Royal Mail - Special Delivery Problems

poonpatch

I've just had a few hundred pounds worth of vouchers sent to a company, which were special delivery - guarnateed next day. They didnt arrive for a few days and the post office have no confirmation of delivery.

I do know the company received them - but only after chasing them myself - what can I claim back off the post office? They've failed on guaranteed date of delivery and confirmation/signature for delivery. Any ideas on how I should play this with the PO?

Thanks

PP

NewFoundGlory_2

If they fail to deliver on time then you get the full postage costs back...not sure about anything else...might depend if any money was lost due to the items being late?

dzug1

You can claim back the cost of the special delivery postage.

If you purchased consequential loss cover when you posted it you can claim under that as well - not sure if it's a fixed sum or whether you have to prove the loss.

Given that the vouchers have arrived you can't claim for them.

exel1966

As above you can claim for the postage of the item only, nothing else. Read here. Section 11

They may If they're feeling generous send you an apology and a free book of stamps as a goodwill gesture !

dzug1

They don't seem to publicise it, but as well as the cost of postage they pay £5 if it was more than 24 hours late and £10 if more than a week late.

Oblivion

From my own experiences and those of neighbours, the Royal Mail's signed For / Special Delivery 'services' are a complete scam and should be subject to an OFT investigation.

They rarely deliver within the specified time and hardly ever bother to obtain a signature. They must be making money hand over fist from those who can't be bothered to claim the fee back for this non-service.

My latest experience has been with sending a bundle of objection letters to the Government's Planning Appeal office in Bristol. They had to be submitted by a specific date to be validated, so we sent them by RM Special Delivery and monitored the tracking on their website. It just never proceeded beyond "in progress" or whatrever the wording is they use.

Three days later we contacted the Bristol Planning office, who were unable to confirm that they had arrived due to the vast amount of post they receive. So to be safe, we had no option but to employ a private courier service at considerable expense to hand deliver a duplicate set of paperwork.

It later transpired that the original set had been delivered on the third day, but no signature had been obtained and so no tracking was recorded. The Royal Mail are just conning people.

Dave.

custardy

Oblivion wrote: »

From my own experiences and those of neighbours, the Royal Mail's signed For / Special Delivery 'services' are a complete scam and should be subject to an OFT investigation.

They rarely deliver within the specified time and hardly ever bother to obtain a signature. They must be making money hand over fist from those who can't be bothered to claim the fee back for this non-service.

My latest experience has been with sending a bundle of objection letters to the Government's Planning Appeal office in Bristol. They had to be submitted by a specific date to be validated, so we sent them by RM Special Delivery and monitored the tracking on their website. It just never proceeded beyond "in progress" or whatrever the wording is they use.

Three days later we contacted the Bristol Planning office, who were unable to confirm that they had arrived due to the vast amount of post they receive. So to be safe, we had no option but to employ a private courier service at considerable expense to hand deliver a duplicate set of paperwork.

It later transpired that the original set had been delivered on the third day, but no signature had been obtained and so no tracking was recorded. The Royal Mail are just conning people.

Dave.

did you contact RM?
as for the rarely delivered on time? what are you basing that on?
i deal/admin over 1000 SD items a day and all bar the odd unavoidable issue(eg less than 1 a week) are delivered on time

neil9313

Oblivion wrote: »

From my own experiences and those of neighbours, the Royal Mail's signed For / Special Delivery 'services' are a complete scam and should be subject to an OFT investigation.

They rarely deliver within the specified time and hardly ever bother to obtain a signature. They must be making money hand over fist from those who can't be bothered to claim the fee back for this non-service.

My latest experience has been with sending a bundle of objection letters to the Government's Planning Appeal office in Bristol. They had to be submitted by a specific date to be validated, so we sent them by RM Special Delivery and monitored the tracking on their website. It just never proceeded beyond "in progress" or whatrever the wording is they use.

Three days later we contacted the Bristol Planning office, who were unable to confirm that they had arrived due to the vast amount of post they receive. So to be safe, we had no option but to employ a private courier service at considerable expense to hand deliver a duplicate set of paperwork.

It later transpired that the original set had been delivered on the third day, but no signature had been obtained and so no tracking was recorded. The Royal Mail are just conning people.

Dave.

A bit of a sweeping statement really, and a load of old tosh!

olly300

Oblivion wrote: »

From my own experiences and those of neighbours, the Royal Mail's signed For / Special Delivery 'services' are a complete scam and should be subject to an OFT investigation.

I actually disagree.

I think it depends on both the RM employees delivering the mail and the employees in the organisation receiving the mail.

I've been down to post rooms in different companies and have seen clear rules of what the people working in that area of the company should be doing with different letters. Lots of companies have a rule that when you sign for an item, you also have to put it in a book and get the person it is address to to sign for it when they have received it. Clearly if you have lots of signed for mail items it's easier if you don't bother doing this.

Over the years I've had Signed For/Special Delivery letters delivered to a range of people, and businesses and organisations of different sizes. 90% of these letters have been tracked

On the occasions where a letter hasn't been and the organisation has been difficult, when I've chased the letter up by email, fax or by another Special Delivery letter threatening court action the business/organisation has no problems acknowledging my original letter.

In addition there have been occasions where even though the mail is tracked the company concerned has pretended they haven't received it.

One of the most amusing was when I could actually read the name of signature of the person who signed the letter for a car insurance query. The insurance company tried to claim they hadn't received it but I wrote an email stating that as X Smith had signed for the letter on a date and time then if I don't hear from them in the next two weeks I would be referring my customer service query to the financial ombudsman. They managed to go, find and urgently answer my letter they hadn't received.