Tenant withheld important mail

[lacelyna]

Originally Posted by izhenko

Hi,

Really need advice on serious matter. Recently tried to refinance out rental property and a lien on the property came up, over a minor detail. Apparently our tenants received two letters from the clark county department within two weeks of each other which allowed 10 days to clear up the matter. Understandably it is not their responsibility to do anything about it (or is it?) You'd think if an important enclosed document was posted on your door twice, with landlords name on it, you would do something about it. Anyways so they had these letters for almost a year and fees reached ridiculous proportions. I was able to get most of them cleared but almost $2000 still must be paid. Any suggestion on how to go about making them pay this amount? Their lease is up this month so they left a stack of about 20 different letters including the two notices from all past year for me to pick up.

I've been a tenant myself for several years and I know how frustrating it is to receive mail with someone else's name on it. But a simple and decent thing to do would be to return to sender or call usps and let them know or even let your landlord know and they can take care of it.

Thank you

I completely understand how frustrating this would be. I am often in the situation as the tenant for homeowners who live overseas. They claim to have filed a change of address form for mail to go to their parents place in the states, but occasionally mail comes addressed to them. I always let them know about it and offer to send it. Sometimes they just ask me to scan it and email it which is better for me since it's free and doesn't require that I go anywhere. If I've got to mail it, then I need to find the right sized envelope for all the pieces of mail, address it and pay to have it mailed - at the post office which is not a fun place to be especially in a big city. I'm a really busy person with a lot on my plate in other ways and I get a bit frustrated when I have to do that. So, sometimes I wait for some mail to build up before I send it to save money and time. They keep saying they will reimburse me, but never do. It's not a huge deal, just inconvenient. When it's clearly junk mail, I return to sender or dispose of it. Sorry I'm rambling and not helping. Anyhow, I just don't think that the hopefully decent relationship you have with your tenants needs to be destroyed over this. Ultimately it's your responsibility to forward your mailing address. If you have proof of that, I would seek reimbursement from the postal service (not that they would ever pay), but unless the tenant has already said they just threw it out, or you have proof of that (maybe you do in that stack), they could just say they never saw it if you take them to court. In the end, no one would win. Everyone would be unhappy. I hope you find a solution that works for you.