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My Royal Mail Rant

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spiritadventures

Free Member
Mar 18, 2008
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I am sure there are many of you like me who run mail order companies feel like it is a CONSTANT BATTLE with Royal Mail to find out what has happened to all those lost packages. I do remember a time when getting compensation for items was quite easy – you claimed, you proved the cost of the lost item and 4 weeks a nice cheque would fall through the letter box.
Compensation is now an entirely different matter!

Now before I start my rant, I want to say I love posties – I have a fab postman and I know many of my customers think their local postmen are great. I DO have a problem with Royal Mail Management though!

Royal Mail state that they will pay compensation for a lost item at “COST PRICE” what does this mean?

Well they have changed what this definition means over time. A year ago, it meant they would pay the full price of what the item was worth. (This meant that if you had to fully refund a customer because Royal Mail had lost an order, you were confident that Royal Mail would fully compensate you.)
Now, WITHOUT EXPRESSEDLY SAYING SO Royal Mail have changed their interpretation of “COST PRICE.” It now means Royal Mail will only compensate you for the suppliers/manufacturers price of the lost good(s). (You will affectively loose out on a sale if you have to refund a customer because of Royal Mail loosing their goods.)

What annoys me about this is Royal Mail did not say anything about this change! I have been posting items in hopes that if the parcel goes missing, I shall be fully compensated for it! It also means that Royal Mail are misrepresenting their different postage methods and compensation levels. For example, you may think to yourself “I shall send this parcel by Special Delivery as it is worth £50 and normal post will only compensate me up to £33. Well, in practice, if you only paid £25 for that item in the first place, you may as well send it by normal mail (albeit by Recorded, just to ensure a signature at arrival.) Because £25 will be all you are compensated.

With a lot of “heated” letters between Royal Mail and myself. I have had to accept defeat over this subject area. However, my latest communication with Royal Mail has got me all bothered again!

3 MONTHS since I placed a claim with them, I received a letter from them stating that they would not compensate me on a certain lost package because they had not heard back from the customer in question to verify she had not received the parcel. I phoned her today and she said she had sent Royal Mail’s form back to them pretty much straight away! Errrrrr! I now have to write to Royal Mail yet again (more time and money.) To let them know this. They have given me 5 working days to this (funny they could not extend me the same courtesy!)

The thing is, this recent parcel was not worth a lot of money. However, it is the principle that Royal Mail is such a large organisation and seeking compensation when things go wrong should not be so difficult as this. You know, I may have even taken them to the small claims court if I felt this would do some good, but I heard they are above the law on matters like this. (That gives you absolutely no confidence in an organisation that is practically unaccountable to the Law.)

I try to send as many parcels as I can through couriers. However, at the end of the day, they cannot compete with Royal Mail Prices. With companies providing Royal Mail with most of their business these days – it would be nice if they could give us something in return – like good customer service – perhaps not loosing the goods in the first place?

So what’s the solution?

I would love to hear from others about their experiences (good or bad with Royal Mail.)​
 
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Maybe I've been lucky, so far a 100% sucess rate via RM since last Nov albeit just 6-10 parcels a day average.
 
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Personally, I see no problem in how Royal Mail operate. Loss in transit is just one of the risks of mail order trading.
 
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I must admit they are a little behind now days in the technology front. I never bother to claim for missing goods as it takes them months to sort it out!
 
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I think the answer is not to use royal mail

I have been told by a postie who used to work for another biz I own, that often when sorting letters & parcels they throw them across the room towards the baskets rather than walk & put them in.
This results in a few hitting the floor and not being delivered, or being broken etc
he also told me the level of thieving in our local depot is quite high but they are so desperate to keep staff they turn a blind eye

the other problem we have is customers returning stuff to us
if our regular postie is off on Saturday, parcels are left inside the front door of the building for any visitor to take as we are closed at weekends.

Also the post offices are upselling special delivery to customers rather than recorded delivery so they get ripped off for higher postage costs

G
 
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yes i know about that it was same when i had a delivery franchise they should have made a BBC documentary on it!! How your parcels are treated!!
 
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I've had serious problems with my bank (see private forums about it all), to cut a long story short, they've got a complete wrong address for me.

