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Comments:
Utter trash. I have had a pretty bad experience with these guys which will cost me money, all because the do not keep a record of tracking numbers. I sold an item on eBay in mid january 2008 and it arrived with the buyer within 2 days, excellent i thought, he signed for it, and left me positive feedback. Now at the beginning of may 2008 he has issued a chrgback for the item, saying it was unauthorised use of his card. I have asked royal mail if i can get the tracking number as i have the address where it was sent from, where it went and when i sent it. I have been told no, we do not keep a record of the tracking number so we can not help. Without this vital piece of info i am going to be out of pocket as i need it to prove it went to his actual address and it was he who signed for it. If anyone can help that would be great.
Smokie,
Could you please explain what has happened to these recorded delivery items? Be my guest and check with Track and Trace.
DW120843238GB sent on November 17, 2007;
DW120843215GB sent on November 17, 2007
DL614930223GB sent on November 2, 2007
DL749185794GB sent on August 6, 2007
They haven’t been signed for.
There are many other special delivery and recorded delivery receipts which I binned in disgust after finding out how difficult it would be to get my money back.
My experience with Royal Mail is very similar. If you send a letter to a big office then it won't be signed for. I work in a city centre office and our postroom told me that every day they get special delivery and recorded delivery letters stuffed in with the ordinary post, not signed for.
watchingbrief at 17th Nov 2007, 10:26PM - Really?? Oh come on!! Never ever ever signed for? I worked for Royal Mail for 25 years and saying stuff is never ever signed for is complete utter absolute nonsense.......Oh, and if you think I'm defending them because I worked there - I resigned 3 years ago because they are a now an awful place to work for - I'm defending them in this case because your statement is clearly a mountainous pile of bull.
As for "and if there was an alternative for recorded and special delivery from another firm we would use it..." - there are alternatives with many couriers, so stop whinging and go pay them £10-20 they want, then you have somthing to moan about!
P.S. I note from the date of your last post that you never did give us the update on your sent recorded deliveries, indicating that you are as bad as you claim Royal Mail are for not providing a service.
I've been having endless problems with special delivery and recorded delivery letters. They are not signed for on delivery - ever - and I mean EVER.
If I send a letter in this way it's because there is a reason why I want to make sure it is received at the other end and I don't want the embarrassment of having to phone up to ask if it has arrived.
Every time I check on track and trace it isn't delivered. I've complained through the Royal Mail website (what a waste of time that it!) you just get fobbed off, and I can't find the details of the particular sorting office which handles most of my deliveries anywhere on the internet because I'd like to write to them to ask what's going on.
We no longer send parcels by RM, we have been forced to switch to a courier, which is actually cheaper, because of the high number of non deliveries and damaged packages we had to replace.
It's a really disgusting service and if there was an alternative for recorded and special delivery from another firm we would use it. I've sent two recorded delivery letters today and I'll report back next week about whether they were signed for or not.
Very possibly the worst company in Britain, and almost certainly the worst postal 'service' in the developed world. I am absolutely sick to death of Royal Mail and I'm not prepared to waste any more of my time or money chasing after recorded items that they've lost/thrown into the sea/claim never existed. It's impossible to speak to a human being at my local delivery office, their complaints procedure is nothing more than a fob-off attempt, and I've totally lost my rag with them. They've got another two weeks to ignore my most recent complaint (they've ignored the last 2), and then I'm going to the BBC. I'm also going to write to the online retailers I use to explain to them that Royal Mail has cost them my custom.
