[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
Does one have any legal obligation if one gets somebody elses mail? Can one just through them out?
[/QUOTE]
According to a friend of mine who just retired from the law enforcement division of the USPS, if it gets delivered to your home you are free to do whatever you want with it.
[QUOTE=AngelicGemma]
At my old house we were getting bills from NTL for a previous tenant. I sent at least five back with “Not known at this address” or “STILL not known at this address” written on it. They never took the hint and kept sending them.
At the new place I received a bill from the electric company. It seems the previous tenant didn’t bother to pay the bill for 12 months. I’m getting someone’s bank statements too.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe NTL have a thing about us Mancunians yanno. :rolleyes:
So when are you in court?? :eek:
We have calls for Aura Gordon who is a similar deadbeat. Her prescription is ready at the local Walgreen’s right now. And I think the collect calls from prison are for her, although I have never accepted one to find out. She has many collectors trying to get ahold of her.
Since we also have almost the same phone number as the local cab company, there’s a pretty good chance that any given caller is not trying to get ahold of us. I have had some very interesting chats with drunken people looking for a ride, though. I finally looked up the cab company number so I can give it out to people, otherwise they inevitably call right back. It sucks at 2 am when the bars close.
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
The scariest one, though, was last week when the son got some sort of writ of seizure served against him, with “FINAL” and “48 HEURES” and “AVEC SERRURIER” written all over it, to the effect <snip> I hied my butt down to the borough hall, not even pausing to change out of the grunge-style transgender rights teeshirt I had on, and politely yelled at them until they filed some sort of official FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD, DON’T REPO MY STUFF paper. I still have it taped to my front door.
[/QUOTE]
And I thought the US treated their candidates for elected office shabbily!
Aangelica, I would have paid money to have been in the courtroom for that case. Bravo.
Many, many years ago my parents were assigned a new telephone number that used to belong to someone named “Flip”.
“Flip” used to get lots of calls, but the number decreased over time as the word of the incorrect telephone number spread among his apparently limitless number of acquaintances.
Then one day while my dad was at work two polite plainclothes police officers with a search warrant showed up at my parents’ front door. Turns out “Flip” had been involved in illegal bookmaking, and his (now my parents’) telephone number had been found among other evidence at a bookmaking joint the police had recently busted.
It didn’t take the police long to figure out they were at the wrong address, and much amusement ensued on both sides.
[QUOTE=lezlers]
I thought about that. Federal law says you can’t tamper with someone else’s mail, right? I’m not doing that. The mail is reaching it’s intended destination, my mailbox. I’m not opening it, replying to it or anything like that, I’m simply throwing it in the trashbin next to my mailbox.
Now, if I was taking mail out of someone else’s mailbox and throwing it away, that would be one thing. But it’s my mailbox, so in my opinion, I’m under no legal obligation to make sure misaddressed mail makes it to it’s intended recipient. I am not employed by the post office, therefore, it’s not my problem. Any other interpretation would require me to sit there, spending my time every day marking “no longer at this address” on umpteen pieces of mail for an indeterminate amount of time. Sounds like involuntary servitude to me.
Of course, I have absolutely no legal authority to back me up on this one, it’s purely my own logic.
[/QUOTE]
I strongly suggest you *don’t * throw out someone else 1st class mail. Give it to the postman, or leave it for him. It’s rude (after all, perhaps they former teneant did do everything they were supposed to do re fowarding their amil, but someone else screwed up), and I have strong doubts as to it’s legality. IANAL.
https://hdusps.esecurecare.net/cgi-bin/hdusps.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=6414&p_created=1106064178&p_sid=BlZcu6ji&p_accessibility=0&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiZwX3Byb2RzPTAmcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PW1pcy1kZWxpdmVyZWQ*&p_li=&p_topview=1
"Despite our best efforts, occasionally mail is mis-delivered, or is delivered to an old location for an individual. If you are receiving mail for the previous resident and do not know their address, simply return the mail piece back to the mailstream (by leaving in a collection box or other mail receptacle) with the notation “Not at this address” marked on the envelope.
If you do know the address of the previous resident mail can be forwarded (or reforwarded) in certain situations, depending on what the mail is:
First-Class Mail® items
The address (but not the name) may be changed and the mail reforwarded as often as necessary to reach the addressee.
Cross out any of the address necessary to be changed.
Write the correct address on the envelope.
