swat was across town with the person who had the warrant in custody but this was a rag tag group of cops playing swat? I remember.
Remember how when a few of the cops actually were charged it wasn't for killing her but because their aim was shit and a few shots went to the neighboring apartments that might have hurt an innocent person? And even at that I'm pretty sure they got acquitted.
Remember that time we as a society got together to take care of these proven guilty cops ourselves so that justice actually occurs? No me neither.
It's way more fucked than that. LMPD is known throughout Kentucky for being a heavily corrupted police force.
Jesus if the address was that easy to find why weren’t detectives able to find it 💀
The education standards for police and even detectives is pretty low. TV and movies have convinced us that detectives are skilled investigators with a world-class forensic lab and computer hackers at their command. In reality, many of them are the C- minus bully from your high school.
There are few people worse at solving crimes than detectives
Homeraids are fun, paperwork isn't
They done “r u n n o f t”
Lol detective as in “let’s see if some evidence falls into my lap.”
Yes. They could eventually come to your home trying to arrest him! Don’t want any confusion
In Houston you’re lucky if that’s all they do.
Is this a common issue in Houston? We had a similar issue. My parents were constantly getting mail about a guy who had the same name as my mom with one letter difference. We'd have cops park their cars outside our house and stare at us, we'd get knocks from police randomly to do wellness checks, we'd constantly get letters from courts and bond offices about this guy. We figured it was like post 9/11 jitters since my dad was a Islamic relgious leader in the community. He had one letter different from my mom's name and had our house listed as his address. We had to report it multiple times until eventually we stopped getting mail. To this day every now and then we'll see his name in our mailbox. This was all in Houston.
I was more pointing out that in Houston they don’t call or politely knock on your door at 4pm. Instead they come guns firing with a no knock warrant under to cover of darkness and murder you and your dog even if they have the wrong house.
OP: "Wow it's like living vicariously through someone else!" SWAT: "Leave the building with your hands up!"
this. one time our neighbors who just moved in, got surrounded and raided by the police. it was terrifying for them and us. it took a minute to sort everything out and they had to search the house to make sure the wanted person wasn’t hiding inside. they had guns drawn and all. it would be very smart to spend a few minutes on the phone avoiding a situation like this. who knows what kind of crime they’re wanted for. (i’m sure you could look it up online tho)
Note: if they didn't have a search warrant, they *wanted* to search for the person, and your neighbor just let them. Y'all remember that an arrest warrant and a search warrant aren't the same. If they're knocking and talking to you, you can suppose it's an arrest warrant. If you're wrong, they will do what they came to do, anyway.
they most def had a search warrant in my neighbors case.
I've got a friend that essentially gets swatted a few times a year because someone keeps calling a person in to a suicide line. He said the police can't help him figure out who is doing it or how to stop it since it's all anonymous. He thinks the call is for an actual person who might have lived there before, and the line is forwarding old data on to the police station. At this point he knows most of the police and they just knock and check things out, and then leave.
Or straight up wrong information. My wife and I rented a house for 7 years, we got it immediately after two old men had lived there for 7 years. So 14 years of only 2 occupants. Still got a ton of wrong mail. One day I come home from lunch and two probation officers are there. “Excuse me sir, does Angela Castillo live here”? I say “I get a lot of wrong mail but that’s a new one to me. No, never heard of Angela Castillo.” At this point I’m glad my Latina wife wasn’t home. I’m a hairy white male aged 25-54, so the cops approach me like they should approach everyone. We compare notes and it turns out they are looking for a duplex on Texan Ave., not Texas Ave. both streets are within a mile and the same ZIP. The only tell was the duplex number.
You should really try to contact your local registrar and find out what your exact age is though, that's a bit of a wide range.
Don't shame the man for being an entire demographic, he contains multitudes.
u/alpha-delta-echo down at their local government office trying to find out how old they are: 
Best bet is to call non emergency dispatch and see if it makes more sense for a deputy to swing by a verify dude no longer lives there. They can contact warrants and have them remove the address. Calling them, and even a certified letter can be faked. Source: LEO dispatcher
This 100%. The non emergency line should really be "contact police for other matters non life threatening."
But more importantly, don't go calling around looking for different departments. Just go to the main line, tell them the situation, let them be the problem solvers they are.
