Royal Mail

LittleTinker

Ivory_Tinkler wrote: »

OP I sympathise with you about Royal Mail customer services. I have had many dealings through work with their general customer service line and it is pathetic, often with the staff not knowing about Royal Mail products or how to effectively handle a complaint. Occasionally you will get a real gem who is very helpful but generally speaking their customer service staff are pretty useless and sometimes rude.

However, what other service do you know where you can underpay for a service or product and get away with it? I feel that if a letter is underpaid then it should just be returned to sender so that they can send it again with the correct tariff but why should Royal Mail stand the cost of an underpaid item because someone hasn't taken the time to find out the correct tariff or has just chanced it? The current method of recouping the underpayment is perhaps a little unfair on the recipient but other than return to sender I can't see any other way of handling this.

I understand what you are saying and I agree with you to a point.

However, on this occasion, I havent emplyed Royal Mail to do anything for me. They simply turned up on my doorstep and told me that I couldnt have a letter that is addressed to me because it has been underpaid by 6p.

Oh...well not by me it hasnt. But they want ME to pay the 6p + £1 fee to find out what the item is and who sent it.

And what happens to this letter is there is no return address on it? It goes in the bin. And heavens knows what else is going in the bin becasue I dont know who it is from.

Royal Mail may be fed up with this, but it is a situation they have caused themselves. Quite simply before, a letter needed a 1st or a 2nd class stamp on it. And packages were paid for over the counter.

And if that wasnt paying enough, then put the prices up but dont introduce silly pricing systems that take away ease of posting items such as Birthday Cards. Whats the point of selling stamps in advance and having post boxes on the corner of streets if you have to go to the Post Office to check you mail, 'to be sure'.

And having to wait 48 hours is stupid.

But anyway....as I say......it isnt the pricing that I was venting about on here. It is the way the Customer Service Guy was with my partner.

custardy

LittleTinker wrote: »

I was saying that I would happily pay 6p because according to Royal Mail, that is how much the postage was short.

I understand that to 'let it go' they would lose money......I will pay the undercharge without a quibble. But I object strongly to paying a £1 fee for them to tell me about it. If I dont pay, they have to send the card back, and they dont get a £1.....so why charge so much?

If every company charged a £1 to get 6p back there would be uproar!

And the new stamps will cause problems because of the design. If you stick a stamp onto an envelope and make a mistake or forget to post something, you will want to get the stamp off to use on another letter. Why should we have to pay for another stamp because of that? We shouldnt and its wrong.

lol

I posted this on here because of Royal Mails disgraceful customer service chap who was rude and put the phone down....not because of the payment they were asking. Thats a different matter.

yes but you have seen my points
just rip up the card if you are bothered by the charge
there are companies who charge money just for not paying by DD so there are many charges in life
the fact is the sender underpaid yet RM are still obligated to bring that item to your local office and make you aware of it
there are allowed to charge for this by the regulators
nobody forces you to pay anything.you were calling RM to complain anyway which is what i was replying to

i have very little day to day interaction with RM's CS but i do agree many have little knowlege of the business

custardy

LittleTinker wrote: »

And if that wasnt paying enough, then put the prices up but dont introduce silly pricing systems that take away ease of posting items such as Birthday Cards. Whats the point of selling stamps in advance and having post boxes on the corner of streets if you have to go to the Post Office to check you mail, 'to be sure'.

And having to wait 48 hours is stupid.

But anyway....as I say......it isnt the pricing that I was venting about on here. It is the way the Customer Service Guy was with my partner.

RM were not allowed to raise their prices as the requested(and continue to request)
again where on the card does it say leave 48 hours?

Pollycat

LittleTinker wrote: »

Absolute disgraceful customer service.

My partner has telephoned their 0845 number for customer services to make a complaint about a card we recieved saying that they will not deliver our letter until we pay £1.06 as the postage was short by.........6p!

Now....I know all these 6p's add up, and Im quite happy to pay 6p but to charge £1 "handling fee" is a bit much!