The name cannot be changed without a new envelope and new postage.
NOTE: This does not apply to PO Box mail. If you have questions about forwarding mail delivered to a PO Box, please contact your Local Post Office™
Accountable Mail (i.e. - mail that requires a signature and/or payment of fees from the addressee or the addressee’s agent before delivery is complete)
Once delivered, Accountable mail cannot be hand forwarded.
To forward the item, you must pay postage for the item to be mailed to the new address.
Other Mail Classes
Contact your Local Post Office for more information on Forwarding other classes
*Destroying mail that was not intended for you may be prohibited by US laws.
Willfully destroying mail is an act that may be punishable by the Federal Government. * If you have any questions about the legality of doing this, please contact your local law enforcement." (emphais mine)
I offer this “amusing” anecdote from the other side of deadbeat city.
I’ve had a few problems with debt, but I’m coming to grips with it all, and getting it all straightened out. In fact I’d thought I’d had it all solved. Then one day, out of the blue, my checks were being garnished. I called one debtor who I had a payment plan with, and verbally reamed them out ('cause no way would I do so physically). As it turns out, it wasn’t them after all.
What had happened was that I had taken out a series of student loans when I was young and stupid (as opposed to now, when I am no longer as young), and for some reason assumed that I would have to pay back one bank in one series of repayments. Nope, it ended up coming from two different banks. So I would have had to pay two seperate payments every month.
I thought I had been responsible by making changes of address whenever necessary. Little did I know that one bank has gone unpaid all this time. So I went unaware of the extra debt. However, people at my old address were well aware of it.
The bank was finally able to track down where I work (some 10 jobs later). They never bothered to track down my new home address, though.
When I finally found all this out, I called them that I hadn’t lived at that previous address for as long as all that interest had been accumulating.
Nineteen fucking years.
[QUOTE=tdn]
When I finally found all this out, I called them that I hadn’t lived at that previous address
[/QUOTE]
Insert “and told them” into that sentence.
Aangelica, your CivPro professor rocks, and I would have loved to be there for that hearing.
How’d the patent bar go? I’ve been a patent lawyer for four years, and I was an agent for five years before that. It’s fun stuff.
[QUOTE=chowder]
Maybe NTL have a thing about us Mancunians yanno. :rolleyes:
So when are you in court?? :eek:
[/QUOTE]
In that case they’re damn good! I was living in Lincoln at the time.
The new tenants get to deal with it now. 
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
I strongly suggest you *don’t * throw out someone else 1st class mail. Give it to the postman, or leave it for him. It’s rude (after all, perhaps they former teneant did do everything they were supposed to do re fowarding their amil, but someone else screwed up), and I have strong doubts as to it’s legality. IANAL.
[/QUOTE]
That is all well and good if it’s a couple of pieces every few days. But when you’re getting 10 to 20 pieces a day, as I was in the beginning, it tends to get a bit unreasonable. I did mark every piece individually in the beginning, as I was trying to do the right thing. But after getting any pieces back that I hadn’t blacked out my address on and spending 10 to 20 minutes at the mailbox every day, I decided the hell with it. I was not being “rude.” Rude is not bothering to forward your mail (based on the amount of mail she was recieiving, I seriously doubted she forwarded it) or expecting an unpaid employee to do your work for you (I was seriously considering sending a bill to USPS for all of the time I spent out at that mailbox doing their job for them.)
And as Antinoir1’s friend said:
[QUOTE=Antinoir1]
According to a friend of mine who just retired from the law enforcement division of the USPS, if it gets delivered to your home you are free to do whatever you want with it.
[/quote]
I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep over it.
[QUOTE=lezlers]
And as Antinoir1’s friend said:Quote:
Originally Posted by Antinoir1
According to a friend of mine who just retired from the law enforcement division of the USPS, if it gets delivered to your home you are free to do whatever you want with it.
I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep over it.
[/QUOTE]
According to the USPS itself: "Destroying mail that was not intended for you may be prohibited by US laws.
Willfully destroying mail is an act that may be punishable by the Federal Government. "
So, we have a choice between a FoaF or a direct cite with a link. And, you choose the FoaF instead of the cite and link from the actual USPS itself. :rolleyes: You are a moron.
On a similar note, husband and I just got mail delivered to our address with someone else’s name on it. Correct address, though.
