Issues with Royal Mail/Rant

With sending me my enveloped letters, RM has been great. However, I've had more negative experiences with packages. I get quite annoyed when I pay for my item to be shipped to me and only to have a "Sorry-you weren't in" paper at my door. Do they even knock? I promise that I was home all the times I received those papers...

Anyway, my latest issue with them is due to recent package from London to Kent. A friend of mine in the US has a penpal/forum buddie in the Kent. When I visited the US, she gave me some American candies, Texas souvenirs, and a postcard to mail to him when I arrived in London.

I mailed everything in a nice little box--not overflowing or anything like that. I actually went inside the post office to send it out. I was the one who sealed the package in front of the worker.

I found out rather recently that the UK friend did get the parcel, however ALL of the candies were gone except for a single package of M&Ms. He said it appeared as if the package had been torn open. 

How disgusting is that?! 

Apparently, he has had various troubles with the office in his area--packages never received in the UK or sent to the US. He once suggested that they were teasing him for his Indian sounding surname. I have no idea why they give him troubles, but why would someone just steal from someone's parcel like that? Even if they needed to open it--for whatever reason--wouldn't they leave a sticker or note declaring they had to open the package?

Grrrrr 

Apparently, he has had various troubles with the office in his area--packages never received in the UK or sent to the US. He once suggested that they were teasing him for his Indian sounding surname.

I'm sorry that happened to your friend, but I don't think it's racially-motivated. Up until the time I got married last year, I had an Indian surname and I've never had this happen to me.

Unfortunately, sometimes accidents (and "accidents") happen. I've had it happen when I sent something to a friend here once, and I also had it happen once in the US. It's just bad luck - but I know that doesn't help your friend who wanted his American candy. 

As for the "Sorry you weren't in" cards, my postie always leaves parcels either by our front door or, if it's something big, around the side of the house by the back door. I don't know why some posties this and some don't, but I'm not going to complain about mine! 

I sent my passport (with my precious and expensive! ILR stamp) to the DVLA.  Registered and everything and it never made it out of the post office.  They called it "lost,"  even though I had a return address, applications inside with my address and even a return envelope all stamped and registered to return the passport.  When I went to the Embassy to replace it, and told them why I was replacing it, they told me that they think there is something going on at the Post Office as many people have lost their passports this way.

As Chary says, mostly it is just bad luck, because millions of items are processed daily without incident.  But when it happens to you, all the times you had great service is forgotten and what you remember is that they screwed up.

I get quite annoyed when I pay for my item to be shipped to me and only to have a "Sorry-you weren't in" paper at my door. Do they even knock? I promise that I was home all the times I received those papers...

I will say mine is the same way...It's like ding dong ditch...If I am upstairs I cant get down fast enough and get the key in the door to open it! If I am expecting anything I am like a hawk now from the upstairs if I see the red truck I haul butt downstairs and open the door BEFORE they knock.

I will say one guy actually knocked on our window and it scared the crap out of me as I was sitting right here on line.

I think once again some people are lucky and some aren't...We live kinda on a main street they can't leave anything here plus all mine seem to have to signed for anyways.

Rant Away as I joined in ;-)

what really bugs me is that, until we moved, the pick up place was about a mile from the bus and has really horrible hours. I know things can be delivered to your post office, but I don't want to wait or pay.

Our old post man didn't knock. My husband worked from home and he would find the little (incorrectly filled out card) on the floor in the kitchen having never heard a thing . He's caught them filling it out in the van before ever getting to the door!

Once they left a package out side the gate on the main road. Not inside the courtyard where the house door is...

that said I'm horrible at getting to the post office to mail things and have to admit I've used them as an excuse for my forgetfulness - mostly with postcards...

what really bugs me is that, until we moved, the pick up place was about a mile from the bus and has really horrible hours. I know things can be delivered to your post office, but I don't want to wait or pay.

What's up with that? "You must wait at least 48 hours to pick up the parcel we just tried to deliver 3 hours ago from 1 mile away, and when you do pick it up, it must be between the hours of 11am and 1pm on a Saturday that follows a Thursday with a full moon." Oy.

