Royal Mail Claims

[I Hear You]

I recently sent off eight lost item claim forms to Royal Mail and included all the required supporting documents and email correspondence from our customers telling us the items didn't arrive.


Royal Mail have written back saying that after further investigation in which they've written to the customer and not heard back from them, they've assumed the items were actually delivered and everything was ok, therefore all claims have been rejected.


Question is, what else can I do?

I've included all the emails from our customers telling me their items haven't arrived, so if they reject the claims then surely they must accept that the customer is lying and fraudulently trying to claim that the items haven’t arrived :|

 

[KateCB]

That is very strange - I had one of these recently - recorded delivery and RM wrote to the customer - I called after 10 days to find out what was happening, and they told me that the customer had not replied, but they would send another letter.....if the customer still did not reply, they would settle my claim - they did. 5 days later I got a cheque.

I would ring them - presuming that they were sent recorded delivery of course - if not, then its the customers word against Royal Mail, and if Royal Mail say there were delivered then I would google 'Royal Mail ombudsman' - one dishonest customer could be accepted as human nature, but eight is pushing it a little too far!

The letters to the customers state, I believe, that they must sign to say that their goods did not arrive, and that they can be prosecuted for fraudulent claims - if you have a good relationship with these people, email them a scanned copy of Royal Mails letter, and ask THEM to call to try and sort it out, alternatively, write a document for the customer to sign and return to you stating that they have not received the good,. and make sure there is a declaration to the effect that 'the information given is accurate, and I understand that to give false information/attempt to defraud is punishable by law' - they must sign it.....it will have one of two effects - they will either 'find' the missing goods, or they will be on your side again RM - then go back to RM and state your case, armed with copy letters from your customers!

Good luck!

 

[Truemanbrown]

Around 4 years ago, I sent out the client's payroll by first class post.

None of my clients received their payslips so I had to re-do the whole payroll run again. I filed a missing letter form with the post office.

A couple of weeks later, a woman phoned. She had found a large pile of post, including my client's payrolls, which had been opened and dumped in a ditch.

Along with the woman, I took the opened letters to the nearest sorting office and made a compliant. They told me that they knew who the postman who had picked up the mail from the letterbox was and that he would be dealt with internally.

They refused to pay me compensation because I had sent the payroll out by special delivery. They then fobbed me off by giving me two packs of first class stamps.

I then took my complaint to the regulator and they did nothing about it.

The moral of the story - do not be surprised if RM do not do a thing about your missing post!!!

 

[KateCB]

Sadly very true - a law unto themselves most of the time.....about time someone did something, they have fobbed us off for long enough!

 

[arcon5]

You can telephone them and tell them the parcel never arrived. They will submit to claim to be paid out.

Its obvious standard practice to by defaul close compensation claims if the recipient doesn't reply as it is a 30 second phone call.

 

[deniser]

You can telephone them and tell them the parcel never arrived. They will submit to claim to be paid out.

Its obvious standard practice to by defaul close compensation claims if the recipient doesn't reply as it is a 30 second phone call.

Yes, they always send this letter out first in an attempt to fob you off.

To counteract this I sometimes ask my customers to sign the claim form and also print off the screen with the tracking number showing it to be still in the system and enclose that.

In your case just write back to RM saying the customer, having already been refunded by you, has no incentive to reply to their letters and refer them back to your emails and/or any tracking number which would allow them to check their own systems for delivery confirmation.

 

[I Hear You]

Unfortunately all the claims are for standard post, that’s why we included any correspondence we have with the customer, as I thought that would be proof that the item hasn’t been delivered. How wrong can you be…


I’ve tried calling our so called Business Account Manager (or so he calls himself) but he’s as much use as a chocolate fireguard. If he’s not selling something he’s not interested



I used to have a lost item claim form that I sent to customers but it became such a pain the backside I dropped it! And it’s always risky if the sale is through eBay or Amazon to ask the customer to go out of their way and do anything to help you because of the risk of negative feedback.


The inconsistency of the whole process is really frustrating. The exact same claims on another day would probably have gone through. They once wrote back to me and suggested I get proof of posting for all my packages as this would help with any future claims. Hmmmm…I doubt the postman is going to wait at our reception while we check off 200+ packages together…

 

[Dollybean]

Is there anything to tie the 8 missing parcels together - delivery to the same part of the country (through the same hub/sorting office), or just totally random? I think you have a better chance if they were sent on a signed for service, although I stand to be corrected if that's not the case these days.

We gave up making Royal Mail claims years ago - the number of claims we made was very low anyway (average of 2 or 3 missing per 5000 parcels) and we were always promptly paid without question. About 8 years ago this all changed and the default position now seems to be to challenge every claim and make the process as frustrating as possible. If I made a claim now and actually got a cheque, I think I'd frame it!

Despite being on a RM PPI account, they have never sent us correct claim forms and always demanded proof of postage (impossible on PPI for individual parcels) and copies of all supplier invoices, which became a forensic exercise on some missing parcels. We would get fobbed off with standard letters and for the time involved it just wasn't worth it.

We're finding the average loss rate is still about the same, so we just accept it as a cost of doing business. We make sure our customer is happy and leave it at that. Must say though, in our experience the problems we have with couriers is much higher as a percentage so although RM are much maligned, on the whole they do a pretty good job for us (just watch it all go pear shaped now ).

