interesting WHICH article

soolin

The December 2005 WHICH magazine has an interesting article about the Royal Mail.

It says basically that 1 in 4 people they interviewed said they had had lost or damaged post in the previous 12 months, which is much higher than the RM official levels. A further 34 % saw their post (I assume outwards) either get lost or damaged.

One poor chap who was interviewed and whose story features at length had had three parcels go missing containing high value goods. WHICH sent him a parcel of books but on arrival it looked as though someone had slit open the box and unwrapped the books to see what they were, before delivering the parcel in a poor state. The RM response was that the package had been damaged due to poor and inadequate packing however the Chairman of Postwatch agreed that it looked like it was a dleiberate act, and from the photos shown it clearly looks odd as the books were all individually wrapped and the covers have all been torn so that the books can be seen.

Interestingly for all us that use ebay or Amazon it finishes by saying that last year 202 postal staff were convicted of theft -78 cases are outstanding .

Also, and quite importantnly and worth noting, the RM say that signing for a package means you accept it as complete, so they will not automatically compensate if some contents are later found to be lost. This is balanced against parcel tampering which is up apprently by 50% and this involves packages being opened carefully and the contents rifled or even removed, before the package is re sealed and delivered.

WHICH suggest that all high value items should be automatically sent in tamper proof plastic bags, the kind that can't be opened without tearing, or if you sign for a package in paper or a brown envelope make the postie wait until you check the contents are complete.

Soo

Alleycat

Interesting reading! Although I have fortunately not had anything like that, only a few torn envelopes from water damage my mum sent my auntie a card with some gift vouchers in that had been slit very neatly at one end and had the vouchers removed. I think I will thoroughly check on delivery everything I get before signing Mr Posties list.

I am however, waiting for a parcel to arrive from an Ebay purchase that should really have turned up back end of last week.

Not good is it, when we are paying for safe delivery of our goods.

Suzi.Q_3

I read that this morning - doesn't surprise me to be honest - not parcels but at least 2 credit card bills haven't reached me in the last year.

Did you read the article about ebay scammers being jailed? Which said you should always pay by paypal as they hold onto the money until the transaction is complete - that's bull! I spotted another inaccuaracy in another article as well - annoys me a bit - you'd expect Which to be accurate!

Alleycat

Slightly off topic, but my pc is being veery slooow, can someone just confirm that its seven days for royal mail to consider a package 'lost'?

madfrenchgirl

Well, can we also add that they seem to be racist towards foreign mail? Especially French one? I am still waiting on some of my birthday cards fromt he past 5 years!

jaffa30

Alleycat wrote:

Slightly off topic, but my pc is being veery slooow, can someone just confirm that its seven days for royal mail to consider a package 'lost'?

Hi
Its 15 days unless they have changed it recently.

Jaffa

soolin

Suzi.Q wrote:

I read that this morning - doesn't surprise me to be honest - not parcels but at least 2 credit card bills haven't reached me in the last year.

Did you read the article about ebay scammers being jailed? Which said you should always pay by paypal as they hold onto the money until the transaction is complete - that's bull! I spotted another inaccuaracy in another article as well - annoys me a bit - you'd expect Which to be accurate!

Yes I noticed that as well, I was going to email them and say they ought to check how paypal work as they appear to be suggesting that paypal are an escrow service, which they are not.

I find it slightly annoying when an interesting article that might genuinely help someone contains inaccurate information. Likewise, when the recent baddies on ebay were caught and there was a lot of press interest, trading standards went on the TV and were saying that no one should pay for their ebay goods until they were delivered and checked over!!

Soo

soolin

jaffa30 wrote:

Hi
Its 15 days unless they have changed it recently.

Jaffa

AFAIK they haven't changed it...yet. 15 working days for internal UK and 'at least 20 working days for overseas airmail and up to 3 months for overseas surface mail.

Soo

Contains_Mild_Peril

jaffa30 wrote:

Alleycat wrote:

Slightly off topic, but my pc is being veery slooow, can someone just confirm that its seven days for royal mail to consider a package 'lost'?

Hi
Its 15 days unless they have changed it recently.

Jaffa

It's actually 15 working days, i.e. 3 weeks.
edit: I see Soo beat me to it.

RM admit to losing 14 million items of mail a year, so the actual figure is almost certainly much higher. Most missing items proably go unnoticed, since normally at least half my mail is unsolicited junk anyhow, so I have no way of knowing what proportion of the mail sent to me actually arrives. I do know that a number of letters, including some important ones, cards (some containing cash, until I asked relatives to stop sending cash for birthdays because it didn't always arrive), parcels and even photos on their way back from the processing lab have been sent to me and never arrived.
I also know that I sometimes get mail addressed to my neighbours. I once hand-delivered what appeared to be a Christmas card to an address several streets away, which had been delivered to me in error. Normally, I'd just write "delivered to wrong address" on the envelope and put it back in the post box, but since this was about the 22nd of December, I took it round to make sure they got in for Xmas. I have never received anything marked "delivered to wrong address", so if that's what's happened to some of my missing mail, the recipients have not dealt with it as I do.
As for eBay, I only joined in January and have 134 feedback so far, and already I've had 2 no-show outgoing parcels and one damaged, and 2 items not received (1 complete no-show and 1 empty envelope with a slit where the contents appeared to have been stolen). Nowadays I get COP's for all parcels, including low-value gifts.

shelly

Whenever I receive anything from either postie or mail order and it has to be signed for, I always sign my name and beside it write " Contents Unchecked" then if I'm missing items or they are damaged the sender can't say that by signing for the parcel I'm saying its ok.

pug_in_a_bed

What's doing my head in lately is the number of rental dvds from the likes of lovefilm which I recieve blatantly opened or torn. They have also gone missing quite a few times both en route to me from the companies or when i send them back. Luckily though it seems my choice of viewing is not to the PO workers taste, and the dvd's are still in the envelope when I receive them.