Royal Mail

Hi,

We haven't seen any real difference since the strike, apart from there are always more people in a hurry to chase up orders around Christmas. We ask them to check their local Post Office as there seem to be more packets getting returned to the PO without a card being left and that solves most of our missing stuff. It's rare, even at this time of year, that we have to send out many replacements for completely lost parcels.

We gave up bothering to claim for lost parcels due to the time and effort it takes, it costs more in time than we get back, and you can't even claim for the postage costs. Don't get me started on claiming for stuff which gets broken in the post. The claims process is the one aspect of the Royal Mail / Post Office which really annoys me. The local PO staff are great and most of our deliveries get there in an acceptable time, although not as quickly as we'd like sometimes.

You're allowed to rant; I remember you saying in a previous post that you fitted the grumpy profile

Edited by Dave P - 14 January 2010 at 7:01am

raineshoe,

You're not the only one receiving complaints from customers regarding non-delivery, I've had an alarming number of calls/emails from customers that have been waiting for goods to arrive that we posted over a week ago, despite adding the following message to our basket page:

'Delivery delays expected due to severe weather
Royal Mail and our couriers are currently struggling to make deliveries due to the adverse travel conditions so please allow extra time for your goods to arrive'

Nick G.

Hi Everyone,

Have not heard anything about RM delivering excessively late, have actually had more issues with our express overnight courier service - in one case the package was despatched on the 21st December and not received until the 12th January.

I think the RM does a remarkable job for the amount of money they charge, 9 times out of 10 there are no issues and it seems only in exceptional circumstances there is a problem.

Although I may regret saying that, I somehow feel I'm tempting fate!

Trinity wrote: Like Dave we don't usually claim for lost packages as it is too time consuming to do so and certainly not cost effective. I am however thinking of starting to put in claims though, in the probably misguided hope that Royal Mail or Parcelforce might decide to do something about it if they know just how many packages actually are going missing and have to pay out for them. Mind you I guess that could backfire in costs going up more to compensate. Rosemarie

I put every claim in in the hope that they might notice there is a problem although it just seems to go over their heads with a "don't care attitude". If I could find another cost effective service I would. Having said that as RM are so cheap maybe that's why the service is so damn shoddy. I am sure they are out to put me out of business. It just seems worse than normal since the strike. The complaints from overseas customers has risen ten fold. Like you guys say though the paperwork amounts to more time and effort than the return.

Also like someone else said where do these parcels go? I have return addresses on everything and nothing ever comes back here apart from one parcel I posted on the Friday at the PO and they promptly delivered it back to me on the Saturday. Asked them if they could understand the words "to" and "from" on the parcel which was quite clearly written. Seemed not.

I want to keep my costs to a minimum, but clearly I'm paying for what I get.

Those who had postmen that walked in the snow to reach them you should pat them on the back as must be exceptional as we didn't get any post for nearly a week here and the local post office which was in walking distance closed totally so couldn't even post anything out either.

Incidentally, this problem for me has arisen since the strike and not just since the bad weather.

They wouldn't even need to open mine to see who to return them to and like you say, very dubious.

On another note though in the 1960's I used to write to Father Christmas every year as a child and post it through Royal Mail and it arrived every time and got a reply. I did the same with my eldest child in the 1990's and had a reasonable service every year but one for which the reply was sent but a bit late. I've now done the same with my youngest child through 2005-2009 (last year I think we could manage it!!) and this time no reply, nothing. They couldn't even manage to get Santa's post correct. One very disappointed child. They may wish to try and put me out of business, but to not deliver Santa's post is just the pits. One disappointed child.

I know they don't have to do this service, but its one they've done successfully for years and years and delighted many children. I suspect we won't be the only ones they fouled up on either. It seems that even this isn't safe.