# How to get Post Office to stop delivering someone else's mail to our house **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 23, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359 "2014-03-23T14:22:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/21 "2014-03-24T02:51:02Z")
Dear husband **Shoujin** says that rural carriers get to “single bundle” their route’s mail (grab all the mail for a particular house and rubber-band it together so it’s a quick “grab next bunch and put in box” move) and that they’re probably just bundling up mail by **surname** , especially if it’s a not-so-common surname. Thus that’s probably the problem in this case. On the unrelated topic of forwarded mail: He also says that forwarding orders are kept on file in the system after expiration for more like 2-3 years, but only supervisors and up have access to that info. The vast majority of forwarded mail makes it out of the mail stream and back to senders/on to the actual recipient without the carrier at the old route ever seeing it, especially for single-family homes. It’s sorted and recognized/redirected by computer. Obviously problems may occur at times. ---
**Author:** ![MostlyUseless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MostlyUseless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MostlyUseless)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/22 "2014-03-24T14:41:24Z")
I work for a company that does both financial processing and mail processing. Your issue here is likely not the USPS at all and there is no amount of dealing with the USPS that will solve it. Most likely, if you consistently see mail addressed to someone else being mailed to you after changing address at least once, you have been householded. In direct mail, householding is when the business wishes to send mail to all persons in a home. Suppose, for example, you have a bank account at a bank and your wife has a different bank account at the same bank. Names are different, but addresses the same. In this case, the bank saves money by combining your monthly statements into the same envelope. Linking the two accounts is called householding. The odds are that the originator of the mail to your daughter has her name associated with your name and thus, wherever you move, her name will continue to be linked to your’s. To defeat householding, simply contact the originator of the mail and let them know what is going on. They don’t like such mistakes either because it represents a cost and an error in their database. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/23 "2014-03-24T15:14:42Z")
Leave your carrier a humorous note, explaining your issue and attempts to fix it. Then apologize for not starting at the top-with the postal carrier! Throw yourself at his mercy, to please, please make it stop, I beg of you! Include a few homemade cookies and I’d wager your problem will be miraculously fixed! No phone calls or phone trees, or annoying bureaucrats to deal with! Definitely worth baking cookies for, if you ask me! Good Luck! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/24 "2014-03-24T15:15:37Z")
So how do I get the USPS to stop delivering mail for people who don’t live her anymore? We bought an ex-rental and there are a dozen different people getting spam here, in addition to our own spam which is quite sufficient. At first I was “NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS”-ing all of it but eventually I gave up and started throwing it out (yes, I know I’m not supposed to do this.) ---
**Author:** ![Orwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/dfb087/32.png) [@Orwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orwell)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/25 "2014-03-24T15:34:11Z")
As someone who lives in a rural area, I echo the advice to a) try and meet the carrier at your mail box and have a friendly chat, or (if that’s not possible) b) leave a little note in your mailbox, or C) call the post office and ask when the carrier for your route gets back from delivering mail, and say you’d like to speak with him. Just explain what’s going on - that your daughter now lives. I think it’s clear that he’s recognizing the name and inserting it into your “slot” in his delivery schedule. I’m curious, though, how often mail gets correctly delivered to your daughter at her new address? Seldom, sometimes, never? Is it a certain type of mail that only gets misdelivered to your house? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/26 "2014-03-24T15:37:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > So how do I get the USPS to stop delivering mail for people who don’t live her anymore? We bought an ex-rental and there are a dozen different people getting spam here, in addition to our own spam which is quite sufficient. At first I was “NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS”-ing all of it but eventually I gave up and started throwing it out (yes, I know I’m not supposed to do this.) [A few years ago I was unhappy about the volume of mail coming to us for my gf’s ex-husband](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=643260). We had no forwarding address. I began writing to the senders (especially those with return addressed envelopes) notifying them that the guy had died. I was creative, writing long missives lamenting the loss. It has worked!! ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/27 "2014-03-24T17:01:24Z")