My boss sent his and his fiancee's passports by royal mail special delivery to the Chinese embassy to get visas for their holiday. The envelope arrived at the embassy minus the 2 passports and the envelope was stuck down with sticky tape so the passports had clearly been stolen by employees. I think its absolutely disgusting that you cant even send things special delivery without having to worry that they'll get stolen! Luckily special delivery comes with £500 of insurance so they got their passports replaced for free but it was touch and go for a while whether they'd get them and the visas in time for their holiday and the insurance wouldnt have covered that!!!

DH recently had a battle with Royal Mail.  His son sent him a greeting card with a giftcard inside.  When it arrived at our flat the envelope was open and the giftcard was gone.  DH searched online for a contact number or email address for Royal Mail but all communication pertaining to this "theft" had to be done via snail mail.  Fine!  My mister has a great way with words.       
The first reply from RM said the usual "We're sorry for your inconvenience.  We cannot be responsible for every letter passing through our vast empire.  We suggest you pay extra for guaranteed delivery.  If we can be of service in the future etc. etc."
So DH wrote again saying he was not satisfied and expected RM to correct the problem, that the customer should not have to pay extra to guarantee his letter is processed by an honest person, and he expected a better response from RM.
Second letter from RM contained a complimentary packet of 6 stamps and an apology for his dissatisfaction.
DH wrote again, returning the 6 stamps and stating he was still not satisfied and a token gesture of less than £3 worth of stamps would not put this matter to rest.  It was a great letter!
Next reply from Royal Mail was a bit of a surrender, contained a check in the amount of the lost giftcard, and a veiled message of "Now leave us alone please!!!"
I guess it's sometimes true that the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

When I was living in rural Cumbria just before moving back to the US, my mother sent a package with baby clothes and toys in it. My FIL hardly leaves the house and the village is small. The garage was being used as an office so there was always at least one car in the drive. Yet the PO claims that they attempted to deliver the package no less than 2 times and that no one ever was home.

So they sent the package back to the US.

It does depend on where you are.  In Westminster, we had fairly good post service.  Once in a while, things would come opened or drenched, but overall, it was pretty good. They even would sometimes get deliveries more than once a day. When we moved here, the post was dreadful.  We would be missing mail, things would show up weeks after the post-mark, service was erratic as to what time it would come (talking about a 12 hour window rather than say a 3 hour window).  This area was on Panorama (I think, although TBH, it might have been one of the other investigative journalism shows) Channel 4's Dispatches along with a few other places.  They had undercover temp workers secretly film, and what they found wasn't all that surprising.  Well, the attitudes when we had all that snow last winter was a bit worse than we expected, but soon after the programme, things improved.  I don't know if the changes will be permanent or if things will slip again.

Our postal worker (Sam) leaves stuff with the neighbours if we're not in. The people who cover this route on his days off can be a little iffier.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves, and I absolutely sympathise with your rant, rynn!  It's completely unreasonable to expect people to take time out of their day to wait for a package, or to chase it down at an inconveniently located depot that closes before most people are done with work  .  Drives me mad.  However, I do agree that a lot hinges on the quality of the postman.  When I lived in Syracuse, I used to leave for work at about the time our mailman would arrive, and so we used to chat and he was very good about leaving things when I asked him to.  Once, he rang my bell to deliver a Harry Potter book that could easily have fit in my mailbox, though I think that was more to tease me about my reading material . 

Wow.    I can hardly believe these stories.

June Cleaver, I'm glad your husband had to persistence to follow up with the post office.  I probably would have given up. 

I guess we've been lucky with our Royal Mail service here, or maybe it's just because we're in a small town?  Our posties often go out of their way to be helpful.

All of them seem to do it. We were expecting a delivery recently from FedEx. My husband was home all day and was listening out for the door. Didn't hear anything. When I got home I found one of those 'sorry we missed you' notices. Not even outside the door of our flat, but outside the door of the building. I was livid. It's like the guy couldn't be bothered to carry the (really light) package upstairs.

My mom sent me homemade Christmas bread over the holidays last year, and I never received it, or even got any notification that a delivery had been attempted.  Royal Mail claimed that their records showed that the package had been delivered, but in April, it showed up back at my mom's place in the US--apparently it had just been sitting around for four months until it was returned.  =/