Six months after our move into our home we continue to get mail addressed to the former owner. He still lives in town in a lovely refurbished apartment on Main Street just above his satellite communication business. I know it is lovely from the gossip of some electricians who were at our home and had been in the previous owners’ new place.
I always let him know when we get his mail. Sometimes he picks it up. Sometimes his elderly mom picks it up. She lives one block from us. About a month ago we received the property tax statement for his Main Street property along with some other mail from a finance company. I could tell what it was since the property tax envelope had been conveniently torn enough in transit for me to peek inside. I let him know via text that we had it. He texted that he was currently in Arizona and would pick it up when he got back to town in early April.
I saw him in his Jeep last week as I was going to the grocery store. He still hasn’t phoned to pick up his mail. I decided I am not going to remind him. The more we learn about him and his ways of dealing with things I think that he has been cossetted and coddled far too much by this community, and if his property taxes are delinquent, well, that may be a good lesson for him.
What natural consequences have you seen people deal with? What natural consequences have you experienced?
Trail Baboon 
So sorry this was late. I had it scheduled for 4 pm, not 5 am. Sheesh!
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I keep a little pad of post-it notes downstairs and I have to admit that over the years I’ve used it more for communicating with the mail carrier than anything else. Personally, especially for the taxes thing, I would probably stick a post-it note on it that says “No longer at this address” and leave it for your mail carrier. Maybe after four or five of these the post office will get the message. We also had a wonky mail carrier two summers back who over the course of 4 months, left us someone else’s mail 6 times. My other close neighbors reported the same. Whipped out my post-it notes again with “Delivered to wrong address”!
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Then there’s the other side of the coin. Last May, my beloved next-door neighbors (Minnie and Marie) moved about 10 blocks away (their new house is lovely). Not sure exactly what happened, but for the first seven or so months, every couple of weeks, some of their mail ended up with the new occupants of their old house. These new folks are very nice and very young and they always told ME that they had these pieces of mail. Never asked me if I had the new address, clearly never stuck a post-it not on it.
So I would gather that mail and deliver it myself. I do enough errands that I can always tack it on and it’s not that far. Most times just put it in their mailbox and texted them that I had dropped it off. Nice dividends paid for this service — Marie just invited me to her school music program on Friday so I consider it a good trade!
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How fun!
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Seems odd that the post office would send tax notices to an old address. Letters, junk mail, sure, but it’s surprising to me the property tax people don’t have current info.
No need to put yourselves out for that!
I think I’ve finally lived here long enough to no longer get Viking Cruise mail for a former owner who I knew to be deceased.
Tangent-i realized I’ve know all the owners of the house next door (I think it was a GI bill house). People tend to come here to stay
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The name on the tax form is his business name, which is just a three letter abbreviation with our house number as the address. The County Auditor didn’t know he had moved. I phoned and talked to her to make sure they had us as the owners of our house, which they did. We received the property tax statement for the house a few days after we got his.
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Still seems odd if they had you as the new owners of that address. I’m sure he will get it figured out …
Eventually.
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