> [@Toledo\_Jim](#): > > Panache 45, you might have noticed on some mail the phrase “address correction requested”. That causes the USPS to advise the sender of the address change. My mother passed away in 1992, and we still get mail (mostly charities) for her about once a month. She never lived here, or at our previous place. But I was the executor of her estate, and had her mail redirected to me, two moves ago. Both times when we moved, the mail dutifully followed within a month or so. You would think that after no donations in over twenty years they might notice, but apparently not. I really wish I had been warned about this. It was a bit unsettling when it started happening. I’m not only getting mail for my mother, who passed away in 2012, but also for her second husband, who died in 2005. She gets a lot of mail. In fact she got an offer for life insurance last week. He mostly gets hunting magazines. I really wish there were a forwarding-for-the-deceased option that would not send out address corrections. On the more amusing side, I was a member of a small sorority once, for a semester. Then I transferred and was shifted to the alumni list. I was living with my parents at the time, so annual newsletters came there. When I married and moved out, I didn’t give a thought to it. Later, Mom tried sending change of address notices, more than once, but it didn’t seem to work. My parents moved twice and the newsletter followed them both times. Now that Mom has died, and the post office has notified senders that she’s living in my house, that old newsletter is finally coming to the person they’re trying to mail it to. I’m still not particularly interested, but the correct person is finally tossing it in the trash. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/28 "2014-03-24T17:38:08Z")
> [@MostlyUseless](#): > > Suppose, for example, you have a bank account at a bank and your wife has a different bank account at the same bank. Names are different, but addresses the same. In this case, the bank saves money by combining your monthly statements into the same envelope. Linking the two accounts is called householding. In the UK that would actually be illegal unless both parties agree in writing to allow it. A bank account is private, and to disclose details to a 3rd party, even a spouse, would be a breach of the data protection act. After all - they have no idea what your relationship is like. This can be a damn nuisance at times - my wife and I frequently receive identical stuff from various financial organisations - that’s not a huge problem, but when I phone the AA to change the car on the policy, and they refuse to speak to me because it is in my wife’s name - grrrr. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/29 "2014-03-24T18:55:33Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > … > I really wish there were a forwarding-for-the-deceased option that would not send out address corrections… The USPS may not have such option but the Direct Marketing Association does. Details from USPS and with link to DMA [here](https://www.usps.com/manage/mail-for-deceased-people.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/30 "2014-03-24T19:56:13Z")
> [@MostlyUseless](#): > > I work for a company that does both financial processing and mail processing. Your issue here is likely not the USPS at all and there is no amount of dealing with the USPS that will solve it. If you had read the OP you would have noticed that the mail was addressed properly - to the daughter’s new address - but was being delivered to her old address. Nice user name post combo, though. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/31 "2014-03-24T20:02:56Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > So you are on a rural route. That makes it much more likely that you have a full-time permanent carrier who recognizes his customers by name. Try not to get mad at him, he thinks he’s doing you a favor and correcting a mistake. It will be to your advantage to be on friendly terms with him. > > Yes, mail carriers deliver to hundreds of addresses in a given day. > > If at all possible, try the personal touch. If you ever see him, hand him back a piece of your daughter’s mail and explain the problem. (Keep a letter addressed to you daughter that she doesn’t need on hand for this.) Act like you’re just having a friendly neighbor-to-neighbor down home chat. > > If that’s not possible leave him a personal note in your mailbox. If you like attach it to a small gift. He’ll remember you. (He knows your name, right?) The only problem is if you leave it on his day off and a sub gets it. > > Bringing in the big guns should not be your first attempt to fix the problem. You may be able to fix it with a little heart-to-heart talk at the source. Since this is a rural route, I assume the mail is hand sorted, the way it used to be when I worked as a carrier one summer. Experienced carriers sort very quickly, I saw them doing it, and they never let me sort since I worked lots of routes and I would have been sorting until noon. I strongly suspect that they sorted by name, not address. I’m not sure if a present is necessary, but if you can flag down the carrier and show him or her the mail, they’ll never do it again. Assuming she doesn’t get tons of mail, I bet the carrier has never even noticed the new address. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359/32 "2014-03-24T22:10:51Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > The USPS may not have such option but the Direct Marketing Association does. Details from USPS and with link to DMA [here](https://www.usps.com/manage/mail-for-deceased-people.htm). Thanks. I had to register in order to use it, but I can understand the requirement for the registration. We’ll see if it helps. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-get-post-office-to-stop-delivering-someone-elses-mail-to-our-house/684359.md?page=1)