Postal law question - who can open your letters?

Dogg Thang

Not sure if this is the right board for this but hopefully it is. I'm having an issue in work where my boss is opening any letter addressed to me. His logic is, if it came to the company, it's a company letter. I disagree. If it is addressed to me, I would have thought nobody else is legally entitled to open that letter no matter where it arrives.

Anyone know the legalities of this?

TIA.

parsi

Plenty of companies open all inbound mail and send it onwards.

See this UK link - the last line refers:

http://www.yourrights.org.uk/your-rights/chapters/the-right-to-privacy/interception-of-post/index.shtml

Culchie

I think your boss maybe be right in fairness.

Although, you may have some cause for greviance from a trust/internal relationship angle with your boss, legally he would be entitled to open company mail.

Opening personal mail at work, on company time, is the same as personal phone calls, internet usage etc...
Company Time = Company Money

If this was just one of a series of other things being done to you to undermine you, your confidence and standing in the company, tactical bullying etc.... you may have an issue that needs to be dealt with from a HR perspective. Difficult to know without further details.

Dogg Thang

No, none of those things would apply - my relationship with my boss is actually very good and I don't in any way think he's doing it in a malicious way. It's simply that it bugs me!

You're probably right though - he could well be entitled to open it. Thanks for the input.

gerrycollins

u could try the "is it ok if i get a letter/package delivered here as i dunno what the size etc is and its important" might make him leave ur mail alone cause he doesnt know weather the mail will be personal or business?
worth a try especially if u have a good working relationship

BrianD

His within his rights. Any mail delivered to your work place is considered to be work related. Some employers will allow letters marked 'Private and confidential' tp go through unopened. Why would you get personal mail delivered to your place of work? In any case he is opening the letter after it has been delivered to the address by the postal service so technically it is no longer 'post'.

GreeBo

BrianD wrote:

In any case he is opening the letter after it has been delivered to the address by the postal service so technically it is no longer 'post'.

Hmm I disagree.
The address has the OP's name on it.
Otherwise once a letter addressed to Dublin could be opened by anyone in Dublin.. where do you draw the line?
Town, Estate, Street, House, Addressee?

Kolodny

BrianD wrote:

Why would you get personal mail delivered to your place of work?

I have personal mail (parcels) delivered to work simply because they can't delivered to my house when there's no one there and I finish work too late to collect stuff from the nearest sorting office. It's just too much hassle. I'm sure a lot a people do this.

Dogg Thang wrote:

Anyone know the legalities of this?

I'm not sure of the legalities but I asked my boss if this would be ok to have parcels sent to me at work and luckily was told that a lot of staff do the same thing so there is no issue of my personal mail being opened. I suppose it depends on the employer though. I wouldn't like my personal mail being opened by my boss (or anyone) but if it happened at work I don't feel I could make a huge fuss about it.

BrianD

GreeBo wrote:

Hmm I disagree.
The address has the OP's name on it.
Otherwise once a letter addressed to Dublin could be opened by anyone in Dublin.. where do you draw the line?
Town, Estate, Street, House, Addressee?

The line is very clear. Once the postman pops the letter through the 'letterbox' of the addressee. It is then delivered and no longer in the postal system. Every employer has the right to open to any item that arrives on his premises.

N_Raid

I'm not sure of the legalities but I don't think it's as clear cut as once it's delivered to the address the boss has a right to open it. I'm open to correction here but as far as I know if I get a letter through my letterbox and ,say, it was for the person who lived there before me, even though it was delivered to the address I don't think I am legally allowed to open it because it's not my name on the envelope.

It could be totally different for business but I would have thought that common courtesy and manners would stop a boss from opening post addressed to his staff. I know a few people who get mail,and packages especially delivered to work and no one has ever had a problem with it.

Dogg Thang

Yeah it's a case of whether the letter is the property of the premises or the person. Is it fair game if it has been delivered to your premises no matter who it is meant for? There has to be an ownership law when it comes to mail and I originally thought that the owner of a letter would have been the person whose name is over the address.

If that is the case in a home situation (and I don't know that it is), then I see no reason why it would be different in a business situation unless you have signed over all rights to property.

