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Royal Mail failed to provide PO Box service for 10 months, offers token refund
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xdrquinnx
Posts: 6 Forumite
I've got a bit of a dilemma and was hoping someone here might have experience with the Royal Mail complaints procedure. I paid £120 for a year of PO box service which I found out wasn't working due entirely to RM's failure (I have this in a signed letter) and was only fixed last week -- 10 months into the service. Royal Mail offered a 50% "good will" refund despite the fact that I'd already paid for 83% of the year without receiving any service whatsoever. The man I spoke to at RM said I could either accept the "good will" refund OR pursue it with Postal Review Panel. If I pursue it with the PRP, the "good will" offer is removed from consideration. I wanted to know if there's any chance of winning the full 10 months of refund or should I suck it up and accept the 50% offer.
The long version:
1) I signed up and paid for a PO box in September 2008. I still have the original receipt which confirms I paid for it AND confirms the address to which the PO box's mail is meant to be delivered.
2) It was a very low-use box for me, so I didn't start to investigate the lack of mail until about April of this year. I wasn't expecting any specific letters, but it got to the point where I thought something must be wrong. I started sending test letters to myself and none of them arrived, even after weeks of waiting.
3) I called the Royal Mail customer support number 3-4 times and was told "We're looking into it" and "Everything seems fine" and "I called the local sorting office and they don't see any problems". Each time they told me it was working, I sent another test letter which never arrived.
4) I eventually escalated it to a higher level of the customer service system. That person told me he'd look into the problem and contact me. 4-5 days later, I got a letter from him saying that the PO box hadn't been working because the local sorting office didn't have a delivery address for me. "I am informed that the local XXXXXXX Delivery Office lacked an address for this mail. This has now been rectified.." I have this in writing from Royal Mail Headquarters. I also have my original receipt which lists the correct delivery address which also happens to be the billing address for that PO box. So it's not as if my address was a mystery to Royal Mail's computer system. The day after I received his letter (to my flat's address), I also received two of my test letters (dated April and May of this year) and a postcard (also April) that had clearly been sitting in the PO box for months and months. My other three test letters are still undelivered.
5) I called the RM guy back today seeking some sort of compensation for their lack of service. I asked that my PO box be extended for the amount of time it was non-functioning. This seems incredibly reasonable to me. He said that they don't extend things like that because "when you extend services, they tend to eventually drop off of the system." So apparently changing the end-date of something is even beyond the abilities of RM. He then offered by a £60 "good will" refund (which he kept stressing was purely good will and wasn't required of him at all). I argued that I should be given a refund proportionate to the time the service was non-functioning due to RM's failure. That would be about £95. He wouldn't budge from the £60 and said that if I chose to pursue the matter further with the Postal Review Panel, that £60 offer would be removed from consideration. I told him I was appalled by RM's treatment of this matter and that I'd have to consider the offer before committing in either direction.
I'm leaning toward pursuing it with the Review Panel strictly on principle. I've been pretty disgusted for years with my local mail delivery system losing mail, leaving packages outside in front of the main entrance to my building, delivering signed-for letters without bothering to have me sign for them.. but this PO box issue seems to cut-and-dry and well documented that I think I have a shot at actually winning. Anyone ever have experience with this sort of thing?
The long version:
1) I signed up and paid for a PO box in September 2008. I still have the original receipt which confirms I paid for it AND confirms the address to which the PO box's mail is meant to be delivered.
2) It was a very low-use box for me, so I didn't start to investigate the lack of mail until about April of this year. I wasn't expecting any specific letters, but it got to the point where I thought something must be wrong. I started sending test letters to myself and none of them arrived, even after weeks of waiting.
3) I called the Royal Mail customer support number 3-4 times and was told "We're looking into it" and "Everything seems fine" and "I called the local sorting office and they don't see any problems". Each time they told me it was working, I sent another test letter which never arrived.