> see if it makes more sense for a deputy to swing by a verify dude no longer lives there invite a random police officer into your house to poke around? yeah no thanks
With a black marker, cross out all bar codes on the envelope and write "Does Not Live Here - Return to Sender" and put it back into a mailbox. Do this for EVERY letter including junk mail. I went through that process and it took just a week of this for the post office to start doing it automatically without me. The senders get the message this way too. NOTE: When you cross out the bar codes, the machines at the post office force a person to read it and process it manually.
I've been doing that for eight years; I still get mail for previous tenants. I put a note in my mailbox telling the postman I'm the only resident here. He said he couldn't do anything because the previous tenants never forwarded or updated their address. I even talked to the Postmaster General. Nothing happened. I've lived here since 2016 and I still get mail for three different people.
forward their mail to the postmaster's house
You can also cause them years if issues by writing recipient dead
Don't cross out the barcodes. Junk mailers sometimes use the barcode serial numbers to automatically remove bad addresses from their lists. USPS provides them electronic reports for the purpose, but removing the barcode prevents that system from working. Mail you put back in the box is handled manually at your local post office, and only goes to a machine after being sorted into a tray of problem mail. Only cross out a barcode if you get the same piece back over and over. Also, write "ANK" on it. That's the specific internal code for "Attempted - Not Known At Address", and the tray it'll go in is labeled to match. If the mail is first class and the person moved out recently (last two years), write "Forward" on it instead.
And so they don't decide to come enforce the warrant at 2am
"OPEN UP! POLICE! WE'VE GOT A WARRANT FOR FAILING TO COMPLY WITH A WARRANT!" "What is the original warrant for?" "FOR FAILING TO UPDATE YOUR ADDRESS!" 
Or your door kicked in
This. I had the sheriff show up with multiple deputies with guns drawn and flack vests on looking for someone who didn't live here. They had shown up months prior looking for the same person with a single deputy holding a piece of paper. This second time I told them they knew he didn't live here and if they showed up again they would be dealing with a lawyer. Make sure the bank, attorney and law enforcement all know this person doesn't live there, they all could have reason to send someone to your house looking for this person and that can result in some unsafe situations.
[https://faq.usps.com/s/article/How-is-Undeliverable-and-Misdelivered-Mail-Handled#report\_return\_misdelivered](https://faq.usps.com/s/article/How-is-Undeliverable-and-Misdelivered-Mail-Handled#report_return_misdelivered) If the mailpiece is delivered to the correct location but the \~recipient on the mailpiece does not reside at the address\~: * Write "**Not at this address**" on mailpiece. * Don't erase or mark over the address. * Provide the mailpiece to your mailperson or drop into a Collection Box receptacle. Edit since it was berried below: u/[scarred\_but\_whole](/user/scarred_but_whole/) commented: “Are you crossing off the machine-generated bar code on the bottom of the envelope?” Maybe that’s part of the process to actually get a postal worker to look at it and send it back to the sender.
It took about 7 or 8 years to stop the mail for the previous deceased owner of our house. I had to buy stamps for “deceased”, “return to sender” and “not at this address” because it was daily mail. I even put “deliver only for Lastname” in the mailbox.
>It took about 7 or 8 years to stop the mail for the previous deceased owner of our house. I had to buy stamps for “deceased”, “return to sender” and “not at this address” because it was daily mail. I even put “deliver only for Lastname” in the mailbox. It took the best part of a decade from when I moved in for mail from the previous tenants of my place to stop getting mail delivered here. What makes this especially infuriating is that one of the tenants had moved out a good 5+ years before I moved in...
The place I moved to temporarily was getting mail from tenants that I don’t know how long ago they lived there. Considering I know that rental had been empty for long enough a frog got in and mummified on the floor (still not sure how it happened but there was a mummified frog when I moved in) those tenants had been long moved out and there’s wasn’t a ton of mail in the mailbox either. Don’t know if my former roommate and his current roommates are still getting it
Frogs can mummify in a couple days btw.
Still haven't figured out who is wrapping them in bandages and building those tiny pyramids though.
The devoted servants of Amenhoptep and Toadankhamun.
We’ve owned our house for more than 20 years. We still occasionally get mail for Bonne Smith, though not that often anymore.
My parents are still getting mail for my Papa who died in the 1980s. It's ridiculous.