I really don't know now.

shayser

Found this


from the POSTAL AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES ACT, 1983



84.—(1) A person who—

( a ) opens or attempts to open a postal packet addressed to another person or delays or detains any such postal packet or does anything to prevent its due delivery or authorises, suffers or permits another person (who is not the person to whom the postal packet is addressed) to do so, or

( b ) discloses the existence or contents of any such postal packet, or

( c ) uses for any purpose any information obtained from any such postal packet, or

( d ) tampers with any such postal packet,

without the agreement of the person to whom the postal packet is addressed shall be guilty of an offence.

(2) Subsection (1) shall not apply to any person who is acting—

( a ) in virtue of any power conferred on the company by section 83, or

( b ) in pursuance of a direction issued by the Minister under section 110, or

( c ) under other lawful authority.




http://www.ispai.ie/legal/ie/1983-pt-act.htm

Culchie

We're moving into interesting territory here now.

I must admit, when I purchased my house, I had to resort to opening up the previous occupants post.

There was a massive (8 or 9 pieces per day) coming in from different companies looking for money owed etc... they must have been up to their necks in it.

Despite me sending back what I could to those that had return addresses on the envelopes, there was still loads coming in. (Previous occupants left no forward address).

We also had visits for debt collectors on behalf of this creditors, some official, so not so official if you know what I mean.

Anyways after about 3 months, it came to a point wehn one Saturday morning, I opened up all the previous weeks mail, and called all the suppliers, financial institutions to let them know that (a) I was sorry for opening their mail but..... and (b) The previous owners have moved on, and I'm afraid I don't have any new address for them.

It was the best decision I ever made .... post and visits stopped immediately.

So, technically I suppose I was breaking the law, but it just had to be done.

BrianD

You don't even have to open it. Just write 'return to sender - Not kown at this address' and pop it into your nearest post box. I find it's a good way of stopping mail addressed to previous residents. Yoiu should not have to sort out their financial affairs!!

ambro25

Well... that might work wherever in Dublin you're based, but in Rathfarnham we're still getting reminders/money owed/this/that/the other for the previous tenant more than a year on - that after trying the RTS, opening and contacting directly the senders and asking tehm to update their records, etc, etc. Now, they just end up in the cheminea :rolleyes: - the basis is that we've done our bit and beyond, if the senders can't be arsed it's not our fault (and I've photocopied stacks of such RTS-marked envelopes from the 'usual suspects, just to be safe).

On the matter of records - a funny thing on Monday night (not related to the thread, but to my point above). Eircomm rings the wife and asks if we want to upgarde this/that/the other. Wife tells em we've been with BT for over 3 or 4 months now. Guy at other end gets the funnies and states: you owe us money for last bill. Wife goes: not quite, it was on DD and paid/drawn acc to bank statement, your last bill clearly states 'Final Invoice'. Guy goes robot and re-states: well, system sez you owe us money and solicitors are involved. Wife: WTF?!? wanna talk to your boss right the f*ck now. Cut a long story short, accounts eventually confirmed that all was in order after all... but it just goes to show.

Oh and another while I'm at it - anyone remembers my DHL thread? Yeah well, I did kinda let this one by for a while (too busy with work and exams and family and whatnot) but guess what...? It's happened again, with DHL France this time - sent ThinkGeek stuff from US to my parents, value about $34 + $21 P&P - they've asked my parents €30 in import duty and VAT, calcultated it (just like DHL Ireland in my thread) on goods value plus shipping (shipping is not subject to import duty, and I think not subject to VAT either).

So, question (might start a new thread on this) to you guys buying stuff outside EU: when you get import invoice from courier, is your total calculated on goods value only, or is the courier just trying it on with everyone and laughing all the way to the bank?:mad:

Culchie

BrianD wrote:

You don't even have to open it. Just write 'return to sender - Not kown at this address' and pop it into your nearest post box. I find it's a good way of stopping mail addressed to previous residents. Yoiu should not have to sort out their financial affairs!!

I did for months .... but these kind of creditors were quite persistent.

Besides, once I did it, it all improved immediately, so if ever in the same position, I'd do the same thing again, only 3 months quicker than I did.

LegacyUser

I know it is a while since this post was addressed!

