HA! HA! Your third class mail stinks!

July 20, 2005 10:20 PM

How do I tell the USPS to stop delivering the mail of the old tenant of my apartment?

I just moved into a new apartment, and I'm already tired of getting the old tenant's junk mail (and some other mildly important-looking things). How do I tell the post office to stop delivering to this person?

Note of course that filing a change of address or hold in her name is a crime, and a change of address wouldn't stop the third-class mail anyway. Please help me out.

posted by symphonik to human relations (17 comments total)

I had this problem too. What they told me to do is take a pen, cross out the address, write "Does not reside", and then put it back in the box. I haven't received any more letters after the first couple times I did this.

Interestingly enough, the old tenant came back around mid February. Turns out a previous employer had sent his W2 to my address. I never got it; too bad for him.
posted by sbutler at 10:35 PM on July 20, 2005

Ohhh... also, a lot of junk mail will say "So and So OR CURRENT RESIDENT". You're kind of screwed in that case.
posted by sbutler at 10:36 PM on July 20, 2005

Much junk mail notes that it should be delivered regardless of who lives in the home. (It will likely say "no forwarding service" or some such thing.) The best way to stop it is to contact the company sending the material and ask the address, not the name, to be removed from their mailing list. We sometimes do this by telephone but find great pleasure in using any postage paid envelopes for the purpose (include the mailing label). We also send back any postage paid envelopes empty when we have the chance.

For anything which is not obvious junk, we write on the envelope "not at this address" or "no longer at this address" (circling the name) and give the mail back to the postal service. Many important looking things are often not very important and now, after owning our house for 10 years, important looking mail addressed to the former owner, regardless of content (where we can not know the content until opened), goes straight into the dust bin.
posted by Dick Paris at 10:37 PM on July 20, 2005

Also, put your name on a sticker or one of those letter-stamp tape widgets, and tape that to the inside of your mailbox somewhere it's clearly visible for your mail deliverer. Combined with a few good 'RETURN TO SENDER - ADDRESSEE DOES NOT RESIDE' scrawled on some envelopes, this should cut down on misaddressed mail considerably.

Chatting with your mail carrier will also eliminate the problem.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:45 PM on July 20, 2005

This is is a FAQ at the USPS website.

If I receive mail for someone who has moved, what should I do with it?

If you are receiving mail for the previous resident and do not know their address, simply return the mail piece back to the mailstream (by leaving in a collection box or other mail receptacle) with the notation "Not at this address" marked on the envelope.

It might also help to check that your mailbox is labeled with your name; it might tip off the delivery guy that a new person is living there, or maybe he/she just won't care.
posted by Brian James at 12:27 AM on July 21, 2005

Write NATA on the envelope on and put it back in the box, like outgoing mail. I do this with 'or Current Resident' and they take it back. I don't know anyone named Current Resident.
posted by raaka at 2:15 AM on July 21, 2005

I was about to post the very same question today, since I had trouble finding the proper info on USPS. Now to start marking off two years of collected non-junk mail from three prior tenants.
posted by brownpau at 5:39 AM on July 21, 2005

I had this problem too. What they told me to do is take a pen, cross out the address, write "Does not reside", and then put it back in the box. I haven't received any more letters after the first couple times I did this.

Also, take a pen and scribble over the code on the back of the envelope - it's a bunch of vertical lines and some letters and numbers. This will ensure that it doesn't get automatically sorted again and back into your mail box.
posted by KathyK at 6:11 AM on July 21, 2005

I just moved into a new apartment, and it's no surprise that I've been getting mail intended for the previous tenant. Thanks for this advice!
posted by elisabeth r at 6:14 AM on July 21, 2005

In my experience, none of this works. I have been receiving mail for the same 5!!! previous tenants for the last 10 months. I have:

1) Put my name on the mail box
2) Written "Please forward, addressee is no longer at this address" on all mail not for me.
3) Written on the back of every envelope "Addressee please change your forwarding address"
4) Written a letter to the Postmaster (on the recommendation of USPS phone service.)
5) Written "Do not re-deliver to this address" with an arrow pointing at the address.
6) I have spoke to 6 or 7 different letter carriers in my 'hood asking them not to deliver these people's mail to me; or at the very least not to re-deliver it.

