i’ll spare you the details, but basically a person used this business address (it’s the address to a BUSINESS) as their personal mailing address back in 2008. this person gets tax commission paperwork every month or so in the mail at this business which they have no association whatsoever. this person has been MIA since 2008. this person was never an employee and has/had no associations with the business. she simply used the address, got it on her tax commission file, now all her tax mail comes to the shop.
the business owners are afraid that all this tax commission paperwork is going unchecked to THEIR business and worry at some point someone’s going to show up and cause trouble. maybe they are just worrying over nothing–but at any rate, they are desperate to stop this mail.
the person this mail is addressed to simply will. not. fix it. i’ve written formal requests, left voice mails, emails, emailed members of her family, etc, and have not received anything in return.
can we–as in the business owners–unilaterally do anything to stop this mail?
i know i cannot change her address with the tax commission unless i forge her signature on their form.
i do not have any means to talk to her. for all intents and purposes, she’s dead. i do not have a forwarding address and cannot get in touch with her.
the business owners are extremely unhappy about all this.
so. what are the options to get this damn mail to cease?!
I’m curious what you’ve been doing with the mail until now? Are you in the US? Have you gone to the post office and asked them?
I would write on the front of the envelope “Not At This Address” and put it back in the mailbox. If there is a bar code at the bottom, cross through it with a pen or marker.
You can also write a letter on the business letterhead to the return address explaining that the person doesn’t work there, and to please stop sending the letters.
You may want to stop at the post office and ask them if there’s anything else you can do, but those two things should help.
we’ve tried the “not at this address” numerously. nothing’s changed. i tried contacting the tax commission (who is sending the mail) and they just point me towards their change of address form–which requires their signature.
for a while i was in charge of this stupid mail and had to save it up then drop it off at the last known forwarding address. this has been since 2008, mind you. i’ve contacted her parents, spoke personally to her step mom and had been assured it’d be dealt with. it’s kind of beyond ridiculous at this point and i think abundantly clear they are not going to deal with it. i guess i’ll go to the post office and see what my options are. maybe i can forge a death certificate and stop ALL her stupid mail. (kidding).
Presumably, as a business, you have access to the services of a tax attorney and/or CPA, no? Ask this person if you are legally liable for anything addressed to this person at your address. My uneducated guess is that you are not; of course you should get a professional opinion.
If, as I suspect, the tax pro confirms that you are not liable for someone else’s mail, then fire up the shredder and be done with it. You’ve already gone above and beyond trying to sort this out. Seems like a lot of anguish over a dozen pieces of mail a year.
Ask the local postmaster instead. I’m pretty sure Federal regs forbid you from doing anything amiss with mail not addressed to you that doesn’t also have something like “or Current Resident” also appended. You may be able to get the letter carrier to attach a “Ms. Jane Doe is not at X address, return all her mail to sender” note to that route’s information so that the mail doesn’t ever end up in your mailbox.
If you just write “not at this address” on a piece of mail, it may not register with a letter carrier - especially if you have a lot of substitute carriers on your route - to put a note on the route as well.
i think in the USA the carrier has to deliver the mail to the address, they have no choice.
putting a single line through the address and putting “not at this address” and giving it back to the post office (your carrier or any mailbox or mail slot in which you can send mail) is the right thing to do.
We’ve been having the same problem. Our house was previously used by a church as their synod offices. We’ve owned the house for 4 years, and it was vacant for 2 years before that. We are down to maybe 1/3 of all incoming mail being for the church. Thankfully, most of it is third class, catalogs, fliers, etc.
But once a quarter, we get something from the county, labeled property taxes due. We dutifully deposited it all back in the mailbox, marked “No longer at this address”, but the tax bills kept coming. So we contacted the county, and we were told that the property under discussion was not our house, but a different parcel, with our address listed as the owner’s location. The county also told us that they could not change the contact address without the ok of the property’s owner. So once a quarter, I get out my red pen and send the envelope back to the county. Someday, someone is going to have a surprise when they try to sell that piece of land and it’s got 20 years worth of back taxes due.