I have been living in my house since May 2004.
I get a lot of junk mail for specific 3 people - 1 girl and 2 guys.
In the beginning I used to return to senderand I rang the tax office and reported 2 of them (as letters and "revenue was here" postcards were arriving at the house). Revenue said that they had to keep sending to my house for those 2 people as that was the last known address of their residency.
For the last few months I have been binning/burning them..
This evening one of them knocked on the door, looking for a revene lettter that I binned last week. I just didn't see the point in me driving to the post box to post these things when revenue were ignoring it!! Waste of my petrol and time.

I told the guy I posted the tax letter and reminded him that I was living hee almost 2.5 years at ths point!!

He walked off .. and didn't leave a forwarding address.
I don't see how, after 2.5 years that I am liable for some lazy tosser's inability to let REVENUE know their changed address!

chrislad

Regardless of the legalities of the situation, I would have thought it common courtesy and decency to not open any mail, regardless of whether it was work or not, that was not addressed to you. The only exceptions I make would be for work when something is addressed to the Manager (as in the title, not her name) and she is not in the store for the day, and only when I know what's in it (comes regularly so you know what's in an envelope before you open it,.

ircoha

Dogg Thang wrote:

Not sure if this is the right board for this but hopefully it is. I'm having an issue in work where my boss is opening any letter addressed to me. His logic is, if it came to the company, it's a company letter. I disagree. If it is addressed to me, I would have thought nobody else is legally entitled to open that letter no matter where it arrives.

Anyone know the legalities of this?

TIA.

Interesting post, this, ignore the pun.

The boss is within his rights here.

From an internal control perspective, the company, ie the bosses have a legal responsibility to ensure that all procedures are in place to safeguard the assets of the company etc.
Not opening the post is risking the assets of the company as the receiptient could be on the fiddle with a supplier/customer/ etc.

Case in point: when ICI went bang just after AIB bought it one reason it went bang was that massive risks had been underwritten, but the paperwork was concealed in post that was diverted and unopened.

In addition the P+T law only applies while the piece of post is under the control of the P+T.

RainyDay

I know of several companies that do this. One multi-national opens all post for security reasons, having got a pile of white powder delivered during the post-Sept-11 anthrax scares. One IT company (multi-national) used to have the MD opening all the post every morning, which seems like a huge waste of time to me!

Why would have personal post going to your work address?

moshpit77

Culchie wrote:

We're moving into interesting territory here now.

I must admit, when I purchased my house, I had to resort to opening up the previous occupants post.

There was a massive (8 or 9 pieces per day) coming in from different companies looking for money owed etc... they must have been up to their necks in it.

Despite me sending back what I could to those that had return addresses on the envelopes, there was still loads coming in. (Previous occupants left no forward address).

We also had visits for debt collectors on behalf of this creditors, some official, so not so official if you know what I mean.

Anyways after about 3 months, it came to a point wehn one Saturday morning, I opened up all the previous weeks mail, and called all the suppliers, financial institutions to let them know that (a) I was sorry for opening their mail but..... and (b) The previous owners have moved on, and I'm afraid I don't have any new address for them.

It was the best decision I ever made .... post and visits stopped immediately.

So, technically I suppose I was breaking the law, but it just had to be done.

Culchie, you broke the law by opening the previous occupants mail. The correct procedure is to either hand the mail back to the postman or mark it 'gone away' and put it in a post box. Every main sorting office has a RLB (returned letters bureau) who are the only people with the authority to open this mail, and even then only if there is no return address on it just to see if the letter inside has a return address. Most companies, when they get mail back undelivered, will strike the address off their database or follow up on it so you shouldn't get any more mail for the previous occupants.

Back to the OP, if the mail is marked 'for addressee only' then your boss shouldn't open it. If it is addressed to you at your company name then he would have the authority to open it as it is addressed to the company.

aman

If you know he's opening the post (& he has now informed you of this) why not get all your post delivered to your home? We have a business & never really get any personal mail for staff at all - our receptionist opens all mail regardless (including mine & my husbands) & it's put in our mailboxes.
From a legal point of view once he has informed you that he is opening all mail you don't really have a leg to stand on.

LegacyUser

moshpit77 wrote:

Most companies, when they get mail back undelivered, will strike the address off their database or follow up on it so you shouldn't get any more mail for the previous occupants.

