Once you’ve entered the home moving process you need to start thinking about who you need to inform. Surprisingly enough there are a lot of organizations and people who need to know about your change of address. Some are official and you are legally bound to notify them and some are simply personal. Others need to be told that you are moving so that that they can disconnect services or issue final bills before you leave your current home.
Finally, you need to contact service suppliers for your new home to let them know you need services connected or to open new accounts etc. It’s also important to talk to your bank(s) in particular to cancel any automatic payments to your current service providers and to set up new ones if appropriate. Most banks will want you to do this around a month in advance.
This isn’t something you should leave to the last minute. It’s far better to start planning the process early and get letters/notifications out to people as soon as possible. You really should be preparing for this as soon as you know you are moving. Don’t, however, send out notices before you have a firm moving date as this may just cause confusion later. You can have change of address cards printed up for friends and family if you like but it’s better to produce a standard letter for official notifications so that you can include account numbers and so on. You can set up a simple template on a PC and work from there.
It’s always worthwhile contacting the post office and arranging to have your mail forwarded to your new address for a specific period of time. You’ll probably have to pay for this service but it will help you ensure that nobody slips through the cracks.
The easiest way to assess who you need to tell is to draw up a list of organizations to whom you regularly pay bills or with whom you regularly do business. Your bank statements can help you with this. Your address book will help you with friends and family. The checklist below may also be of use – you may not need to use all of these recommendations but many will apply:
- Friends and family
- Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions
- Insurance companies
- Local government authorities as appropriate
- Tax authorities
- Hire purchase companies
- Utility companies (i.e. gas, electric, water as appropriate – in these cases you may need to talk to them direct to arrange disconnection/connection of services, account opening/closure etc)
- Phone companies – both fixed and mobile
- Satellite/cable TV providers
- Internet service providers
- TV licensing (in the UK)
- Doctor, optician and dentist
- Veterinarian
- Any home service provider (i.e. cleaner, pool maintenance, window cleaner etc)
- Schools
- Employers
- Regional driving license offices
- Magazine or newspaper subscriptions
- Clubs, professional associations, motoring organizations etc
- Rental companies
- Mail order companies