4) I eventually escalated it to a higher level of the customer service system. That person told me he'd look into the problem and contact me. 4-5 days later, I got a letter from him saying that the PO box hadn't been working because the local sorting office didn't have a delivery address for me. "I am informed that the local XXXXXXX Delivery Office lacked an address for this mail. This has now been rectified.." I have this in writing from Royal Mail Headquarters. I also have my original receipt which lists the correct delivery address which also happens to be the billing address for that PO box. So it's not as if my address was a mystery to Royal Mail's computer system. The day after I received his letter (to my flat's address), I also received two of my test letters (dated April and May of this year) and a postcard (also April) that had clearly been sitting in the PO box for months and months. My other three test letters are still undelivered.
5) I called the RM guy back today seeking some sort of compensation for their lack of service. I asked that my PO box be extended for the amount of time it was non-functioning. This seems incredibly reasonable to me. He said that they don't extend things like that because "when you extend services, they tend to eventually drop off of the system." So apparently changing the end-date of something is even beyond the abilities of RM. He then offered by a £60 "good will" refund (which he kept stressing was purely good will and wasn't required of him at all). I argued that I should be given a refund proportionate to the time the service was non-functioning due to RM's failure. That would be about £95. He wouldn't budge from the £60 and said that if I chose to pursue the matter further with the Postal Review Panel, that £60 offer would be removed from consideration. I told him I was appalled by RM's treatment of this matter and that I'd have to consider the offer before committing in either direction.
I'm leaning toward pursuing it with the Review Panel strictly on principle. I've been pretty disgusted for years with my local mail delivery system losing mail, leaving packages outside in front of the main entrance to my building, delivering signed-for letters without bothering to have me sign for them.. but this PO box issue seems to cut-and-dry and well documented that I think I have a shot at actually winning. Anyone ever have experience with this sort of thing?
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Comments
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totally agree with you,i would keep pushing for a full refund at least
TBH given the total failure of the service here im surprised this hasnt at least been offered
a 'good will' gesture to me would have been a free extension of the service on top of the refund
interestingly i myself have been the 'cause' of a PO box delivery failure which i was just made aware of today!!
seems i had one on my duty which should have been cleared and delivered daily. dont live in edinburgh do you?
unfortunatly without being informed of this i can hardly deliver it :rolleyes:0 -
You paid your money and they weren't providing the service for all that time. Some of the test letters you sent yourself have still not been delivered. This means other mail that was sent to you in the period the Royal Mail were failing to provide the service may also have gone missing. It seems like a serious matter to me. A full refund would be the minimum I would expect.0
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Nope, London here. But you work for Royal Mail, apparently, so I have to hate you just a little bit anyway!
Anyhow, I decided to tell the RM customer service guy to stuff his £60 and I've sent a letter to the Postal Review Panel which apparently sits outside Royal Mail and should, in theory, be impartial. I included a detailed history of the case and copies of every bit of correspondence involved. If I win this, I'm going to call that guy back and let him know that I beat him. Oh, and the refund money will be nice too.. but not as satisfying as letting him know that I went over his head and hopefully made him look bad to his superiors.
interestingly i myself have been the 'cause' of a PO box delivery failure which i was just made aware of today!!
seems i had one on my duty which should have been cleared and delivered daily. dont live in edinburgh do you?
unfortunatly without being informed of this i can hardly deliver it :rolleyes:0 -
Let us know how you get on. I can't believe they didn't offer you 8 months back in the first place
- surely that's what you are entitled to.. by the laws of common sense if not actual consumer law! 0 -
The Postal Review Panel responded to my complaint and basically upheld the other guy's £60 refund claiming that the PO Box service "doesn't carry any compensation cover" and that Royal Mail wasn't responsible for service prior to my complaint because they didn't realise there was a problem. Apparently it's the customer's duty to constantly be testing Royal Mail products to make sure they're actually working properly.
But at least I have a cheque for £60 which is better than the £0 I thought I might get. I'm going to go ahead and deposit that and then pursue the matter further with the Postal Redress Service, which apparently is above the Postal Review Panel. I doubt it'll actually make a difference, but I'll get the satisfaction of annoying Royal Mail and it's not as if they're going to reach into my bank account and take the £60 back!0 -
Careful. Banking their cheque may be seen as accepting their offer in "full and final settlement".
Can the small claims court be involved?
Surely, you paid for a service and they did not provide it. Pretty clear cut as I see it.
They are saying they didn't know they weren't providing the service... amazing!!
But didn't the local delivery office know that your PO Box wasn't being delivered?0
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