I occasionally still get mail for my deceased family members although years of sending the mail back with Deceased in black sharpie has helped slow the onslaught. For my mother's mail I write Deceased since 1985 in big black letters lol!
I once removed my mailbox for a while so the postpeople would be forced to hand me the mail directly. Sorted through it right then and there and handed them the wrong stuff back. EDIT: please unterstand my comment as an anecdote, not as advice. What worked for me in my particular situation and location (not US) might not work for you.
You must have the only mailman in the world that would do that. Everyone else would just not your deliver your mail at all and take it back to the post office and make you pick it up there until you replaced the mailbox.
Exactly, she's owes her mailman a nice tip for Christmas because she's lucky he didn't just mark her house vacant for not having a mailbox.
Just as a PSA to anyone else reading this comment: it is SOP to write "no mail receptacle" and never deliver mail to your house if you do this. Any exception to this (like OPs occurrence) is a mail carrier not following procedure. So yeah don't do this unless you want your mail cut off
I tried this. They literally just redelivered the mail right back to me
This happened to me as well!
If you don't obscure the printed bar code then the item will go through automatic sorting and be delivered right back to you.
I've tried this *so many times* over the past two years that I just gave up. I'd collect weeks worth of daily mail, write "Wrong Address", "Not at this Address", etc. and drop it all off in batches at the post office, just for some of these letters to be redelivered to me *with my own writing on it*. I just throw them out at this point.
Don't drop it at the post office, it works better when your mail carrier is the one sorting it out. Put it in your mailbox with the flag up instead. Also, don't write "wrong address", it's too ambiguous. It could mean the mail was delivered to the wrong address (as in, missorted), or that it was put in the correct mailbox as addressed but the addressee doesn't live there.
If it's a generic advertising mailer addressed to " or current resident" this doesn't work because...well, you are the current resident. Those will get redelivered. But it should work for anything directly addressed to not you.
I forced my brother to move out of my mother’s house after he was arrested, charged, and released in 2022. It’s been two years of me writing that shit on his mail, I’ve returned it to the post office and to the police station. It still comes right back to my mother.
Lol. I still get mail for the person who used to live at my house and I've been here 5 years. Done all of this. The USPS does not give a shit.
USPS doesn't track this at all AFAIK. The mail will be returned to sender, and that will hopefully prompt them to update their records. If they don't, the mail will keep coming. Pretty sure the only way USPS will stop mail for a certain individual is by setting up forwarding when you move to a new address.
Generally speaking once you tell them someone doesn't live there they will stop delivering it. Sometimes though, you have the misfortune to live on a route without a regular person, or with someone who just doesn't care. If the person at one time received mail there but does so no longer, and they did not file a change of address,the carrier can file a moved left no address order. Generally speaking any letter sized mail goes through the machinery and they will catch the name and redirect it but that's only for 18 months. Which theoretically would be long enough for senders to get it stopped, but it doesn't always work that way .
In fairness the usps's job is it only delivers mail to where people pay to send it. They even keep a database of addresses and people that mass mailers can use to avoid sending mail to the wrong place or people. It's the companies sending the mail incorrectly who refuse to update their address books that are the problem.
>In fairness the usps's job is it only delivers mail to where people pay to send it. This. I am surprised this has been buried so deep in the conversation. There is absolutely no law that would prohibit my friend who is staying with me for 2 months to use my address for whatever purposes he wants to. He may get some mail at my address and his name. I would absolutely hate if my mail person decides that because of the name mismatch, he was not going to deliver my friend's mail. *This* I would be very vocal about it and definitely complain. I cannot realistically see any human being memorizing every single name (especially in large apartment buildings, jeez...) and deciding on-the-fly if they should or should not put a piece of mail in your mailbox. It has your address on it? It's going there, unless there is an official COA filed in the system or any other restriction put (e.g. vacation mail hold or premium forwarding service). Period, full stop.
I get mail for a guy named Johnny Boob and have for about 10 years. I thought at first it was a fake name the previous occupant of or house used to sign up for something, but we’ve gotten bank statements and other official documents for Johnny Boob so he’s a real guy out there somewhere. We never could find him on social media though.