We’d have chalked it up to a previous resident – we’ve only lived here for almost two years – except for the fact that we built this house and are the first and only people who’ve ever had this address. Our house is sufficiently new that google maps still shows our address as a stand of trees with no structures on the property.
I suppose it’s remotely possible that the squirrels had mail delivered…
:rolleyes: Just got another call on my cell phone for Yamamoto. Get these about four times a week. I finally had enough and prepared a little speech explaining that Yamamoto just died in a traffic accident and sorry, but I have to hang up now I’m talking with the police [click].
Or maybe the person didn’t do shit to enlighten anyone as to their physical location and is leaving their problems behind for someone else to deal with.
When I lived in Houston, I had to deal with the previous tenant’s shenanigans. She didn’t bother to have any of her old mail forwarded, which resulted in HUGE problems for me on two levels.
First, some of her creditors used a reverse directory and found me. Never mind the fact that her name and mine aren’t remotely the same. Never mind the fact that I’d been living there for maybe a month. They thought they tracked their quarry, by gum, and proceeded to leave several messages each week until I told them that I would notify the police.
Second, leaving HER old mail in my mailbox marked “Return to Sender” meant that her old mail would stay in MY mailbox until I did something about it. Which meant throwing it out, since the postal carrier refused to do anything about it and refused to deliver MY mail because I had a “full mailbox”. This resulted in me having my phone cut off because I didn’t get a bill for two months; in fact, I didn’t get any of MY mail at all. It took that two months to get the situation with the previous tenant’s mail straightened out enough that I could rely on the USPS to leave MY mail and not the ex-tenant’s. (Oh, and my mail carrier was fired in the process.)
Rude or not, people create their own problems. Her bills were none of my concern, and the only way I could get my own mail was to throw hers out. Sorry, but that’s life in the big city. Moron.
Robin
[QUOTE=MsRobyn]
Rude or not, people create their own problems. Her bills were none of my concern, and the only way I could get my own mail was to throw hers out. Sorry, but that’s life in the big city. Moron.
Robin
[/QUOTE]
Or, you could have taken the items to the PO. Instead of violating the Law. I don’t get how your belief that the previous tenant didn’t try to have any mail forwarded and the incompetence of your mail carrier combined into a personal pass for you to violate the Law. Personal inconvenience is not an excuse to violate the law. The problem caused by the full mailbox was caused by the combination of your mail carriers incompetence and your laziness and stubbornness. Indeed, you could have even rubber banded the items together, included an explanatory note (as per the USPS cite above) and just dropped them in a mail box, thus even the tiny step of actually hauling your ass off to the PO would be solved.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Or, you could have taken the items to the PO. Instead of violating the Law. …
[/QUOTE]
May[be] violating the law. Your cite says…
… and …
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Or, you could have taken the items to the PO. Instead of violating the Law. I don’t get how your belief that the previous tenant didn’t try to have any mail forwarded and the incompetence of your mail carrier combined into a personal pass for you to violate the Law. Personal inconvenience is not an excuse to violate the law. The problem caused by the full mailbox was caused by the combination of your mail carriers incompetence and your laziness and stubbornness. Indeed, you could have even rubber banded the items together, included an explanatory note (as per the USPS cite above) and just dropped them in a mail box, thus even the tiny step of actually hauling your ass off to the PO would be solved.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, genius. Here’s where ethics and your cite collide. Sure, it would’ve been awfully nice of me to take care of her mail for her. But it’s not my responsibility. My obligation ended when I notified the post office that the previous tenant no longer lived there. I have neither the time nor the inclination to be nice to someone who didn’t care enough to spend the five minutes to fill out the necessary paperwork to have her mail forwarded.
I don’t know what else I was supposed to do, short of tracking her down and delivering her mail to her myself.
Robin
[QUOTE=MsRobyn]
. I have neither the time nor the inclination to be nice to someone who didn’t care enough to spend the five minutes to fill out the necessary paperwork to have her mail forwarded.
I don’t know what else I was supposed to do, short of tracking her down and delivering her mail to her myself.
Robin
[/QUOTE]
How do you know she didn’t do so, but the USPS screwed it up?
And, like I said- take the mail, write “no longer at this address”, rubber-band it together, and drop it in that blue box down on the corner. Gee, was that so hard?
How mad you you be if you moved, and the next tenant there tossed your mail out, instead of sending it on?