The Royal Mail; supposedly the postal system which the rest of the world is in envy of. For hundreds of years England and the rest of the United Kingdom have relied upon the Royal Mail to deliver important letters, if it was good enough for King Henry VIII then it’s good enough for me, or so I thought.
So what has changed?
I’m sure most of you will already know about the flagship Special Delivery service from Royal Mail which guarantees that the item you send will arrive the next day, it costs quite a few pounds but if you want something delivered quickly then it’s great. Of course things go wrong and sometimes the item doesn’t arrive on schedule, fair enough – shit happens, I understand that. This time however I found out about a dark side of the Royal Mail that I had never seen before and I want to let you know about my experiences.
Well recently I sent an item using Special Delivery and a few days later a disgruntled eBay asked if I had sent the item or not yet. So I tracked the item and sure enough the Royal Mail website confirmed it has been delivered and they even had a lovely digital signature from the recipient. But hold on, didn’t the recipient say that it hadn’t arrived? Well yes he did, and then he went on to say that he was at home all day and definitely didn’t sign for any item. Puzzled we agreed that he’d wait 24 hours to see what happened, perhaps a neighbour had signed for it but then not taken it around.
What happens next in this tale? Well the item arrives the very next morning and the concerned buyer asks the postman why the item had already been stated as delivered and signed for? This is what was sent to me by the buyer and I have no reason to doubt the claims made.
“Panic over it dropped through the letter box this morning,No signature!,I grabbed the postie and asked why it showed on tracking as being delivered and signed for yesterday,he said it’s all to do with meeting targets,as it was a bank holiday monday being delivery today would have failed the two business day target….Great stuff!”
So what does this actually mean?
For starters it means a Royal Mail employee illegally signed for the item’s delivery. Firstly the effect of this meant that they did not have to refund me money for the late delivery that would have been due. Secondly if the item had been subsequently lost in transit both the sender (myself) and the recipient would have had no recourse and the Royal Mail would have simply said, ‘the item has been delivered’ and not investigated a claim of lost mail. Thirdly if this is really about meeting targets then this shows that the Royal Mail will do anything not to lose their reputation, would they deliberately lose my mail if it meant their targets would look better? I’m starting to think that they might.
I have sent a complaint to the Royal Mail customer services department and will post an update if and when I hear back.
I am so disappointed for this to come to light and am now considering if I should use a different postal company altogether in future because I don’t think I can trust Royal Mail anymore. I’d be really interested if anyone else has had the same experiences of this right Royal Mail scam.
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