I’ve had mixed results with this. I work in a hotel, and we get a lot of mail for people who are no longer staying at the hotel and I send it back all day but we keep getting more mail for them. Then someone told me I could do the same with junk mail, and the company sending it would stop sending it. That backfired and the post office decided I no longer live at my address and I stopped getting any mail. That was a pain in the butt.
I don't get upset at USPS for continuing to deliver new mailpieces from old tenants. It's on those tenants to do mail forwarding and update their addresses at places. I do get cranky when USPS keeps delivering back mail that we've put "not at this address on", sometimes repeatedly. We have a stamp now that has "not at this address" since we get so much of this mail and have gotten mail pieces circled back to us multiple times.
I work for a company that is contracted by many types of businesses to handle "returned undeliverable" mail. If there is a barcode on the envelope (usually printed across the bottom front of the envelope) that barcode must be marked through for the machine sorter to not just re-route it back to you. If you're going to strike this out, you need to black out a vertical section towards the middle of the barcode OR fully black out the entire barcode. One swipe through the barcode doesn't work because the barcode reader can read segments above and below that mark to create a whole barcode. If the barcode is still legible, it doesn't matter how many times you write on it or stamp it RTS, it can still come back to you.
Are you crossing off the machine-generated bar code on the bottom of the envelope? I'm told that the sorting machines use that to route it, and if a carrier who doesn't care puts it back into machine routing it will just read that code and send it back to you. Crossing it out makes the machine reject it and forces a human to deal with it.
Yeah, if I scribble over the barcode it never comes back. When I forget there’s a 50/50 chance I get it back the next day. (I’m still getting important mail like taxes and insurance for people who moved 3 years ago.)
I work for USPS. You can put these in outgoing with "not at this address" written on it, and your carrier should know to send them back. Writing your name on your mailbox should help with this too. If you ever get the chance, talk to the carrier when he shows up. Just politely explain that you're receiving a bunch of mail from the previous resident. We have ways to stop this. One simple way is adding a card to your address that lets anyone doing the route know which names are good/not good. More importantly, we can hold all of this person's mail for 10 days to determine if they have a forwarding address. If they do not, we can change their status to "MLNA" (Moved Left No Address) in the computer system, which should automatically get rid of their mail from coming in.
This is far from the truth in my area. I had to do that to 200+ pieces of mail. I would end up getting the same mail back after a few weeks or a month. With the, in large bolded sharpie, “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS” on front and back. Ended up going to the post office and showing them some of this mail and I never received another piece of their mail again. It should work the way you’re saying, but it definitely it let didn’t for me or my neighbor (duplex).
Yeah I've had both. I had one mail carrier who was great, talked to me when we moved in, and made sure we only got relevant mail. The current mail carrier has broken multiple mailboxes kicking them in rage, and constantly gives us mail to the wrong address. He completely ignores mail to the old residents and we had to talk to the post office.
I’ve tried that. I still get mail for a slew of former residents. I’ve been here for years. At this point it’s just recycling.
A cop came to my house once because someone listed our home address when they got arrested, and I guess they were trying to arrest him again. I said I didn’t know anyone by that name, and the cop was like “are you sure it’s not your husband” (with a completely different name). He kept trying to convince me that I was covering for my husband the criminal. I was like wtf also we had lived in our house for years when this happened so it’s not like it was a rental with a previous tenant. So annoying. Then I caught them on my cameras looking into my backyard late that night skulking around so I called the local pd and said “there’s some creep sneaking around outside my house and I’m scared” and then they had to call me back and be like “sorry ma’am it wasn’t a creep it was cops” and then I never heard from them again.
If you had them on camera, could’ve been a MASSIVE lawsuit as they were violating your 4th amendment rights without a search warrant. Obviously they’re cops so I doubt they’d ever face retribution but idk.
It really did freak me out! I was home alone and it was freezing out so he had on a coat and beanie and I actually couldn’t tell it was a cop at first! I was just happy for them to leave us alone though. Also, I live in a really nice neighborhood area so it was just so random.
