post office? - buckin'fastards!

sold a few cd's on the site recently.
sent them first class (1st) to save a few quid, you know keep the cost down so the punters don't shy away.
anyway, at least one of the parcels has gone walkabout en route.
this cost me 3 cd's, my postage costs, £15 refund and the loss of face.

i spoke to the girl in my local P.O. - nice lass, and she told me that unless it's special delivery (£3.5 min) you can not be fully suprised if your package does not arrive.

i hope the monopolies comissions decision to open the floor to indy carriers of the mail makes a difference, because otherwise whats the point?

here's to first class meaning something.

CNUTS - REALLY

 

There must be a problem at your local post office. When I ran an ebay business selling cheap playstation leads I got cheap (from the £1 shop) I sold 30 of them and every single one of them recieved them. This was sent first class also.

I only had one customer who claimed they never got the item but this was 6 weeks after I said I would have a word with the post office to find where it went, he never bother replied so he was just trying it on.

 

Muffinman, I can sympathise. When I ordered my Rega P25 Parcel Farce managed firstly to destroy it in transit. Then when returning it to the factory for rebuilding they managed to take 11 days for a next day delivery! It's certainly put me off using the Royal Mail for anything I consider of value or actually want to get there.

 

Totally agree! There's nothing like having the freedom to choose which carrier looses your parcel

I'm afraid they're all as bad as each other. I am just glad that my discs arrived from you safe and sound

Regards

Hex

 

it's certainly annoying when it happens to you but if you think about the fact that you can go into your local post office in twelve toes norfolk hand over your parcel and a few pounds and in a day or two it can be anywhere in the world it's not a bad service.
the fact that we expect this and consider it as a matter of course is asymptom of todays modern world and out ever increasing expectations of it.
cheers



julian

 

If you ask for a 'proof of postage' recipt when you post the item at a post office you are covered up to 28 quid if they loose it. It costs no more, but does involve filling out some tedious forms to get your money back.

Tony.

 

Yeah - and Aloud.com would do well to know this.

Thanks to both them being scummy cheapo b*stards, and Royal Mail screwing up, I'm now 1 Morrissey ticket down (£31) and, since I can't attend the gig now (too skint) I can't sell the seated ticket, unless I give the buyer an authorised letter stating that I've transferred it to them. They won't send out a replacement until 48 hours before the gig...

And I was going to sell the damn thing on Ebay with a BIN of face value - grrr....

Almost as gutted as when my Laserdisc of The Wall turned up with a huge crack in it - nice one ParcelFarce.... (Sorry, Mick Parry )

 

'proof of postage' is just that: proof that you've posted it, to get insurance (up to 100x the price of a first class stamp, ie £28) you have to send it 'recorded'.

but for anything important (or worth more than 30 quid) i always recommend Special Delivery. i've never had anything i've sent SD lost.

and for the bigger things (most recently when selling my MD deck and a PC) i recommend parcel2go.com, who use DHL/Securicor and are pretty cheap to boot

 

Not true. A proof of postage recipt does the same, its just they keep it a pretty closely gaurded secret! I have sucessfully claimed back on them in the past. All recorded delivery adds is a signature at the other end and the ability to insure for more than 28 quid.

Tony.

 

Gentlemen

As an ex employee of the Royal Mail, I read this thread with dismay.

A few genuine facts for your consideration.

If you have a delivery which has gone missing, report it. If there is a dishonest employee (which is very rare indeed) there is a proceedure which very quickly routes them out. I am not at liberty to explain how it works, but it does. Most complaints get results.

Secondly, Royal Mail loses less mail, percentage wise, than its competitors and much less than any foreign Post Office. This is bourne out by audited measurements by independent agencies.

Regards

Mick

 

Hi,

TonyL is right. You can claim up to £28 for standard First class, 2nd class, recorded delivery & standard Parcels. You need proof of posting. I have claimed for damaged goods too. Special delivery will get you bigger compensation.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=400029&mediaId=3500015

Do what Mick Parry has suggested & get it reported. I too have had things lost in the post which have turned up.

I had a letter stolen by a royal mail employee. He had stolen a lot of mail & opened letters to steal the contents. In my case, there was no money or cheques in the letter. The employee was caught & sent down and I got the letter back, over a year after it was sent.

SCIDB

 

thanks for your replies.
a couple of points i'd like to make:

firstly, a lead for a playstation feels like a piece of wire. a cd on the other hand (or three for that matter) feels like a cd/dvd/computer game and as such is very likely to have a resale value and be difficult to disprove ownership.
i heartily agree that the virtually all p.o. workers are as honest as the day is long but for the opportunist thief, some parcels are too tempting.

secondly, issue has been raised regarding the cost of the service and how much we expect for the price.
basically i expect to get what i pay for. if i dont, then some one should be accountable. i can afford to send things special delivery day in day out. often however, buyers want to save as much as possible. if the suggestion is that if i dont pay full secured delivery then i get what i deserve - what is the point of having any other services?

thanks for the info about the claim facility. not going to bother this time as it was only fifteen quid. as i have said before though i will only be using SD from here on in

 

My dad has had a couple of letters go missing of late, so I am sometimes wary about using RM but even for parcels its the most convenient for me, even if its not always the cheapest I choose to use them (the post office is all of 200 yards away).