Royal Mail actually managed to track me by postcode and name only - and luckily, my cheque book, debit card, pin number, etc were all delivered to me... ONLY because my Postie is so good!!!
 
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We've had some horrendous experiences with Royal Mail in the past :mad:

Several Christmas's ago we had half a dozen sack fulls of packed orders collected from our office by the Royal Mail. We found out a week or so later through worried customers that the contents of an entire sack had gone 'missing'. It cost us an awful lot of money and some serious reputation repairing for the effected customers.

Another memorable occasion was when a customer tried to return a very expensive designer handbag to us by Special Delivery. We told her it had not turned up which it hadn't, but the Royal Mail were telling her it had been delivered to us and signed for.

Only when we demanded to see the signature sheet and threatened to call in the Police was the package mysteriously left on our office doorstep overnight, and the signed-for sheet had been blotted out to obscure the signature and postman responsible. After that we made a decision to stop branding our envelopes with our fashion business logo and the incidents of missing post dropped considerably.

I have to say, nearly all of the major problems we experienced with the postal service where through the Wolverhampton sorting offices. When we moved to a different part of the Country we had virtually no problems at all, the service there was excellent.

We resorted to engaging with Post Watch over other issues and over a period of about 5 years we got nearly 1k back from the Royal Mail in compensation.


One tip we came to swear by and it probably saved us thousands; NEVER NEVER NEVER have your mail collected just before the weekend. The highest incidents of missing mail (i.e. stolen) happen when the temporary weekend workers are being used. :rolleyes:
 
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We never use Royal Mail, even for personal mail I use our courier. At my home address we always receive somebody else's mail at least 2 days a week.
 
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On the whole, my experience of RM is not too bad. (Strikes aside.)

They are currently delivering at a rate of more than 99.5% which bearing in mind the volume is pretty good. Okay, the odd parcel does go astray but I can live with that. I am more than happy to take the lost value of the parcel on the chin...far better than getting stressed out about it.

For the type of deliveries which I need, RM offer by far the most cost efffective solution.

Good tip on the don't get your mail collected before the weekend though:eek:

Mister B
 
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Thank you for all your comments - I am a bit bewildered with those of you that would not want to claim for lost / damaged items- at the very least you should complain - Royal Mail need to know where things are going wrong and someone in that organisation has either walked of or damaged goods YOU have paid for.

Your good experiences have restored some of my faith in them, and at least I am not the only one who has issues with them!

I am finding I am sending more and more via courier - perhaps one day it'll be the last straw and I will totally convert to courier.
 
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gibby said:
Also the post offices are upselling special delivery to customers rather than recorded delivery so they get ripped off for higher postage costs

G
Click to expand...

Recorded Delivery, now know as "signed for" is totally different to special delivery. They are not "substitute" services.

"Signed For" is not a guaranteed delivery service, i.e. your item is NOT guaranteed to get delivered. It is insured only for the basic 10 x value of the a first class stamp. It goes in the sacks with all the normal mail. It is not tracked. The only thing it gives you is a signature as a POD. And you won't even get this if you send it to a PO box.

"Special Delivery" is the ONLY mail service the Post Office offer where your mail is guaranteed to get delivered. It gets delivered hand-hand through the sorting process, i.e. Post Office hands it to postie, who hands it through sorting office etc. It is tracked all of the way. And your address etc is checked on acceptance. Basic insurance is for £500, but this can be increased to up to £2500,

If all you need to know is that it got there, then "Signed for" is fine. If it contains valuable or important items, which you cannot afford to loose, then "Special Delivery" is the service to use.

Ask yourself - can I afford for it NOT to be delivered? If the answer is no, then it's got to be Special Delivery. And if you are too tight to pay an extra £4 for that, then you need to view the costs of dealing with undelivered mail on as part of your "postage costs" expenses.

Kind regards
Sandra
 
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I found that since I've had my mail collected combined with Smartstamp (instead of the post office), I have less mail going missing. Less than 1 parcel a month at the moment goes missing. I send about between 120 to 200 a week.

