Royal Mail - lose your credit card receipt - lose your property and your rights?

Captain_Sensible wrote: »

O
Unfortunately, around a week later, I did what I imagine a lot of people do and shredded a whole bunch of receipts after I had reconciled them in my banking records. Big mistake.

Captain_Sensible wrote: »

Over the years I have found the UK postal service, on the whole, to be reliable (lets not debate the unreasonable postage prices and all-too-frequent price increases at this point)- but it has taken one occasion of their failings for me to made painfully aware of the appalling inadequacies of the Post Office and, indeed, the Royal Mail itself.

I recently paid for parcel to be sent, Tracked & Signed, to recipient in Slovak Republic (part of EU) - I attended my local post office in person and paid for the service using my debit card on the POS machine at the counter. I had pre-printed a very clear address label to avoid any issues with handwriting legibility and the post office themselves attached a return address sticker which I filled out at the counter.
At no point did the person behind the counter give me any warnings or draw my attention to some of the data printed on the small piece of paper that was my debit card receipt. (I am not in the habit of sending tracked/signed parcels - sending something abroad is a rare thing for me and on this occasion I thought it best thing to do).

Unfortunately, around a week later, I did what I imagine a lot of people do and shredded a whole bunch of receipts after I had reconciled them in my banking records. Big mistake.

It turned out my parcel never got to the recipient (nearly 3 weeks now). I needed to investigate the situation and quickly realised that I needed my tracking number - this, apparently, was printed on my card receipt - the receipt I had shredded. All is not lost I thought as I have the payment transaction showing in my bank records and I can tell them exactly when I visited the post office, how much I paid and the address the address the parcel was sent to - they MUST have a record of this and therefore will be able to issue me with a duplicate receipt?

No.

In fact the post office told me they DELETE all payment records from customers who visit their counter AT THE END OF EACH WORKING DAY!

So... I rang the Royal Mail customer service department - the local post office may have deleted their own payment records but surely they have a record on their system for the payment for my parcel?? (Remember - the payment receipt data includes my tracking reference...)

No.

Surely, given all the other data I have regards the parcel (date/address etc) they must be able to find the tracking number??

No.

Further insult added when a another member of their customer service team tried to explain that when the parcel is defined as LOST (in my case this will be about three and half weeks after postage date) - I should be able to complete a compensation claim form. Great! I thought... what do I need for that I asked? - Er, your tracking reference number...

So, ladies and gentlemen - we entrust often valuable property to our wonderful post office but in return they have a completely inadequate record-keeping system for that property once you walk away from their counter - should, god forbid, you accidentally lose/destroy that credit card receipt. How can this be acceptable?
IF I had been made aware, as a paying customer, of the significance of some of the digits on my card receipt and WARNED that if I lost the receipt I would lose all the rights to the property I had given them then I perhaps would have made an effort to have kept the receipt under lock and key - maybe in a safe... That little piece of paper has cost me the total value of the item sent and the postage I paid for it.

I cannot believe, as a consumer, that this is right.

During my lengthy chat with Royal Mail Customer Service (which devolved into an argument after nearly 45mins of being given the runaround) - I suggested that IF tracking numbers are a ONCE-ONLY generated piece of data at the point of sale then this reference number OUGHT to be incorporated as part of the transaction reference number that shows up in our bank statements in order that the consumer has some kind of backup? I argued this would be a relatively simple process to invoke but the idiot I was talking to was determined to tell me that "from an IT perspective" this would be an impossible task (this was customer service I was taking to - not their IT department). My proposal that maybe their post offices should retain customer payment records for maybe a few days/weeks was met with equal derision.