Asking for a friend. Really.

A friend at work has recently moved into a new house. It turns out that some woman – friend doesn’t know who – is having post with her name redirected from the house to a new address. We’re pretty sure she’s never lived in the house.

Friend got home last night to a letter from the water supplier containing a final bill. When she got in touch with them, it turns out that the woman has cancelled the water connection and opened a new account, so she now has a current bill for my friend’s address with her name on it. Water co were great at cancelling it, but obviously friend is very worried that this woman could now be applying for all sorts of things without her knowing.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Post Office are being pretty useless.

Does she have the new address?  Maybe having a conversation with Action Fraud, as she will be using the utility bill as proof of address.

It shouldn’t affect a credit rating as that is attached to an individual not an address, but I’d be running a free check now and again as a precaution.

She should get any public registers updated asap, electoral roll, council tax in her name, driving license etc

Could it be that someone with a similar address or postcode has recently moved too and has made a mistake when setting up accounts? For a water bill I could see this – you move into a new place, call the water company who say there is an existing account so you stop that one and set up a new one – but you’ve got one part of the address wrong.

Could also be a letting agent (I once had a letting agent set me up with two electricity accounts when I moved on – one for my flat and one for another flat who knows where as they’d obviously just used the same name and address for two different meters/accounts).

She has an Experian account so is keeping an eye on that. No idea as to the redirect address unfortunately. I think everything is up to date already, but I’ll make sure it is.

*edit* Pretty sure it’s not a mistake, it certainly sounds intentional.