The royal mail - from my experience and everyone i have spoken to are a waste of time - getting mail to the door yeah right - over a 10 month period i had many items of mail go missing from birthday cards to bank statements cheques improtant letters - and where i lived they were renovating the properties next door and the doors didnt have letterboxes so i got all thiers too.
thier cockups have cost me in time money and a great deal of stress - i had to keep going to the bank as the cashcards i repeatdly ordered never arrived.and someone else now knows all my bank details. ive filled in 15 missing mail forms only another 25 to go - but have decided to take them to the small claims court
before demanding payrises they should provide a decent service first - why pay people who dont do thier job properly
as a postman, i think that all you out there that like to complain. just stop and think, you aint all exactly perfect yourselves. who gets you mail to the correct door at xmas when the address is incorrect.and who sends stupid little cards then complains when they get lost. if you can do any better yourseves then have ago. by the way you all moan and say switch to dhl tnt etc. but did you know that royalmail still delivers all their mail to the door. they only bring it to the mail centres. guess we aint that bad after all
as previously mentioned i've had no problems with royal mail but i've got a link for everything you should know about them. http://members.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=dave_from_birmingham
Royal mail have their faults but what large company doesn't,
I buy and sell a lot over the internet therefor its delivered by royal mail, i've never had any problems with them, their service has always been fast and reliable for me and my customers.
As jokes go these people are about as funny as Bernard Manning. Their customer service goes beyond non-existent to down right offensive, their level of organisation would embarass a nursery-school class, and I find it side-splittingly laughable that they refer to what they provide as a 'service'. I have had to stop using a favourite online store purely because they use Royal Mail as their carrier, and I haven't got the patience to put up with even one more recorded delivery item being lost, late, or returned to the retailer despite my leaving various messages on my local sortying office's answerphone (they don't actually pick up the phone even during office hours). Oh - and don't bother attempting to make a complaint to them. If you do manage to get through to a human being they will most likely put you on hold for ten minutes and then quietly cut the connection. Contemptible.
The Royal Mail's customer service is the worst imaginable. I returned some goods by special delivery next day service in July 2005 and paid for extra compensation. When I came to claim in November, they didn't pay up, even though they admitted the parcel was missing. In July 2006 I claimed again and this time they said they had delivered the parcel back to me. Eventually I took them to court in October 2006. They paid solicitors and a barrister against little old me and got the court to throw it out on the grounds that the law exempts them from just about everything. It's not a contract apparently and if you haven't started the court case within 12 months of posting you cannot claim at all. Even worse - even though they lost my £300 item. They claimed and got £200 costs from me at court just because I took them to court beyond the 12 month period. Roll on competition and I vote with others that Royal Mail has disgusting customer service.
That the Government lets them get away with this poor service by exempting them from most court processes is shameful.
A word of warning about overseas post. If you send an item overseas no matter how it is sent, i.e. datapost, int signed for, etc if you have a claim it takes six months for Royal Mail to investigate and nine months before you get a (partial?) refund.
my sister sent a card with some money by special delivery to a friend.
The friend never got the card or money just the empty resealed envelope.
my sister sent a letter of complaint to royal mail all she got back was one pack of 1st class stamps and an unsigned letter not even an apology.
the stamps are worth a lot less the original cost of card and money lost.
I would strongly warn anybody about using this incompetent company. Royal Mail have surpassed themselves with this bunch of wasters.
I ordered a dress from the US over a month ago costing £60. I paid the postal cost for this item too - a total of £15. A week after I ordered this I got a card through my door stating that I had missed delivery and must collect it from the Post Office. Idiots hadn't even bothered to write the tracking number on the front of the card. I went to the Post Office and was told (without them even bothering to look in the back) that they hadn't got it and I was advised to ring ParcelForce, quoting my tracking number (!). I attempted to call ParcelForce but every button I pressed directed me to some robot voice and the whole call system is of absolute no use whatsoever. It is IMPOSSIBLE to speak to a human being on that "customer care" line.
I then wrote to the shop who sent the dress in the US, who very helpfully gave me the tracking number, which SHOULD have been written on the card. I e-mailed Parcelforce several times but got NOTHING back apart from the "we will be in touch within 24 hours". I got one e-mail back saying that the item HAD been signed for in the Post Office (!) but they didn't know where it was now and would "look for it". I have chased them up about this literally hundreds of times now, but not once have they bothered getting back to me with anything even resembling a semi-satisfactory reply. What fantastic service - I paid their £15 delivery costs for them to lose my dress and not even do anything about it, other than waste my time with lies.