None of it works. I still get mail for other people. What's worse is after I have written all over the envelope I get 4 out of 10 pieces of mail back, despite large clearly legible block printing saying "Do not re-deliver..."

It seems my case is on the extreme end however.

Anyone have any ideas past what I have already done to stop this?
posted by thefinned1 at 6:51 AM on July 21, 2005

Put 'refused' or 'not at this address' and dump it in the nearest collection box. The PO will get the point eventually.
posted by NorthCoastCafe at 8:16 AM on July 21, 2005

thefinned1... I moved from my mother's address to a place out of state, and have occasionally received her mail forwarded to me. When I took it to the post office to see about getting it sent back to her house, the person who helped me said that just writing on the envelope sometimes won't work.

There is a barcode at the bottom of the envelope. It's very important this is blacked out, or else it can be automatically sorted, and nobody will see what you write.

I used to get the old tenant's mail (she didn't put in a forwarding adress). I'd scratch out the bar code and, not knowing the catchy NATA thing, I wrote "Please forward or return, addressee no longer at this address" on the front of the envelope. I did continue to get her mail even after a batch or two of that, but I never got one of those pieces of mail back to me.

Haven't seen anything for her in a while. Not sure I have the USPS to thank for that though.
posted by FortyT-wo at 8:25 AM on July 21, 2005

I worked at the front desk of a dorm in college for two years, and seemingly half the job was sending mail back to the sender for people who no longer lived there. What FortyT-wo said about the barcode is one of the most important things to do.

This was our process:

1. Cross out (with diagonal lines, not completely obliterating) the address on the envelope, but leave the name (of the previous tenant) visible.

2. With a black marker, cross out the zip code on the address completely.

3. Also with the black marker, cross out any barcode on the mail - barcodes can sometimes be on the back of the envelope, and are often in orange.

4. In big letters, write "Return to Sender - No Longer at Address." We had stickers printed out on Avery labels that we used for this (saved a lot of time), and I think you can even get stamps.

5. Bundle all return to sender mail together in one pack with a rubberband around it so the mailperson knows it's something different.

Of course, this only worked with first-class mail - stuff that's not junk mail, doesn't say "current resident" and doesn't have a "please forward" notice on it. Anything mailed by something other than first-class or without a "please forward" was just tossed.

This is what the post office told us to do, and it seemed to work.
posted by bibbit at 8:36 AM on July 21, 2005 [3 favorites has favorites]

I second the "Return to sender" and "Not at this address", but I take it a step further and write "Please remove this address from your mailing list".

I seem to have had good luck, with the exception that there is still a company selling the same damn mailing list that they've been selling for the last 15 years. I know this because the addressee's name is misspelled in a particularly horrible way. In those cases, I also add "Please tell whoever you bought your mailing list from that this person hasn't lived here in over 12 years". Honestly, the company selling the list hasn't removed my address, but it gives me some small pleasure letting their customer know that their product isn't up to par.
posted by vignettist at 9:15 AM on July 21, 2005

I've also worked at a dorm front desk, and our method was pretty much the same as bibbit's: Cross out the address [but NOT the name] with a fat black marker, cross out all the post-office codes [which look sort of like bar codes stamped in black or orange on the front and sometimes the back of the envelope], stamp RETURN TO SENDER and/or NOT AT [DORM ADDRESS] on the front, and dump it back in the mailstream. This ought to work for anything more official, but the junk mail, you're unfortunately stuck with. At our desk, we didn't forward anything that was "Presorted Standard", which was pretty much all junk mail and mass mailings. We were told that those things aren't forwardable.

Note that if you don't cross out the post office codes, the mail will probably come back to your address eventually. It's pretty annoying.
posted by ubersturm at 10:13 AM on July 21, 2005

thefinned1: call your post office and ask to speak to a delivery supervisor. You should be able to come to a satisfactory resolution. As a last resort, it’s not unheard of to have a supervisor audit the outgoing mail for an address on a daily basis for a while.
posted by hilker at 12:01 PM on July 21, 2005

Regarding thrid-class mail, the answer to a recent query at the PO on how to stop it was send a request to
Mail Preference Services
PO Box 9008
Farmingdale, NY 11735

More info here.
posted by Rash at 2:18 PM on July 21, 2005