I have been getting letters in the post addressed to a name I don’t recognise. After receiving them for several months, I finally opened one.
It said the person had ignored parking ticket fines they had previously been sent and that, as a result, the bailiffs would be calling.
I went to the council, and it told me I was in the wrong as it is illegal to open other people’s mail.
I don’t want the bailiffs knocking on my door – what are my rights?
L.W., Chester.
Dean Dunham replies: Your local council correctly asserts that it is normally illegal to open someone else’s post, but this may not apply to you.
The law that covers this, the Postal Services Act 2000, gives room for an exception. It says: ‘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.’
So the ‘reasonable excuse’ element of this legislation gives you a defence here.
Technically, it is illegal to open someone else’s post, but there are exceptions
You will not be breaking the law where you have a suspicion that the letter was from an enforcement agent, as this will have given you a ‘reasonable excuse’ to investigate and protect your own interests.
I can assume this was the case here, meaning your local council on this occasion is wrong.
You should now contact the enforcement agents to notify them that the debtor does not live at your address and provide evidence to prove this, such as a tenancy agreement in your name, utility bills and/or a passport or driving licence.
This will solve the issue, as an enforcement agent is not legally allowed to confiscate goods from a home that is not the debtor’s property.
For future reference, I always advise to put letters you’ve received for someone else back in the post box marked ‘not known at this address, return to sender’.
This is generally safer than opening the mail, because when you are ‘without reasonable excuse’ to open mail it is a criminal offence under Section 84 of the Act, and can land you with a fine and/or a prison sentence of up to two years.
My builder is trying to charge me £23,000 more than his original estimate. Do I have to pay this, or can I keep him to his estimate?
R.Ericson., via email.
Dean Dunham replies: Whether it’s in writing or was formed verbally, there will be a contract between you and the builder and one of the terms of this contract will be the price. Your first port of call is therefore is to ascertain what was agreed. If the only agreement you had in relation to the cost was an estimate, what, if anything, was said or written about the final costs?
If the contract is silent on how the final cost will be fixed, as it appears to be here, you will need to turn to the Consumer Rights Act as this provides you with protection in these circumstances.
Section 51 of the Act states that where a trader does not agree a fixed price with a consumer and does not spell out how the price will be fixed, the default position is that the consumer only has to pay what would be deemed reasonable in these circumstances.
To confirm this, you should get three quotes from local builders, for exactly the same work, and use the average as the measure of what is ‘reasonable’.
This is a good illustration as to why it is so important to agree everything in writing with a builder, including what the actual final cost of the work will be.
If a builder cannot give a final quote upfront, as the extent of the works are uncertain at the start of the project, you could at least agree stage payments with a mechanism on how the costs will be fixed.
It also is also advisable not to pay everything up front and to, therefore, hold money back as a retention.
This will give you negotiating power if a dispute arises.
