THAT is brilliant! And very funny.

Why thank you :-)

I actually got the idea from a computer virus which a computer of mine caught some time around the mid-1990s. When I took it apart to see how it worked (and, more importantly, what it might have done to my machine) it turned out to be using a trick very similar to this as a means of saving space.

It might be a good idea to find out a real forwarding address, though. My predecessors here took out redirection for 3 (or possibly 6) months; I still get quite a bit of post for them here which I forward on by hand, and it's over a year since I moved in.

They told me I should feel free to return-to-sender any post that arrives after the forwarding wears off. Presumably by that time they'll have finished notifying everyone they actually care about.

Makes no difference to me either way; I do that sort of thing using sticky labels, so it's just a question of printing a sheet of labels with an address on them or printing a sheet with "not known at this address".

If the post is from banks or similar, you don't really want the sender to be unaware that the person they're sending post to is no longer present at your address - as I understand it, credit blacklisting is sometimes applied to an address rather than a person, so if they think that an account which is overdrawn is based at your address, it can affect your credit rating.

Of course, banks won't necessarily believe "not present at this address" returned mail in this situation, anyway.