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Officially if he didnt come to collect any of his mail within the week/month [i forget] he left OR change the mailing address then you have a right legally! It comes to YOUR house, even if its not addressed to you, he should have sorted all of this out before he left or during the first week/month
After the forwarding expired on her mail, What ever I get I look at who its from, If it looks important, I write her new address on it, She lives about 10 miles from here (I've never meet her) . I put her new address on it, and put it back in the mailbox. and I the PO forwards it to her. It been 7 year and she get about 2 (non junk) thing I send on a year.
Same here. We still on rare occasions get mail for my husband's mother, who never lived at our house (though my husband was executor of her estate) and died in 1990. Occasionally we get mail for the people who lived here before us (we moved in in 1996), and on one occasion we got a check from the electric company for the man who lived here before the people we bought it from lived here. I simply returned that to the electric company.
Mostly, you can throw the mail away. If it's something important, you might want to do the kind thing and forward (if you have a forwarding address) or write on the envelope "no longer at this address" and put it back in the mail box for the post office to return to the sender.
"No longer at this address" written on the envelope and returned to the PO is the proper procedure. Broadly speaking, if you throw it away then that might be construed as mail-tampering which is a Federal offense!
Yes, ditto STT, you cannot throw away someone's mail! Just write "addressee unknown - return to sender" on the envelopes (or write what STT suggests, either one will work) and put them back in your mailbox. That way the sender will know to stop mailing to your address.
Yep you're suppose to write "no longer at this address" and slip it in a mailbox for the post office. Unless of course its bulk mail like catalogs which they will not forward. I just got a package from China addressed to some else but at my address and it wasn't the person who last lived here. So I took it to post office cause well since it was sent from China I thought it might be important. They told me they would look to see if the person had a forwarding address that had expired and see if they could get it to them.
I can't believe the outbreak of common sense and courtesy in this thread. Don't you all realize the OP wanted validation for his whine? C'mon. let's all make him feel better.
The longer I'm on this forum the more amazed I am about the lack of plain common sense shown. Scroll through some of the other topics, especially those asking for advice, and see what I mean.
Officially if he didnt come to collect any of his mail within the week/month [i forget] he left OR change the mailing address then you have a right legally! It comes to YOUR house, even if its not addressed to you, he should have sorted all of this out before he left or during the first week/month
so can I throw it away or something?
Don't throw it away, write not at this address on it and put it back in the box.
I get mail for someone else from time to time and I do that on all the mail, even the junk catalogs. Let the post office burn it or throw it away.
Take the mail to the Post Office. Bring proof that you are the resident of that address (lease,deed). the PO will create a document stopping all mail for that person. It may take a few days to go into effect since it has to be forwarded to the Postmaster General. It should stop it for at least a year. Will it stop it forever, I dought it? I get mail for someone once in awhile who hasnt lived here in twenty years. I get mail for my mother who never lived here. Its all junk mail and place it back in my box as return to sender. Why are we still getting their mail you may ask? Because someone out there is selling outdated mailing lists at a discount. And you know how people react when they think they are getting a deal.
I can't believe the outbreak of common sense and courtesy in this thread. Don't you all realize the OP wanted validation for his whine? C'mon. let's all make him feel better.
Yeah I was thinking that myself...
Any tampering with mail is a felony, so no you can't throw it away, it's theft and/or destruction.
You can't open it either.
You actually can't take a letter that is in your mailbox that is addressed to your neighbor and put it into their mailbox... (same deal)
You should do as recommended here, write return to sender: No longer at this address... or addressee unknown.
Failure to do the above can result in 5 years in a federal penitentiary, lots of new friends in the showers, and/or a $250,000 fine. Plus the requisite loss of rights after conviction of a felony (problems getting a job, possible loss of voting rights, loss of firearm rights).
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