There’s a $347,857 cheque in the mail. But it’s not addressed to you!

What do you do if mail is delivered to your house, but it is not addressed to you? Open it? Throw it in the bin? Take it back to the Post Office?

We have lived at our current address for the past three-and-a-half years. The people we bought the house from, literally moved across the road for the first 12 months of that time while they renovated, and sold, that house. So, when mailed arrived for them, I simply walked 20 steps and put it in their post box. No problem.

The trouble is I’m still getting their mail, but now I have no idea where they live. Every month I mark about five letters “Not At This Address” and drop them in a Red Australia Post letter box. I have no idea if the letters ever reach their intended destination. I suspect not, because the letters keep coming to my house from the same senders.

My friend Ron, who lives just down the road, inadvertently opened some mail the other day that wasn’t addressed to him. He wasn’t paying much attention and just ripped the large envelope open and looked inside. The letter was from a retirement home and contained a cheque for $347,857 – the final refund after someone had died in the retirement home and all their accounts had been settled.

Ron didn’t recognise the name on the letter. It wasn’t the people he had bought the house from. All he could do, after he worked out he wouldn’t get away with banking the cheque in his account, was to drive to the retirement home, apologise for opening it, and hand it back.

Tampering with mail is a criminal offence. Opening mail you are not authorised to can be considered tampering under Division 471 of the Criminal Code Act 1995. But even the law acknowledges that accidents can happen. So it’s not considered an offence if you have ripped open the envelope before checking the name and address; or addressee’s name wasn’t on the envelope; or the mail was incorrectly addressed.

According to Australia Post, here’s what you should do if you receive mail addressed to your address, but the incorrect recipient.

If you receive mail addressed to your address but it is not for you or anyone who uses the address, simply:

• Mark it as “return to sender – unknown at this address”.
• Place the item in a red street posting box or hand it to staff at any Post Office for return.

Australia Post says that if you are receiving mail for a previous tenant they must continue to deliver that mail as addressed unless the previous tenants submits a mail redirection request or updates their address details directly with the sender/s.

If the mail is addressed to a different address and has been delivered to you incorrectly, simply:

• Place the item in a red street posting box or hand it to staff at any Post Office.

In this case, there is no need to write anything on the envelope. Getting mail addressed to the wrong address may not be a problem for much longer though. Since 2008, the number of letters being delivered to households has decreased by two-thirds.

And in April, Australia Post stopped delivering letters daily as it shifted to a new business model that focuses on e-commerce and packages. Australians can now expect standard letters to be delivered every second day with posties prioritising express mail and parcels for daily delivery.

Australia Post CEO and managing director Paul Graham says: “Households now receive about two letters per week, and we expect this to halve in the next five years.”

That’s such a shame. Call me old fashioned, but I would much rather receive a handwritten letter than an email or a “What’sApp” message. I’ve always written letters and I consider them to be special, more personal, and usually more thoughtfully crafted than an email.

There’s every chance though that our over-reliance on computers and mobile phones will send the handwritten word the same way of the dodo.