This isn't the only time I have had problems with these idiots. Only a couple of months ago I found a parcel in one of my recycling boxes - just left there!!!! They hadn't bothered leaving a card at all that time. Lucky the recycling collectors hadn't got to it before I did!!! It had obviously been there well over a week.
ParcelForce / Royal Mail are *&"%£^!&£"^£&£^ in my opinion.
someone pointed out that courier services are more expensive than roayal mail. not so check out courier services on the net. for example send a small parcel weighing over 2.2 kilograms by special delivery cost over £19 many couriers will collect from your home and deliver within 24 hours for around £11 thats collect and deliver. why pay and extra £8 and have to take it to the post office yourself !! i sent a small parcel by royal mail ' enhanced ' service cost £10.20 they have lost it. my customer wants their money back and royal mail say my claim for insurance wont even be sorted out for at least 30 days !
i suggest everyone with a complaint contact the bbc and witch magazine and the press ( i am a journalist ) if we all do so the service might improve. royal mail say their seerrvice has improved, but how do we know ???
No other company in the UK delivers to every door in the land. Even when the barriers are down their competitors will choose not to or find it not find it profitable to do so.
No-one would deliver to the other side of the country for less than a price of a newspaper. For the price Royal Mail do an excellent job. Letters, leaflets and parcels, day in day out they do a spot on job of achieving a national delivery service.
We set up a company in Sept, employed Royal Mail door to door service to distribute 1.1m flyers nationwide. This cost us 35k. a) They overcharged us, b) Couldn;t tell us why, c) refused to accept responsibility, d) cancelled our drop, e) charged us a cancellation fee, f)our investigations showed that they failed to deliver flyers in areas we tested, g)not accepting responsibility, h)apologise for the incovenience and the saga continues. We are looking for other companies who may well have experienced problems with the Royal Mail door drop service in order to try and address such an inadequate service.
I got into a real mess thanks to Royal Mail redirection service. I am a married Czech studying and working here in UK for last seven years. Last October our first baby was born back in Czech Republic. The baby came two weeks earlier than expected. I did not have a chance to sort out all the paperwork before I left UK as I also changed my address here at that time. The only option was to have all the mail redirected to my new address. I did that, paid 15 pounds and thought 'that's one thing sorted then'. Well, it wasn't. My banks sent me new replacement cards for my accounts. Both of them were intercepted and both acounts were wiped clean. I was left with no money, no cards and I could not access my accounts from Czech Republic. I had to take a part time job while caring about the baby and my wife. When I arrived back to UK three months earlier I found out that my mobile phone provider switched me off as they did not receive direct debit payments, electric company is suing me for not paying the bills, etc. My banks charged me through the roof for being unable to process these payments, etc. To my shock I found out that one of my 'private & confidential' letter envelope was delivered torn open and sealed with a celotape. That's against the law in Czech Rep. I don't know what to say. I can forget about any loans as my credit rating is probably damaged beyond repair. I have to run around the banks, explaining, that I could not spend the money in UK shops while I was in Czech Rep. I have to wait couple of weeks to get my replacement cards. And this is all to thanks to the 'service' provided by Royal Mail. So, if you think your life is boring, or just want to feel like an idiot for a while, it just takes 15 pounds to Royal Mail and then watch and see.
I have previously had items lost (stolen) in the mail but for some reason let it go. However it was my birthday last Wednesday and very few of my cards actually made it through my door. My mothers card, which was posted 1st class on Monday 17th turned up on saturday 22nd fully ripped open then cellotaped back up again. I will myself never post a card using Royal Mail as its obviously a good way for some people to steal money/vouchers and after their done they have the cheek to post you whats left because they know that very little is done.