Anyway....he phoned up to complain about it and about the fact that we now have to wait god knows how long before the letter gets to us and the Royal Mail guy on the end of the phone said.....(quoted by my partner here)

"Really Mr ******, I cant see how you are so bothered about paying the extra because this phone call will be costing you more than that. If you want to complain about it, complain to the person who sent it and not us because I cant be bothered wasting my time with you!"

And he put the phone down!! lol

We dont pay for 0845 numbers either....and neither can we complain to the person who sent it to us because we dont know who it is.

My sweetpea has never known anything like it.....so has phoned again and spoke to someone else.

Absolutely disgraceful Royal Mail......no wonder youre in trouble!

Little Tinker
Regardless of Royal Mail's policy of charging £x to deliver a letter that has insufficient postage on it, I agree that it is very poor customer service for your OH to be spoken to in the way you describe above.
This is assuming that your OH did not at any point antagonise or was rude to the guy from Royal Mail. Even if that was the case (and I'm not saying it was at all) ,someone working in Customer Service should have been able to deal with that and end the call without being rude back.
THAT is the crux of your post, as I see it.
All this talk about how much RM should or should not charge or whether you should rip up the card they left is just muddying the waters as far your complaint is concerned.

You said your OH phoned again and spoke to someone else.
What was the outcome of that?

AJ73

This annoys me too, we are a small charity and we get at least one item a month sent with normal stamp instead of large letter and the Royal Mail demand £1 in handling fee's.

This is partially the Royal Mail's fault for changing the postage system, A4 is very popular format and should be normal stamp price, like it used to be.

As a charity, we can't refuse the item in case it is a donation... rarely is though!

LittleTinker

Pollycat wrote: »

Little Tinker
Regardless of Royal Mail's policy of charging £x to deliver a letter that has insufficient postage on it, I agree that it is very poor customer service for your OH to be spoken to in the way you describe above.
This is assuming that your OH did not at any point antagonise or was rude to the guy from Royal Mail. Even if that was the case (and I'm not saying it was at all) ,someone working in Customer Service should have been able to deal with that and end the call without being rude back.
THAT is the crux of your post, as I see it.
All this talk about how much RM should or should not charge or whether you should rip up the card they left is just muddying the waters as far your complaint is concerned.

You said your OH phoned again and spoke to someone else.
What was the outcome of that?

Hi Pollycat, Nice reply

My Oh is a nice chap when he deals with things.....Im the one who has a tendency to get stroppy at times, not him.

I was listening to the call and I was shocked that they put the phone down on him. :eek:

Anyway, he did phone back and spoke to a very nice lady who has given him the correct address to write and complain about the first guy to and has also made note of the complaint with the details of the time of the call etc.She told him that the call was recorded and so they are able to check it ok, to which my OH was pleased about.

You are right....my vent is for the way the customer services dealt with my OH....the reason (which is also something to vent about though) is incidental

LittleTinker

custardy wrote: »

RM were not allowed to raise their prices as the requested(and continue to request)
again where on the card does it say leave 48 hours?

It doesnt say on the card to leave it 48 hours but they cant get the letter back to us for at least 48 hours even if we paid the £1 charge straight away.

custardy

AJ73 wrote: »

This annoys me too, we are a small charity and we get at least one item a month sent with normal stamp instead of large letter and the Royal Mail demand £1 in handling fee's.

This is partially the Royal Mail's fault for changing the postage system, A4 is very popular format and should be normal stamp price, like it used to be.

As a charity, we can't refuse the item in case it is a donation... rarely is though!

so you get loads of underpaid items
so you see why its a problem.
flats(A4) have become more and more popular
infact one reason for the pricing change was all those charities putting pens inside letters looking for donations
you will note most now use redesigned flat pens so they dont pay the higher rate
flats required different handling and different machines
seems people are only interested in what suits them as usual
im assuming this is the 1st charge item the op has had to deal with since the change in pricing

Dave101t

i paid a similar amount online, 1.07 i believe, and i dont think i even ever got the post!

custardy

LittleTinker wrote: »

It doesnt say on the card to leave it 48 hours but they cant get the letter back to us for at least 48 hours even if we paid the £1 charge straight away.

so you have no need to wait 48 hours
you just put that in for theatrics?
are you referring to the online fee to pay service?