In terms of other couriers, in my area I rate Amtrak (the depot is local and all the people there, on the phone or on the front desk, are very helpful and polite, far more so than any other courier I've used, though of course the service must vary nationally).

I truly despise parcelforce, who seem to enjoy trying their damnedest to wreck everything I ever get delivered by them. I have had a box containing £300+ worth of computer components ripped open and crushed in such a way that only luck prevented some of the smaller boxes falling out.

Then theres the time they left a parcel for 'safe keeping' on top of some other junk in the wheelie bin, not thinking that it could be collection day though fortunately my mum rescued it before it got trashed! Every other parcel I've had delivered with them (which numbers about 5) has been pretty mashed up, but nothing broken despite their greatest attempts. I hope they manage to deliver my TFT without suchdrama

Citylink I don't like much because their closest depot is in Telford, which apparently covers both Birmingham and Wolverhampton (hardly small places so having a depot so far away seems daft to me, but hey I'm sure it makes them more money ).

I don't appreciate being told 'oh no we can't redeliver tomorrow, we're all too busy, new year and all' only to find a load of their delivery blokes sitting around drinking coffee and swearing loudly at each whilst watching the telly, when I've just driven miles to pick up a parce either...

 

actually julian, your avatar is my postmasters passport photo.
btw i am not norfolkish myself

 

Apart from being pissed off with the time of deliveries, my post has been very good, all the parcels I have had have arrived near perfectly, as thoguht they had been in transit with care, and that was royal mail std parcels, all the bits I have sent too no probs.
Special del is superb, it gets pricy for heavier bits but for light valuables I really rate it.
I use amtrak, who have cocked up a few times, but my local depot is great, so its not them.
You can't really blame the company then, the local bods treat the items fine, its just jerks down the line.


UPS are shite, they damaged 2 items, never touch them again, amtrak call them whups. It was REALLY hard to get some compensation, too really hard, they really tried to make it tough. bitch on the fone tried to fob me off.

my amtrak bad xps

Some speakers got really knocked, and they refused to pay cause of packing, they won that!

They turned up 2 hrs early for a collection from someone else I had arranged to be dropped to me, and only took half the bits!!

And something else got damaged that I did get some cash for.

In short, always insure your item if its worth more than say £100, keep and use the original packing, I do, it enhances reselling, too, as well as protecting in transit, AND not letting the insurers get a way out for improper packing.
write your name on it, keep your records, and they have no escape from liability. Its really the insurers who try to wriggle out...bastards they are.

I have had quite a few bits from germany, most ok, and the states, fine, apart from they lost £200 worth of books dunno if it was the US PS. didn't get a sausage back.

The bastard mail are shutting a few offices in our area, they should be lynched in the centre of town whichever manager dreamed that up over his/her coffee meeting, talk talk, drink, shut save cash. Save cash and sack the kunt I say.

I don't have anything against 1 delivery, but now the times are all over the bloody place. I want my mail at 9-10am, not 11-12 or worse!!

 

I briefly saw a TV trailer last night regarding a program about the post office...'3rd class post' or something..?

the presenter said something like 'if you knew what I knew then you'd understand why I'm delivering this letter by hand...'

should be worth watching!!
but I haven't a cluie when it's on! *doh*

 

Maybe I'm just lucky but I've never had any real issue with either RM or any courier service in terms of successful delivery.

The only big gripe I had with RM when I lived in the UK was that if there was a parcel that required signing for and you weren't at home it was nigh on impossible to arrange to get the parcel.

Times you could go and pick the parcel up from your "local" delivery office (which was usually in a backstreet of some ghetto you never knew existed 3 miles from your house) were usually between 9am and 5pm....

"Well guess what Mr. Postman, why do you think I wasn't there to sign for the parcel in the first place? Maybe it was because I have a 9-5 job some distance away from home so how the f*ck do you think I'm going to make it to the delivery office between 9 and 5?? :inferno: ".

Sometimes they did open for a 10 minute window on a Saturday morning when you then had to compete with the 1000 other people in the same situation as you who also have 9-5 jobs and can't sign for or pick up parcels during the week. Inevitably someone will have forgotten to bring along their passport, driving license, birth certificate, DNA profile (it's best to bring them all) so the monkey behind the counter will refuse to hand over the parcel and, being as people are already not thrilled about being there a huge row erupts. When you then eventually get to the counter it will suddenly be "closed for coffee break" :bub:

Michael.

 

yeah, the program is called Distaptches, it's on 29th April at 9pm and it states -
"Third Class Post.
Flagship current affairs programme covering groundbreaking reports that often set the news agenda. Reporter Simon Barnes goes undercover inside the Royal Mail to reveal a damning catalogue of skiving workers, ineffective managers and gangs of criminals stealing millions of pounds from the post.
(Subtitles)"

 

I DONT BELIEVE IT - TEA LEAFS? - IN THE ROYAL MAIL? - SHAME ON YOU SIR!

 

Yep - my old housemate's mate is one of said skiving workers; OK so he does his work, but manages to fudge the paperwork to get almost double pay and then does little to justify it.

Mind you, it's the managers who are paid the most and do the smallest - managers suck - whether in the post office or anywhere else...