Royal Mail exhorts their one delivery per day service. The first (and second) class mail delivery in the SS8 postal area consists of 1 delivery per week.....it's like having Christmas every week.
My recommendation to anyone, anywhere with a problem: Make yourselves heard on this and any other complaints website so you bring everyones attention to any below par service, then get in touch with the research crew of BBC1s Watchdog at www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog and dont hold back if you feel you have a strong case to put forward.
Only if you voice yourself to the right people will you ever be heard and companies forced to sit up and listen to its customers.
Good luck with all your complaints, princecharmingoftorquay.
P.S. Watchdog have featured the Royal Mail on their program before. Obviously the service has shown little improvement since and its time we all got onto the BBC to investigate the problems again.
Failing that, (wherever possible) seriously think about boycotting the Royal Mail and using couriers instead. They might be more expensive but at least you can count on deliveries getting to their destination and in one piece!
I have read one or two complaints on here about the Royal Mail and quite honestly it doesnt surprise me at all.
Before I start whinging, I would like to ask if the Queen and the Royal family approve of the lack of decent service offered by quite a number of the Royal Mails employees? If she doesnt support some of the actions of this company then why continue to back the service with her Royal seal of approval!?
It must be quite a few at fault as you cant tell me only a select few can cause so much inconvenience and aggrevation nationwide.
I have lived at my current address for six years now and within that time (barring the odd break where items have been delivered correctly) the majority of the time Ive experienced expected letters and parcels go missing with uncomforting frequency.
Surely if some of these people dont enjoy or want to do this job properly, why dont they find another job and give those unemployed people who would like take their place a chance!
No doubt the companys bosses would explain that with so much mail and parcels passing through their hands daily, that it is only expected that some of it will be lost or mishandled, but I for one dont accept that - particularly as I seem to be one of their favourite victims.
Come on Royal Mail. Get your act together and give us a service the Queen can be proud to back!
I bought a dress (brand new) off ebay 4th November which was delivered via standard parcel delivery.
It was posted on the 5th November & a tracking no was provided.
Between back then today someone has always been in the house to sign for things.
I lodge with a friend and his family. Only this morning he asked if I was expecting a dress because his mum's friend spotted one yesterday down an alleyway next to the neighbours house with my name on the packaging. So I went outside (she didnt say why she didnt bring it in and left it down the alley)
There it was .... the parcel had a sticker dated 06/11. The dress appears to be intact (couldnt find any rips/tears) but is soaking wet because of the weather.
The lady who sold me the dress on ebay has been fantastic. She has been liasing with royalmail for me whilst the dress had been assumed missing. I have now told her its been dumped and awaiting a reply.
What do you think I should do guys? According to royalmail.com the maximum compensation for standard delivery items is £28. According to this site complainers are fobbed off with stamps as a gesture of goodwill.
The only other time I was disappointed with this company is when I ordered a book from amazon and they left it under the mat by the front door. We only knew it was there when the doormat looked much higher.
At my work ,we are consistently posting thousands of letters per day and so many customers claim they havent received anything. And I believe them.
If the dress is dry cleaned, back to its former glory and royalmail foots the bill and apologises then I am willng to accept this. If they claimed someone signed for it, then why would it be left outside the house and not taken in?
Royal mail lost a special delivery item of mine which happened to be £80's cash! After realising their mistake they offered a full refund.
However, it has been a full year and 3 months and I have still not recieved a refund or any compensation!!! Infact, the total sum of phone bills in contacting their nationwide call centres and having been passed on from person-to-person has probably accumulated a phone bill of around £60!!! Each time im promised that someone will get back to me but infact it always happens that im having to call them!!
Their latest excuse was that they have had a change in staff and therefore they do not know who was dealing with my case!!! And, on another occasion I was even told that my case reference didnt even exist!!!!
Is it worth chasing up these people.....? Im begining to think im fighting a lost battle!!!