And for companies that continue to send out those letters - after the new owner has posted back several times .. does the new owner have to continue to go to the post box indefinitely?
I rang revenue over 2 years ago about three people they were sending tax letters to in my new house. They refused to update their database and continued to post letters to my house "as it was the last known address of those individuals".

I then rang revenue and told them I was no longer willing to send the letters back to them, if they continued to post them. I bin them now - and 2.5 years later I get one of the said people at my door looking for his mail!! Did he think I was going to neatly pile up his letters for that long?
If it was 6 months or a year .. then maybe ..

I probably only frequent a post office, or have a reason to go to the post box once a year!! It is an inconvenience to go there for me. Like I said, used to do it, but after 2.5 years .. sod off!

To be safe, after the guy called around the other night, I got legal advice.

eth0_

moshpit77 wrote:

Culchie, you broke the law by opening the previous occupants mail. The correct procedure is to either hand the mail back to the postman or mark it 'gone away' and put it in a post box. .

Now, he said he *had* posted back what he could (i.e. stuff with return address printed on the back of the envelope), but come on, anyone with debt collectors chasing after them could simply write 'not at this address' and return the mail!

I think if you were getting visits from debt collectors, you would have done what Culchie did. I don't think he had any other option tbh.

vector

moshpit77 wrote:

Culchie, you broke the law by opening the previous occupants mail.

on the an post site it says that an post delivers letters to the *address* on the envelope and not to a specific person at that address

so if you live at 28 Nonsuch road, and there is a letter in your letterbox addressed to 28 Nonsuch road then you can open it

well thats what I think maybe someone will look up a postal act

(when I moved into my second hand house letters from Bord Gas kept arriving addressed to previous occupant name, at first I sent them to him, but they kept arriving, eventually they had FINAL DEMAND etc written on the front, so I opened one, he had an outstanding bill! I think he had no intention of paying it)

moshpit77

vector wrote:

on the an post site it says that an post delivers letters to the *address* on the envelope and not to a specific person at that address

yes, an posts job is to deliver to the address on the envelope and that's where their responsibility ends.

however, the law says that if you get a letter addressed to your address but not to your name, you are not legally allowed to open it

BrianD

I think it's pretty clear. If it comes to your name at your work address it can be opened by an employee of the company. After all, you may decide to move jobs or to be reassigned within your company and people may still have you as their contact on their database.

Nobody gets personal mail at their workplace and all mail should be work related and therefore the property of the company. Likewise your company e-mail address is for your use as an employee and you shouldn't be surprised if someone else accesses it. It is however good practice to inform employess of what the regulations are.

BC

BrianD wrote:

Nobody gets personal mail at their workplace and all mail should be work related and therefore the property of the company.

Not true in my company anyway. Most people in my office get parcels delivered to work regularly. I wouldn't get a letter delivered here but as i'm not at home during the day to recieve a parcel i get them sent to work as does pretty much everyone in the office.

BrianD

BC wrote:

Not true in my company anyway. Most people in my office get parcels delivered to work regularly. I wouldn't get a letter delivered here but as i'm not at home during the day to recieve a parcel i get them sent to work as does pretty much everyone in the office.

I do myself but I accept that somebody may open them and I wouldn't have a valid complaint. However, I think the OP was referring to letter mail. You can argue there's no difference (and there isn't really) but a letter post could contain something more personal.

hitbit

Your Boss has options here, He can continue to open your mail, He can be a gentleman and refrain from doing so, He can ask you to refrain from having personal mail sent to your place of work.
On the subject of unwanted mail, You bear no responsibility to advise anyone that the previous resident has moved on. If you elect to do the decent thing and commercial entities continue to send post simply dump it in the bin and forget it.
On the subject of DHL tell them your posting here but remember this is the company that lost the Horse's Piss and Ireland's World Cup Gear.

Hitbit

Kotek Besar

moshpit77 wrote: »

..The correct procedure is to either hand the mail back to the postman or mark it 'gone away' and put it in a post box..

moshpit77, I know I'm hijacking an old thread here, but I find myself in a position now where I need to ask - do you have a link or reference for the procedure above? I've searched and searched but found nothing. I just need to know what is the correct, legal thing to do with post that's addressed to (presumably) the previous occupant.