As the Christmas Mail thread is closed …
I need a small piece of information from a supplier but security says it has to be by post. The sender is telling to to wait “up to 15 days” for it to arrive.
Unbelievable.
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… but absolutely realistic sadly.
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Nothing unusual
My postie says his boss tells him to do parcels and bank letters for a weekly batch.
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Two weeks ago a little package arrived via RM. Initially I thought it was a mistake but then realised it was something I ordered last May. Was post marked 10 May, 2025…
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Almost a post to Santa Claus moment, random mail eventually gets there.
I posted this on the Christmas Mail thread, and will repost here
First port of call is Royal Mail Customer Care, which ensures your complaint is logged and these get flagged up to Ofcom in the Q of S figures or lack of.
Royal Mail Customer Care telephone number is listed on their web page.
Tel: 03457 740 740
Next I would contact your M.P. explaining the lack of deliveries, if you have dates when you have had a delivery, thats even better.
Contacting the Delivery Office and trying to talk to the Manager is a waste of time, direct telephone numbers for each office mysteriously disappeared after the last Industrial Action, and while everyone in the company know that staff are told to concentrate on parcels and leave letters in the frame, said manager will deny ever saying that.
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We had to return an item of clothing I ordered for my daughter.
The pre-paid return label included with the item was used, and she had a receipt with a tracking number and return address matching the return address on the label.
The online vendor said it might take up to 14 days to refund - small company so I left it a bit longer.
When I actually checked the Royal Mail service tracking number the last online entry indicated that the item was out for delivery 3 weeks before that but no record of successful delivery.
Expanding the tracking entries I got a list going back almost 18 months before we’d even ordered the item! Was the company reusing a return label or had different tracking numbers been merged?
Ultimately got the refund but I’ve had so many BT tracking numbers in recent years where there are missing entries when the item has or hasn’t been delivered - most were from Amazon for low cost things which they refunded me for.
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In a nutshell, the RM tracking system is crap, it can’t differentiate between different streams i.e. track 24 / 48 etc and the numerous other product streams thats available, what ever gets scanned, it will accept. When setting up the PDA its very easy to miss the correct setting, you should be able to track it on its journey, from being handed over at the sub Post Office counter/ drop off locker, to arrival and departure at a distribution hub to arrival at the delivery office, then out for delivery and finally delivered, however as @Alley_Cat mentions
Keeping this simple, the system won’t flag this up, it has to be manually updated, and having tens of thousands of such entries daily, you can see why this issue persists
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Is the sender your bank?
I needed a new RCA passcode generator when the battery died on mine. The %%%%ard bank froze my account until a new one was issued. Delivery quoted as “4-8 weeks”. It took 6 weeks.
I often order from Amazon and intentionally check that the sender is in country for each purchase. But I regularly get had by sellers using a paper company located in my country and then shipping from overseas. I ordered 4 new Goot soldering tips that my local hardware store didn’t have in stock and some copper wool. All made in Japan and the seller was a registered Japanese company. 6 weeks later it all arrived. I kid you not, the soldering tips were shipped from Sierra Leone and the copper wool from the Congo. Mrs. FZ had to hear me rage and rant about it for hours
Have done that before and three months later - no reply. Chasing that is pointless too.
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I would suggest you try it again, its the only official way of registering a complaint with the company, it’s logged and counts towards the Q&S figures.
I would also if you haven’t already, contact your M.P. raise your concerns about the lack of service.
It will be interesting what the CEO Alistair Cochrane uses as an excuse for the drop off of service when at the Parliamentary meeting, high levels of staff sickness and the recent bad weather are the two top favourites.
I will also mention, if you think its bad now in your area / nationally, and Royal Mail gets its way with Ofcon about the USO changes it wants, well it will get a lot worse.
Time to think about another complaint.
Had to send a document and needed a signature for it. Sent yesterday and recepit says “Next Day” … the recipient has a mail delivery between 06:00 and 07:00. Guess what - not arrived!
Delivery between 06-07:00 is really early and I presume it’s to a business, your main problem there is, most delivery staff now don’t start work till 07:30 - 08:00.
If it’s a tracked item again it depends what time it arrived in the mail centre, with the recent network changes, final arrival time in to the Mail Centre could be as late as 07:15 then it’s got to be sorted, scanned and despatched to the relevant Delivery Office.
I’m interested as to why it was so early a delivery.
We have a really good Royal Mail service where we are, about 3 miles from a large depot.
Items like the one you mention, signed for etc., usually arrive by van around lunchtime along with our stream of parcels. The normal postie arrives mid PM (each day) with any letters and junk mail/flyers plus sometimes small letterbox size stuff SWMBO has ordered from sites like Wish.
We’d have to be honest, we are obviously very lucky, with seldom a problem.
The Van postie is huge friends with our dog, so much so that he will stop van if he sees me out walking dog just to say hello (to the dog!).
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Major business with a lot of time sensitive documents and they will receive hundreds, if not thousands of tracked/signed for every day. They have a specific arrangement, as I understand, for the early delivery so internal staff can open and pre-sort ready for the working day.
Previous one to them a couple of weeks back - signed for at 06:57.
The same compnay also wrote back to me regarding the previous correspondance - some has still not arrived.
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Right, got that, now I understand, it’s a large company, they tend to go out during the night directly to said companies.
Today is the first day for a fortnight when we have had no delivery, despite the postcode regularly featuring in the service disruption list.
Out of those deliveries just two have been genuine mail, otherwise, handfuls of leaflets, junk mail despite signing up to mail preference.
Well I’ll swop you postcodes then, it’s now 10 days since we had any mail delivered, it’s fairly normal where we are and doesn’t help when your local delivery office is listed as under special measures.
We had an Easter card delivered yesterday, the 8th. Postmark on envelope was 31st March. We spoke to the sender and they posted it on the 30th.
The irony is that they live 3 miles away.
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It’s not good enough, but unfortunately in certain parts of the country, it’s becoming the normal.