Add a comment about this blagger
Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
Could you please explain what has happened to these recorded delivery items? Be my guest and check with Track and Trace.
DW120843238GB sent on November 17, 2007;
DW120843215GB sent on November 17, 2007
DL614930223GB sent on November 2, 2007
DL749185794GB sent on August 6, 2007
They haven’t been signed for.
There are many other special delivery and recorded delivery receipts which I binned in disgust after finding out how difficult it would be to get my money back.
Useless organisation!
As for "and if there was an alternative for recorded and special delivery from another firm we would use it..." - there are alternatives with many couriers, so stop whinging and go pay them £10-20 they want, then you have somthing to moan about!
P.S. I note from the date of your last post that you never did give us the update on your sent recorded deliveries, indicating that you are as bad as you claim Royal Mail are for not providing a service.
PipPip
If I send a letter in this way it's because there is a reason why I want to make sure it is received at the other end and I don't want the embarrassment of having to phone up to ask if it has arrived.
Every time I check on track and trace it isn't delivered. I've complained through the Royal Mail website (what a waste of time that it!) you just get fobbed off, and I can't find the details of the particular sorting office which handles most of my deliveries anywhere on the internet because I'd like to write to them to ask what's going on.
We no longer send parcels by RM, we have been forced to switch to a courier, which is actually cheaper, because of the high number of non deliveries and damaged packages we had to replace.
It's a really disgusting service and if there was an alternative for recorded and special delivery from another firm we would use it. I've sent two recorded delivery letters today and I'll report back next week about whether they were signed for or not.
thier cockups have cost me in time money and a great deal of stress - i had to keep going to the bank as the cashcards i repeatdly ordered never arrived.and someone else now knows all my bank details. ive filled in 15 missing mail forms only another 25 to go - but have decided to take them to the small claims court
before demanding payrises they should provide a decent service first - why pay people who dont do thier job properly
dave_from_birmingham at 21st Apr 2007, 09:58PM
I buy and sell a lot over the internet therefor its delivered by royal mail, i've never had any problems with them, their service has always been fast and reliable for me and my customers.
That the Government lets them get away with this poor service by exempting them from most court processes is shameful.
The friend never got the card or money just the empty resealed envelope.
my sister sent a letter of complaint to royal mail all she got back was one pack of 1st class stamps and an unsigned letter not even an apology.
the stamps are worth a lot less the original cost of card and money lost.
I ordered a dress from the US over a month ago costing £60. I paid the postal cost for this item too - a total of £15. A week after I ordered this I got a card through my door stating that I had missed delivery and must collect it from the Post Office. Idiots hadn't even bothered to write the tracking number on the front of the card. I went to the Post Office and was told (without them even bothering to look in the back) that they hadn't got it and I was advised to ring ParcelForce, quoting my tracking number (!). I attempted to call ParcelForce but every button I pressed directed me to some robot voice and the whole call system is of absolute no use whatsoever. It is IMPOSSIBLE to speak to a human being on that "customer care" line.
I then wrote to the shop who sent the dress in the US, who very helpfully gave me the tracking number, which SHOULD have been written on the card. I e-mailed Parcelforce several times but got NOTHING back apart from the "we will be in touch within 24 hours". I got one e-mail back saying that the item HAD been signed for in the Post Office (!) but they didn't know where it was now and would "look for it". I have chased them up about this literally hundreds of times now, but not once have they bothered getting back to me with anything even resembling a semi-satisfactory reply. What fantastic service - I paid their £15 delivery costs for them to lose my dress and not even do anything about it, other than waste my time with lies.
This isn't the only time I have had problems with these idiots. Only a couple of months ago I found a parcel in one of my recycling boxes - just left there!!!! They hadn't bothered leaving a card at all that time. Lucky the recycling collectors hadn't got to it before I did!!! It had obviously been there well over a week.
