Redirecting Mail

[Cloverjo]

Can I just write a former resident's  new address on the envelope and put it in a post box, without incurring fees?

[barry1010]

Yes

[Redhelen72]

I would write 

Not know at this address try 123 high street

[naomi24]

I just cross out my address, write the correct one on the envelope and put it in the post box.  It works.

[Barmaid]

Yes you can.  Our local postmistress also told me to cross out the orange printing across the envelope too.  The lines that look like a stretched bar code are what I mean.

[Peter Pedant]

yes

where have you been? it has always been like that.

At Boarding school, post was distributed at Breakfast - "Pedant!" and I was given a drug circular on cheap paper, addressed to my father who lived forty miles away !

crossed at the sorting office

and we wrote across it - deliver to correct address

[Cloverjo]

Thank you all.
PP, I know you could do that in the past, but wasn't sure if you can now.

Anyway, I will take the chance

[Canary42]

If you don't know the return address, just put "Unknown at this address, return to sender" and the RM have a unit for dealing with this, they open the mail, which of course is actually illegal for you to do.

[newmodarmy]

For over 4 years since we moved in here we've been regularly "returning to sender" scores of savings account statements, pension statements and mortgage statements/mortgage rate change notifications (for an overseas property), all addressed to the previous householder whose new address we don't know.  (We have accidentally opened them on occasions, but now recognise them without having to open them.) We've been writing on the envelopes that this person moved out in 2019 so please stop sending them here, but they still keep coming. The institutions clearly are not that bothered about confidentiality. (And the intended recipient doesn't seem to have missed them.)

[gingejbee]

I would say that you are lucky to have post delivered - even if not yours.

On a good week we have two deliveries, sometimes only one. We often collect our mail from the "delivery"office. (Deliveries are rationed because of a chronic shortage of staff).