When I moved address last year I arranged for my mail to be redirected to my new address. Fortunately (as it turned out) I made a point of informing the most important companies (my bank and so forth) of the new address myself. I've just received a letter from the Royal Mail asking if I'd like to extend the redirection and it turns out they have my former address down wrong! So I basically paid what is quite a lot of money for no valid reason whatsover! I'm just wondering if I would be able to make a complaint successfully? I haven't had good experience in the past about this sort of thing, and I have a horrible feeling that even if I was successful I would only be offered ?10 worth of postage or something, rather than getting my money back.

How annoying.

It may come down to proving that you gave them the correct address in the first place - could it have been your error?

Either way, I don't think anyone on here will be able to answer your question - unless perhaps they happen to have had an identical experience (or work for Royal Mail!) - so you're probably best to bite the bullet and make a complaint if that's what you want to do.

It also begs the question - if it's your former address they have wrong, you should have been getting somebody else's mail redirected to your current address.

If this was done, wouldn't you have noticed? If this hasn't been happening, what they claim doesn't seem to hold water.

Not if the incorrect address doesn't exist...

W

And they need surname as well as address for the redirection to happen.

That's a point. Or maybe if the names don't match? - I wasn't sure about that.

I've had the opposite problem. I set up forwarding when I moved to Hungary a couple of years ago, but nothing has been forwarded.

The current tenant has been returning everything to sender, so many things have gone missing.

It was a lot of money for nothing - and I will most certainly be making a complaint when I get back to England next month.

Doesn't paint the Royal Mail in a great light does it? I'm thinking I probably should write a letter of complaint just to see if something can be done - although to be honest, I'm not holding out hope...

We had trouble with redirection when we moved a couple of years ago. Our post was being redirected here from the previous address, but the people who were here before had redirected theirs too. The Royal Mail was forwarding our stuff on to us, and then thinking it was for the previous people here, was forwarding it again on to them! They were completely clueless.

I live on a very long road which has one name at my end, and another name at the other end. The house numbers begin again at the change of name, so If I lived at 5 Anon St, someone else is at 5 Anon Lane, but it's essentially one street.
You've guessed it... I get mail for the other person with the same house number, and they get my mail. It's happened so often, we now just pop in when passing to deliver the post. Royal mail keep blaming the post man, but there's a distance of 5 miles between us, and we have two different postmen, so surely it's the sorting office who are at fault.

I understand that the postmen sort their own post ...

The basement flat next door to me recently sold and the occupants moved out about a month ago. Their recycling bins seem to have vanished with their departure. I went to put some stuff in my recyling bins and noticed that a substantial amount of mail had been dumped in my bins! At first I thought they were just junk mail, but in fact most of it was "proper" mail addressed to the girls who used to live next door. I brought them in and wrote "return to sender" then posted them. However I was quite shocked that the new occupant of the flat hadnt bothered to do this and was just binning them but having said that it would appear that the previous occupants hadnt bothered to arrange to have their mail forwarded, when the facility is there - I know there is a charge, but ...

In which case several of the ones round here are illiterate. I've had mail for at least half a dozen different addresses - not just the wrong number (which is understandable if it happens occasionally) but completely the wrong street.

I thought it was all done on postcodes nowadays? With 5 miles between addresses, surely the postcodes must be different?

We live at 0 Willobie's Road. There is also a 0 Willobie's Road in a village a couple of miles away - obviously with a different postcode. Almost every week we receive mail for the village (we have come to know the occupant's name) - sometimes with our postcode on it! We have visits from his meter readers - and have twice been woken up in the middle of the night (2-3am) by the police who are trying to track him down!

We have lived here for nearly 6 years and still get occasional items of mail for our predecessors - luckily our postman does his best to apprehend these rogue messages, or it could be even worse

W

We used to live in similar circumstances - Hollybush being the name of the road in our town and the neighbouring town. We often found ourselves redirecting mail, although the postcodes were significantly different.

There are also 2 Green Lanes within a mile of each other, one is Green Lane, Town, XX6 yyy and the other is Green Lane, Village, XX6 zzz. I have actually been guilty of going to the wrong Green Lane on one occasion when I hadn't listened sufficiently carefully to the instructions as to whether it was the Town or Village address. I expect their post gets confused frequently.

We have 2 roads named only about a mile apart too.
Different towns.

You live on a road bearing your own name? How fortuitous.

W

One of my friends in the states does live on a road named after her family. When I was there, my mail address was Rural Delivery Route 1 Box XXX. As the state has become more urban, roads had to be given names, and as her house was the first to be built on her road, her surname was the one chosen

Good Evening,

the mail would only be redirected if the name and address matched what was on the letter and what was on the redirection card, so the postman would search for the surname and correct initials in the sorting frame under the address that was on the redirection card so your former postman would never find that name at the wrong address so never redirect any mail to your new address.

the error was probably made when you set up the redirection at the post office.

you would have to complain to royal mail that your redirection has failed and then the sorting office manager would make an investigation talking to your former postman and then if it was decided that the error was Royal Mails fault they would more than likely offer you a free redirection for a period of time as compensation.

hope this helps

mp