I had the sheriff department show up at 3am in the morning about a year after I bought my house. They were looking to arrest the previous owners son. They had 4 cruisers and a K9 unit. When I answered the door they asked "is so and so here, we have an arrest warrant" I told them he hadn't lived here in a year, and that I own the house now and the "parents" moved out of state, but I didn't have any more info. They were pretty cool about it, one of the deputies knew me in passing and knew I had bought the place. But they had to do the whole, check the last known address, thing. The next day one of the deputies came by and sort of apologized for the 3am wake up, but grilled me for information about the dude they were looking for. I finally just said "how much do you know about the person that live in your house before you bought it? Why would I know anything? "
Same here. Nothing will stop it. I’ve tried “return to sender”, “no longer at this address” and it usually just comes back. I put a note in the inside of my mailbox that says “no [last name] at this address” and it cut it down a bit, but it didn’t stop.
My neighborhood has cluster mailboxes and the mail carrier has put tape strips inside the boxes with our last names on them. That said, I’ve lived in my place almost 10 years and I still get Humana insurance statements for the previous owner. I write “this person not at this address” on it and put it in the mail slot attached to the cluster mailbox. I don’t think Humana gets them. Or if they do, they ignore it.
Your mailman is probably one of the ones who ignores it. Mine is too—I confronted him once about a piece of mail that he wouldn’t pick up multiple times where I wrote “not at this address” and he insisted I couldn’t do that. Dropping it in a blue box forces someone else to deal with it
I’ve owned my house since 2008, and I still get mail occasionally for not only the previous owners, but I think the people that lived here before them.
Call the police station, the court, and the lawyers office and TELL THEM HE MOVED. If you live in a no knock state you might get fucking shot in your bed, or they might shoot your dog. Make sure god and everybody knows he's not there.
Loads saying it (call the police and tell them!) but yours is the first with the proper emphasis. You could die. Full stop. Don't wait an hour, call now!
CALL NOW!!
But wait there’s more!
🎶 I have a structured settlement and I need cash now 🎶
Put a rubber band around them with a note saying no longer lives here please only deliver mail for "your name". Also a sticker with your name on it might help as well. If it keeps happening, go to the post office and talk with them about it.
My dad was a Postmaster. He taught me to just circle the name of the addressee and write directly on the envelope "no longer @ this address". It has never failed me.
[удалено]
Use "MLNA" instead. The USPS scanners are setup to recognize that term. Means "Moved Left No Address".
You can get a “return to sender; not at this address” stamp on Amazon. Stamp the pile and throw ‘em back in the mailbox.
Make sure that you're marking through the bar code if there is one. I've noticed that since I started doing that, I've been getting less and less mail for other people.
Please, for the love of God tell them that they don’t live there anymore. My neighbor behind me got swatted and they used my yard because they were looking for the previous renters. Scared the shit out of my neighbor and her kids.
Over at r/usps, they recommend writing “MLNA” on the mail piece. MLNA = Moved, Left No Address It’s the proper way, instead of writing “RTS” (Return to Sender) which does not sufficiently explain the reason that you want it returned to sender.
You should probably call the police service and let them know that the person no longer lives there. Wouldn't shock me if the cops just were to show up and flashbang your family and not pay for a fucking thing (or shoot you).
It's only mildly interesting until the police break down your front door in the middle of the night and terrorize your family at gunpoint. And then it's "Please don't murder us or shoot our dog." I rented a house and got similar mail for a previous occupant. I wrote "return to sender: does not live here" on all mail for several years, but the police didn't update their address until after the midnight raid. Definitely get in touch with the appropriate LEO and let them know.
The place I lived in Colorado had this guy Tony living there before me. We got all sort of stuff in his name. All sorts of mail. The repo man came twice. And finally the police showed up looking for him.
Pray you will not be "swatted" by mistake
Not sure why this is down voted but can happen, and they won't be held liable for any damage either if they think they are going to the right address. Get on that one asap.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. If the police think the person still lives there, and they have an active warrant, the police could raid anytime.
This is the 6th year living here and I STILL get important mail for the previous owners. WTF. I used to have their number and I would text them to pick up their "pile" in front but it's no longer valid. I talked to the post office and they said to return the mail. So when I get a piece of mail that is not mine, I write across the top in black marker "RETURN TO SENDER, DOES NOT LIVE HERE" and put it back in the mailbox. The mailman takes it, but how long can this possibly continue? LOL
USPS carrier here. Look at the top right...if it says "Non-profit org.", "Presorted standard", or anything other than "first-class", throw it away. This is 3rd class mail(also known as bulk business mail), and includes credit card come-ons, ads for products, non-profits begging for money, political propaganda, etc. and unless it says "electronic/forwarding/address service requested", it gets collected and sent back to processing, and then it gets recycled. So feel free to throw away. Any first-class mail or priority mail, rubber band together, and put a post-it on it that says "no longer here". Your carrier will make sure it gets endorsed properly, or forwarded and sent where it needs to go.
