There’s only so long you can take responsibility for other people’s mistakes before it starts to feel like you’re being taken advantage of.

So, what would you do if months after moving into your new home, the previous owners kept sending packages to your address?

Would you keep accepting them out of kindness? Or would you finally refuse and let the postman return them to the sender?

In the following story, one homeowner finds herself dealing with this exact issue and decides five months is plenty of time.

Here’s the full scoop.

AITA for refusing a parcel

I bought a house at the start of the year and have been living here for 5 months. When I first moved in, the letterbox was full of mail for the Previous Owners (POs).

I got their details, held onto their mail, and organised for them to come and collect it all.

A week or so later, PO accidentally ordered stock for her business to my address instead of her new one. The postman asked if he should return it to the sender, but I said I’d accept the parcel as I was in contact with the PO.

Again, I had also collected a few letters they’d yet to update mailing details for and organised for them to come collect them.

They apologised, thanked me, and said they’d hoped to have changed everything now.

The parcels and mail kept coming.

Another week or so passed, and another parcel arrived. By now, I’d been living here for about two months.

Again, I accepted the parcel.

The PO thanked me and asked if I could hold the parcel until the weekend. Previously, they came on their way home from work, which was usually 7 pm-ish. This was problematic for me as I have two small kids, and that’s either bath or bedtime for them.

The weekend came and went, and they forgot to come collect it.

They asked if we could drop it off for them (they had just moved down the road), but it was never convenient for us.

So again I asked them to come and collect the parcel.

Finally, she was over it and refused to accept delivery.

By then, some more letters had built up, including ones with letterheads I recognised from previous collections (by previous collections, I mean I had seen those envelopes before, indicating POs hadn’t updated those mailing lists, not collections as in debt collectors) and from their bank.

They apologised again.

A letter from their bank recently came to my mailbox. I messaged PO, who told me to throw it out.

I haven’t received any other letters from them since.

Today, another parcel arrived for PO. The same postman brought it to my door and asked if he should return it to the sender.

I said yes and refused to accept it.

Now I feel a bit bad. Should I have kept accepting the parcels? Or was I right in saying five months is long enough?

AITA?

Yikes! Talk about irresponsible!

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit think about her decision to refuse delivery.

Here’s someone who thinks she’s making too much out of it.

This person wouldn’t have helped after one month.

According to this reader, they refused to help at all.

For this reader, the original owners have a lot of nerve.

She did more than enough.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.