Misaddressed post
Mar. 22nd, 2006 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackDoes anyone happen to know what one can/must do with misaddressed post? Googling says
1. The only views commonly advocated are included by:
(a) You may cross your address and write "return to sender" when the post office will if they can (empirically works)
(b) You may cross your address and write the correct address, and the post office will redeliver it (empirically works)
(c) You must do (a) or (b)
(d) You may not open it (I think this is supported by the law below)
2. The only relevent statue a cursory search found was Postal Services Act 2000, Section 84. Including:
(1) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, he- (a) intentionally delays or opens a postal packet in the course of its transmission by post, or (b) intentionally opens a mail-bag.
(3) A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person's detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him.
It seems blessedly free of any jargon and reasonably complete. I haven't much practice at reading statutes. I don't know:
(a) If transmission by post stops when it hits letter bix
(b) If you are safe to act without detriment OR with detriment but also a reasonable excuse?
(c) If this act is superceded by anything else.
If I cared, how *would* I find out?
3. I think I can do what I like with it.
(a) Was I ever obliged to return it? If so can I send 100k parcels eg. masks misaddressed to my enemy?
(b) If not, but I've collected a too-big pile of mostly mundane letters to previous tennants, is it possible to bundle it up in any way, or must I throw it away or write return to sender 50 times (that's a slgiht hassle)? The postman suggested not.
1. The only views commonly advocated are included by:
(a) You may cross your address and write "return to sender" when the post office will if they can (empirically works)
(b) You may cross your address and write the correct address, and the post office will redeliver it (empirically works)
(c) You must do (a) or (b)
(d) You may not open it (I think this is supported by the law below)
2. The only relevent statue a cursory search found was Postal Services Act 2000, Section 84. Including:
(1) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, he- (a) intentionally delays or opens a postal packet in the course of its transmission by post, or (b) intentionally opens a mail-bag.
(3) A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person's detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him.
It seems blessedly free of any jargon and reasonably complete. I haven't much practice at reading statutes. I don't know:
(a) If transmission by post stops when it hits letter bix
(b) If you are safe to act without detriment OR with detriment but also a reasonable excuse?
(c) If this act is superceded by anything else.
If I cared, how *would* I find out?
3. I think I can do what I like with it.
(a) Was I ever obliged to return it? If so can I send 100k parcels eg. masks misaddressed to my enemy?
(b) If not, but I've collected a too-big pile of mostly mundane letters to previous tennants, is it possible to bundle it up in any way, or must I throw it away or write return to sender 50 times (that's a slgiht hassle)? The postman suggested not.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 03:57 pm (UTC)Eventually, faced with a two-year backlog of post and no way of delivering it to the intended recipients, I put a request through the Royal Mail website asking what I should do. They said I really should label it all "not known at this address" and put it back into my local postbox; they specifically said that if I thought it would overflow my local postbox (which I did) then I should put it in over the course of several days. So I did that, by printing lots of "not known" labels to save the seriously tedious bit.
I haven't had much post for them since. I like to think that the spammy companies, which might incompetently have ignored one or two "not known" letters turning up at once, sat up and took notice when ten or fifteen showed up on the same day, and decided it really was worth removing this address from their lists :-)