 

[Dollybean]

Apologies OP, didn't see your last post where you said:

Unfortunately all the claims are for standard post, that's why we included any correspondence we have with the customer, as I thought that would be proof that the item hasn't been delivered. How wrong can you be…

Sounds like you're being given the standard responses that we used to get, and totally agree with you about the usefulness of RM account managers. Our first one passed away, then we didn't have one for years and the latest one is, as you say, purely a salesman and is only interested in trying to flog us services we can't or don't want to use.

 

[e-parcels]

What Royal Mail send through to your customers for undelivered UK items is a P91 form. They expect this to be filled in and returned to them confirming the fact that the customer had non-delivery of an item they had ordered from you.

Of course, the danger is that if a customer has already been sent a replacement item or offered a refund (what responsible online retailer wouldn't do this in order to keep a happy customer and to ensure repeat business/positive feedback?) for the non-delivered item, then the chance of them being bothered to respond to this P91 form is fairly low. I'd say that 10% sounds about right.

So in the above instance, the customer has received their replacement item and most likely will discard the P91 letter that has been received as they see it as an inconvenience - not realising of course that their failure to respond to the P91 will result in you being out of pocket. Ironic really, considering you've gone the extra mile to give them a good service by refunding or replacing the item. In one sense, it would be better for an online reseller to "unleash" their unhappy customer onto Royal Mail so that they confirm the non-receipt of the item, which in turn increases your chance of receiving a refund for that item. But most online retailers care about the service they offer and so refund their customer in good faith and then hope they get compensation from Royal Mail.

Cynics may believe that Royal Mail do this for the very reason of relying on not getting a response to their P91 form and therefore not having to pay the claim. On the flip side, Royal Mail could state this approach can dramatically reduce the amount of fraudulent claims received by customers and/or online retailers.

The ultimate conclusion is that this usually results in an unsatisfactory result for the online retailer, who will find themselves out of pocket for a situation that is completely out of their control. This is what makes it all the more galling: why should they pay money for a third party’s inability to provide their core service?

Not only do Royal Mail treat public tariff and contract customers in this way with regards to claims, they also do this for their large retail and wholesale customers. We are a Royal Mail wholesale customer and we have come across exactly the same issue. Our customers are all online retailers who sell heavily on venues such as Amazon and eBay. As a result, their feedback is of paramount importance to them and they are quick to send a replacement or refund in the event of non-delivery so that their feedback ratings do not suffer. As part of our service, we dealt with all aspects of the compensation procedure on behalf of our customers and passed all compensation payments from Royal Mail back to them, obviously on production of proof of purchase of the stock by the retailer (we were able to supply proof of postage through our own systems).

Due to the fact that we were finding that Royal Mail were only paying compensation for 10% of non-delivered UK items, we have had to take the drastic action of paying a percentage of claims from our customers out of our own profits (percentage depends on the amount of business that the customer does with us and has an upper limit per month due to tight margins in the postal arena), but we found that this was necessary in order to offer customers a service that we felt was fair to them.

So I would say that everyone faces this issue with regards to claiming from Royal Mail – it just seems to be one of those things, like death and taxes

Interestingly enough, Royal Mail pay claims for International items on a seemingly 100% no quibble basis – almost completely the opposite to UK items.

Derek Seymour
e-parcels.com

 

[owas]

For this we have a template letter that we send the customer asking them to sign and retune to state they have not received the parcel. We then send this with the documentation to royal mail, as well as leaving it the standard waiting time, I dont think we have had any problems doing this.

 

[papverpoppies]

I received a letter from RM last week, that should not have come to me, right address - wrong name.

The letter was to apologise to this person, for their letter going astray.
They could not agree that compensation should be rewarded, as it was only a letter - but as a token of 'goodwill' they included a book of 6 (I think it was) first class stamps.

If they cannot get it right, what chance anyone else.
I popped the letter with the stamps back in the post.

Pops ~xx~

 

[Alicatt]

Is there anything to tie the 8 missing parcels together - delivery to the same part of the country (through the same hub/sorting office), or just totally random? I think you have a better chance if they were sent on a signed for service, although I stand to be corrected if that's not the case these days.

We gave up making Royal Mail claims years ago - the number of claims we made was very low anyway (average of 2 or 3 missing per 5000 parcels) and we were always promptly paid without question. About 8 years ago this all changed and the default position now seems to be to challenge every claim and make the process as frustrating as possible. If I made a claim now and actually got a cheque, I think I'd frame it!

Despite being on a RM PPI account, they have never sent us correct claim forms and always demanded proof of postage (impossible on PPI for individual parcels) and copies of all supplier invoices, which became a forensic exercise on some missing parcels. We would get fobbed off with standard letters and for the time involved it just wasn't worth it.

We're finding the average loss rate is still about the same, so we just accept it as a cost of doing business. We make sure our customer is happy and leave it at that. Must say though, in our experience the problems we have with couriers is much higher as a percentage so although RM are much maligned, on the whole they do a pretty good job for us (just watch it all go pear shaped now ).

That pretty much sums up my experience. It's a waste of time - just allow for a certain loss rate (ours was tiny) and accept it will happen.

And send higher value orders by courier or Special Delivery.