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by DanBC
2505 days ago
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VM even got the mail law a bit wrong. The relevant law is the Postal Services Act 2000, section 84(3) If the letter has already been delivered, maybe to the wrong address, it's only an offence to open that letter if you have the intent to cause detriment and you don't have an excuse to open it. "Hey this looks important and I wonder who it's for" is a reasonable excuse to open the letter. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/part/V/crosshea... > 3)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 to him. |
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My 93 year old neighbour had had people using her address for insurance fraud - I’d spotted the huge pile of unopened envelopes in her kitchen, all sent to her address but with random fictional names. Asked her if I can open one. “By all means,” she says, “I just use them as kindling anyway.” Car insurance policies. Hundreds of them.
So, I did what I thought was the right thing, contacted the fraud line.
A few days later this cop appears, not to investigate the fraud, not to console my neighbour - but to threaten both of us with prosecution for opening letters addressed to someone else - and that was the end of that. Never mind that they were going to her home - if it’s addressed to Miss Xfrjjtgvyes Bstgbfwss then only she can open it. I don’t care that she sounds made up. You don’t know that. How do I know you aren’t made up? Watch that tongue, son.
I ignored him and phoned dozens of insurers on her behalf, didn’t bother the police again. They take opening someone else’s mail, even a fictional person, far more seriously than, say, £30,000 of fraud.