I don't claim because my time is money. Last time I made a claim, well over a year ago, it went back and forth for ages. Also, a customer can buy 10 items but they will be from 5 different suppliers so tracking down the invoices to show the true cost is just too much wasted time which I could spend elsewhere. I'd rather bear the loss (the value is never too high in any case, aways seems to be the small parcels going missing).

I would never put my business name on the envelope for fear of attracting more thefts. I think it depends which business you're in. I only put the number and postcode for returns on the envelope.
 
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We send out thousands of parcels and use royal mail. We loose some and it is very unpleasant having to work with the customer to resolve these issues. But for the vast majority it is in incredibly cheap way to get their parcels in a very timely manner which does not require a troublesome signature.

We do not claim because, presumably deliberately, Royal Mail have made it very hard to do and not worth the bother becasue the comp is insulting and doesn't reflect the cost of the lost customer, packaging and sale price which you often have to refund in full.

They have made it so that it simply makes better financial sense to resend or refund than trying to bother making a claim. I find this outrageous as it means they will not be able to identify problem depots and do something about it.

There should be an online form into which we can enter details of all lost parcels that week (usually only a few to be honest but enough) and submit over the web. So far this doesn't seem to be their priority.
 
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SillyJokes said:
We send out thousands of parcels and use royal mail. We loose some and it is very unpleasant having to work with the customer to resolve these issues. But for the vast majority it is in incredibly cheap way to get their parcels in a very timely manner which does not require a troublesome signature.

We do not claim because, presumably deliberately, Royal Mail have made it very hard to do and not worth the bother becasue the comp is insulting and doesn't reflect the cost of the lost customer, packaging and sale price which you often have to refund in full.

They have made it so that it simply makes better financial sense to resend or refund than trying to bother making a claim. I find this outrageous as it means they will not be able to identify problem depots and do something about it.

There should be an online form into which we can enter details of all lost parcels that week (usually only a few to be honest but enough) and submit over the web. So far this doesn't seem to be their priority.
Click to expand...


Thank you! Some who agrees with me :)
 
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Well we send all items by Royal Mail, like everybody we have the odd package go missing. It causes a lot of aggro with the customer but we overcome this and either resend or refund. Looking at some of my stats out of about a 1000 packages only 5 have gone missing. (Thats just a summary from the start of 08)

We do seek compensation for every missing order as feel its our right to complain and get some money back (even if its not the full cost price) I find it easy to just send them a complete printout of what I know they need (Claims form, customer invoice, purchase invoice, customer email, refund printout, posting receipt - thats probably more than they need but saves it going back and forth) and then a few weeks later I will get credit on my account.

I would love for every item to get there but being realistic it wont happen. Also you cannot beat the cost and time to send each item (we now send everything by packetpost in one sack, such a time saver!)
 
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Well this thread made me think that if I don't claim, they don't know it's missing, so I started putting claims in again with no hope of getting any compensation. I didn't produce the supliers' invoices as there were about 5 suppliers for that one single invoice but wrote down the cost price next to each line of the sales invoice.
They did ask me for more info (gave them the smartstamp ref) and this morning I got a cheque for this claim! Wow! :eek::D

I have another one which I sent this week so we'll see what happens. It's just so time consuming filling in these papers though!

Only about one lost parcel a month, so not bad for me in any case .
 
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I want to know why my postman frequently signs our recorded delivery items himself before putting through our door??? He makes no attempt to knock or ring the bell - i've been sat in my office before now and seen him do it! I have complained to Royal Mail twice about it, not because it's particuarly private, but whoever sent the item has paid for it to be signed for by ME on delivery, not for a squiggle of an unknown signature!
Royal Mail say it doesn't happen!! The best thing though, is that I sent a letter by Recorded Delivery to the Post Office car insurance - according to the Royal Mail website, it was signed for - but they can't find it!!

Jo
 
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As I posted recently on another thread, I've had several things go missing lately, both items I've posted and items I've had posted to me. Mainly it's been envelopes with bank correspondence though, which seems a little suspicious.

The situation seems to have got worse since the PO strike last year.
 
