Unknown people claiming to live at our address - worried

[MrsEricBana]

I am very worried about the above and would appreciate some advice please.

The have been two incidents that I am aware of:

1. in Feb we received letters from two different mobile phone companies (neither of which we use) addressed to a name very similar to my husband's name and at our exact address. In both cases the person had got two phones and associated insurance and listed themselves as living them here. I immediately phoned the companies involved, phone contracts were cancelled and their fraud depts started investigating. As neither the name nor the bank details given were ours we suffered no financial loss and the fraudster just got a couple of weeks free phone usage. Seems to be over.
   
   
2. Yesterday my husband received a call saying that 2 different people had tried to register for postal voting fron our address this week (and that 6 other people had made similar fraudulent applications this week). So again our address but totally different names (different from in 1) ) and no financial loss.
   
   I know this is not identity fraud in that not someone claiming to be me or my husband exactly, but I am worried and would appreciate any thoughts
   advice. Thank you!
   
   (I do recycle our paperwork but tear addresses and personal details off things and rip up those bits small. Am careful re unsolicited calls etc).

[ivykaty44]

I do wonder how the companies are allowing the credit check to go through for the mobile phone? As the names will not appear registered at your address so they shouldn't have given out the contracts - I wonder if the feb phone issue was the phone companies trying to get you to pay the debts - they looked for a similar name and sent you the bill.

[prettybird]

Have you checked your credit files with Experian and Equifax?

Dh had a problem with someone having used his name and address to register an account with Very (and had the goods addressed to somewhere in the Midlands ).

To be fair on Very, once we raised it (when we got the first account ), they were quick to cancel it (at least, their fraud department was, it took ages for their billing department to change their records).

As a result, we had a "fraud alert" against both my name and dh's name in our credit records, which meant that anyone applying for credit using our address had to be asked extra security questions. Didn't affect our credit rating. Very did it for us - but I think you can do it yourself by contacting Experian and Equifax direct yourself.

[MrsEricBana]

Yes I wondered that ivy - surely you have to prove name and address, and odd that both these companies accepted this person as living here. Thank you, will do the Experian and Equifax thing. Dh reckons it is coincidental that both these things happened close together and says people are trying dodgy things all the time, but I think it's odd. Even the voting people said it had never happened here before and so had no procedure for it and weren't sure whether to call us as didn't want to worry us! Well they have!