ParcelForce / Royal Mail are *&"%£^!&£"^£&£^ in my opinion.
i suggest everyone with a complaint contact the bbc and witch magazine and the press ( i am a journalist ) if we all do so the service might improve. royal mail say their seerrvice has improved, but how do we know ???
kfbart at 20th Sep 2005, 02:22PM
No-one would deliver to the other side of the country for less than a price of a newspaper. For the price Royal Mail do an excellent job. Letters, leaflets and parcels, day in day out they do a spot on job of achieving a national delivery service.
My recommendation to anyone, anywhere with a problem: Make yourselves heard on this and any other complaints website so you bring everyones attention to any below par service, then get in touch with the research crew of BBC1s Watchdog at www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog and dont hold back if you feel you have a strong case to put forward.
Only if you voice yourself to the right people will you ever be heard and companies forced to sit up and listen to its customers.
Good luck with all your complaints, princecharmingoftorquay.
P.S. Watchdog have featured the Royal Mail on their program before. Obviously the service has shown little improvement since and its time we all got onto the BBC to investigate the problems again.
Failing that, (wherever possible) seriously think about boycotting the Royal Mail and using couriers instead. They might be more expensive but at least you can count on deliveries getting to their destination and in one piece!
Before I start whinging, I would like to ask if the Queen and the Royal family approve of the lack of decent service offered by quite a number of the Royal Mails employees? If she doesnt support some of the actions of this company then why continue to back the service with her Royal seal of approval!?
It must be quite a few at fault as you cant tell me only a select few can cause so much inconvenience and aggrevation nationwide.
I have lived at my current address for six years now and within that time (barring the odd break where items have been delivered correctly) the majority of the time Ive experienced expected letters and parcels go missing with uncomforting frequency.
Surely if some of these people dont enjoy or want to do this job properly, why dont they find another job and give those unemployed people who would like take their place a chance!
No doubt the companys bosses would explain that with so much mail and parcels passing through their hands daily, that it is only expected that some of it will be lost or mishandled, but I for one dont accept that - particularly as I seem to be one of their favourite victims.
Come on Royal Mail. Get your act together and give us a service the Queen can be proud to back!
It was posted on the 5th November & a tracking no was provided.
Between back then today someone has always been in the house to sign for things.
I lodge with a friend and his family. Only this morning he asked if I was expecting a dress because his mum's friend spotted one yesterday down an alleyway next to the neighbours house with my name on the packaging. So I went outside (she didnt say why she didnt bring it in and left it down the alley)
There it was .... the parcel had a sticker dated 06/11. The dress appears to be intact (couldnt find any rips/tears) but is soaking wet because of the weather.
The lady who sold me the dress on ebay has been fantastic. She has been liasing with royalmail for me whilst the dress had been assumed missing. I have now told her its been dumped and awaiting a reply.
What do you think I should do guys? According to royalmail.com the maximum compensation for standard delivery items is £28. According to this site complainers are fobbed off with stamps as a gesture of goodwill.
The only other time I was disappointed with this company is when I ordered a book from amazon and they left it under the mat by the front door. We only knew it was there when the doormat looked much higher.
At my work ,we are consistently posting thousands of letters per day and so many customers claim they havent received anything. And I believe them.
If the dress is dry cleaned, back to its former glory and royalmail foots the bill and apologises then I am willng to accept this. If they claimed someone signed for it, then why would it be left outside the house and not taken in?
However, it has been a full year and 3 months and I have still not recieved a refund or any compensation!!! Infact, the total sum of phone bills in contacting their nationwide call centres and having been passed on from person-to-person has probably accumulated a phone bill of around £60!!! Each time im promised that someone will get back to me but infact it always happens that im having to call them!!
Their latest excuse was that they have had a change in staff and therefore they do not know who was dealing with my case!!! And, on another occasion I was even told that my case reference didnt even exist!!!!
Is it worth chasing up these people.....? Im begining to think im fighting a lost battle!!!
Add a comment about this blagger