Argh! Royal Mail giving me the run around...

fernandes

Not sure if this is the right place to put this (can't see a forum specifically for post/delivery) but this matter is sending my blood pressure through the roof so would appreciate the impartial opinion/advice of anyone else.

I seem to attract problems with 90% of companies I use and am just about used to consumer pain but this issue seems even more mind numbingly painful that others and Royal Mail so abjectly and deliberately unhelpful about it :mad:


To cut a very long story short. Purchased some items online from a domestic US retailer and sent them to a forwarding service in the US, where in turn under my instruction they were sent to the UK in my name with all necessary documentation. So I'm the sender and the recipient, if you like.

A week later I get carded for a delivery when I'm at work, which I know must be this item as not expecting anything else. Go to the delivery office who do not find it and say it must not have made it back yet 'from the postman yet' and to come back in a few days. Slow postman, fair enough, can live with it.

I make a second trip and they still can't find it and take my telephone number to call me back (this happened once before and they never did). After 2 days with nothing and no way of calling the delivery office, I raised a complaint via Royal Mail customer services phone line (who are always very polite).

The following Saturday, a week after my last trip and the only time I can go due to work, I try visiting the delivery office again, who say there is nothing still and that they'd discovered my postman had been mislabelling undelivered items as return to sender by mistake and that it was too late to find it.

They said to wait for it to make it back to the sender (insisting that returned items even go all the way home overseas) and to claim from the Royal Mail if not because 'it looks like we're at fault here' (their words not mine - invitation to claim #1). So I start the 6 week wait it might take to return to the US.

A week later I get a letter from the phone complaint I made saying that the matter is closed as there is nothing I can do about it. As this conflicts with what the delivery office said, I ring customer services and explain this and they say oh yes I can make a claim to the Royal Mail (invitation to claim #2).

I wait patiently for well over six weeks (giving the benefit of the doubt) and in contact with my reliable forwarding service all the time, but nothing returns. I eventually print the form I was advised by Royal Mail customer services to use and spend over an hour filling it out and compiling all the requested evidence.

I send it to the Plymouth address, 3 days later it comes back from the Stoke address (international customer services) with a photocopied generic message that it's not their problem and no suggestion they've even read the claim that I was twice advised and invited to submit and which I compiled in good faith.


So I still have a delivery card that proves Royal Mail have had and have not given me an item, I have Royal Mail staff who tell me the cause of this and it is a Royal Mail mistake, I have two separate indications that I can claim, and I have an organisation which just sends out letters with generic excuses.

How do I escalate the matter within Royal Mail? I know millions of people are frustrated by lost mail but its the brazen way that their staff on the ground have spelt out to me exactly what happened to lose my item but the Royal Mail itself hides behind standard template letters that claim zero liability.

I get the impression they'd be far happier if I pursued it in my capacity as the sender with the US Postal Service but I have as much chance of that getting back to Royal Mail to generate some action or contrition, as I have of them actually reading my claim and recognising their responsibility.

:(:(

Any tips for getting some action from Royal Mail? I must say the rubbish they put on their template letters about their volumes and general professionalism is laughable in the face of the procedural failure and incompetence you come across and they seem completely incapable of acknowledging or investigating.