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You need to watch out for the practice of not delivering if the postage isn't right. Once upon a time the postman would ring and ask you to pay the additional postage, but now they just put a card through and tell you to go to the sorting office. I went recently for an item that was just 6p under, and had to pay £1 for the privilege. I also had a client contract returned to me after three months because I was 6p under and so it hadn't been delivered (fortunately by then he'd paid up anyway). OK, I know it's the sender's responsibility to check the correct postage, and all the 6ps will add up, but at least a prompt return would have been helpful...
 
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just.b said:
Well this thread made me think that if I don't claim, they don't know it's missing, so I started putting claims in again with no hope of getting any compensation. I didn't produce the supliers' invoices as there were about 5 suppliers for that one single invoice but wrote down the cost price next to each line of the sales invoice.
They did ask me for more info (gave them the smartstamp ref) and this morning I got a cheque for this claim! Wow! :eek::D

I have another one which I sent this week so we'll see what happens. It's just so time consuming filling in these papers though!

Only about one lost parcel a month, so not bad for me in any case .
Click to expand...



Good news for me too - I got the compensation for the lost package I originally was complaining about the beginning of this rant. Yay!
 
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TykeDave said:
As I posted recently on another thread, I've had several things go missing lately, both items I've posted and items I've had posted to me. Mainly it's been envelopes with bank correspondence though, which seems a little suspicious.

The situation seems to have got worse since the PO strike last year.
Click to expand...


My Friend would get Recorded letters through the door with a note saying "signed for by your local postie" - She didnt know whether to laugh or complain.
 
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I no longer use Royal Mail for my business apart from for their International Signed For service for exactly this reason, loss of items when running a jewellery business is just a pain in the neck, especially when items are handmade to order in the first place, for set deadlines, I find it utterly ridiculous that I cannot insure the package for the value I require to refund a customer and expect to get that honoured, if you declare its worth a set value and you pay the cost of that then you should be able to claim. I've had to get customers to claim in order to get the full value in the past as they can get the value of the invoice in full but I can't...it's wrong!! and its got to be the most deceptive service known to man as it doesn't even bother to tell you on the back of the Special Delivery or Recorded Delivery form that they cannot be bothered to actually cover the value of the loss as a result of their incompetence and bad practices.

I now use Secure DX, I have had no losses whatsoever! And its cheaper than Special Delivery, just £3.50+VAT per delivery, though it does only goes up to 1kg, which is perfect for me as I never send anything that heavy via the jewellery business but its not ideal for everyone.
 
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Hi,

I'm glad we're still providing you with a good service Boho.
If anyone thinks they could benefit from SecureDX or any other mail/courier services then you can contact me on:

[email protected]
07771674031

Steve



boho said:
I no longer use Royal Mail for my business apart from for their International Signed For service for exactly this reason, loss of items when running a jewellery business is just a pain in the neck, especially when items are handmade to order in the first place, for set deadlines, I find it utterly ridiculous that I cannot insure the package for the value I require to refund a customer and expect to get that honoured, if you declare its worth a set value and you pay the cost of that then you should be able to claim. I've had to get customers to claim in order to get the full value in the past as they can get the value of the invoice in full but I can't...it's wrong!! and its got to be the most deceptive service known to man as it doesn't even bother to tell you on the back of the Special Delivery or Recorded Delivery form that they cannot be bothered to actually cover the value of the loss as a result of their incompetence and bad practices.

I now use Secure DX, I have had no losses whatsoever! And its cheaper than Special Delivery, just £3.50+VAT per delivery, though it does only goes up to 1kg, which is perfect for me as I never send anything that heavy via the jewellery business but its not ideal for everyone.
Click to expand...
 
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beverleymoore said:
You need to watch out for the practice of not delivering if the postage isn't right. Once upon a time the postman would ring and ask you to pay the additional postage, but now they just put a card through and tell you to go to the sorting office. I went recently for an item that was just 6p under, and had to pay £1 for the privilege. I also had a client contract returned to me after three months because I was 6p under and so it hadn't been delivered (fortunately by then he'd paid up anyway). OK, I know it's the sender's responsibility to check the correct postage, and all the 6ps will add up, but at least a prompt return would have been helpful...
Click to expand...

My daughter's Mothers Day card didn't arrive even though I stuck £1.06 in stamps on the card they left and returned it to them.

I think they just binned them all after a week. I went to the sorting office and they still couldn't find it.
 
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