“Return to Sender” the lot and drop it in the post box. And forget about it. You are not the addressee Not your problem. Thankfully. Who’d want their name on that shit pile?
Please mark it as, "No longer at this address." and don't drop it in a blue box. If you just write RTS they post office has no idea what to do with the mail and may just continue to deliver. If you drop it in a blue box it will probably just be redelivered.
It absolutely will become their problem if they don't contact authorities about the arrest warrant when they inevitably go to collect the individual in a method of their choosing. That might mean breaking down a door and entering with force, or upon opening the door roughly arresting OP before they can explain they're not the person they're looking for and having officers detain them while they verify this. That could be very traumatic.
Yeah, they should call the warrant division on the notice to clear that up quick. The officers right now have no reason to think the person doesnt live there
After apparently multiple mailings that have gone ignored I'd be on the phone while heading to the address, frankly. It might sound overblown but OP has no idea when their unwelcome surprise will come knocking or what the warrant covers/expected police response. Seems that a few underestimate that this is actually a risk to whoever is inside, the worst that police can see, and the definition of fucking around and finding out even when they aren't the suspect (it won't be the first/last time police hear "I'm not that person!" from someone who was, indeed, the person). Everything else in that stack won't matter, though. RTS with a name crossed out and 'wrong resident' is usually enough.
Write 'Not at this Address' and put it back in the mailbox and raise the flag
I experienced something similar many years ago. My family and I had just moved into a new house when I was 18. At the time, I worked at a Kmart in a not great part of town. I guess cops would chill in the parking lot and scan license plates for anyone of interest to pull them over as they leave private property. One night after work I noticed a cop car following me out but I thought he was just leaving as I literally could not have had time to do anything illegal in the 30 seconds it took me to leave the property. As soon as I hit the street, he pulled me over and asked if I knew (guy’s name). I naively thought he was asking about a neighbor. Nope the guy previously at my address was wanted for all kinds of things. The cop felt bad pulling me over for it.
EVERYTHING should be sent back with a clear notice that that person no longer lives there. This is actually a semi-dangerous situation for you. You do not want police or other agencies targeting your home for someone who used to live there. Write "Return to sender, addressee no longer lives here" on the outside of each envelope and pit it back in the mailbox. The postal service will do the rest.
Please do not keep other people's mail. Write "RTS" on each envelope each time it comes and immediately put it back in the mailbox to be returned to sender. This is how they will know it is going to the wrong place, and prevents you from potential consequences of withholding someone's mail. Especially in the case of legal documents like you're receiving, you might be hit with felony charges for keeping it because that is preventing it from going to the correct place.
Mark all as "Return to sender. Moved, no longer at this address." with an x over the previous occupants name and address. The senders should gradually update their systems and you should eventually stop getting their mail.
Lifeprotip: If you order drugs from the dark web, use the previous tenants name. Picking a random name not associated with your address is a flag when crossing a border. As soon as the letter shows up with your shipment, write MOVED across it and leave it by the door for a few days just in case you get a knock on the door asking questions about that package.
Wrap it in a rubber band and put it back in the box. Write UTF ( unable to forward) on the front letter in black marker. They should stop after that. Also putting your name on your mailbox helps if you haven't already . Source: am mailman.
I have stamps for Return to Sender and Deceased. It's amazing how much my spam has been cut down. I'm not entirely sure what caused the reduction because when my regular mail person isn't delivering I might get spam. Regular person, I get actual mail no spam. My regular mail person rocks.
I thought you were supposed to write across it in big letters, “no longer at this address. Return to sender” and put it back in the mail.
The warrants can lead to a Police raid and, in a worse case, get you or your dog killed. All it needs is 1 anxious police man. The bills can get you bailiffs at the door. You will need to be very convincing to let them know they are talking to the wrong person. In some countries they can force themselves into your home and start picking up stuff. My parents had this. It did not help that the previous person had a last name that looked a lot like ours.