Royal Mail vs Post Office redirection

carolinosourus

Hi all,

We're moving soon and I was hoping to set up a redirection service with minimum fuss- I won't be able to go to the Post Office this week and we move at the weekend.

The Post Office and Royal Mail seem to do different services, at the Post Office you have to go in with 2 forms of ID for each resident and do it face-to-face at the Post Office and pay by cash or cheque (!), whereas on the Royal Mail website you can do it all over the net by filling out an online form and pay online by cc/dc.

I thought that I'd just fill out the online form on the Royal Mail website but I've done it twice now and it keeps telling me that there was an error while processing my application, please select the application and try again. I've had a look through the FAQs and there's nothing about this, all the info is correct so I can't work out what it's problem is!

Has anyone got any experience of these things?

Thanks,

Caroline

EDIT: and I'm not sending passports and bank statements etc via post when I have no idea where they'll come back to!

EDIT2: also if we do it online then we get a free box with stuff in it from moveme, apparently...

creditboy

I am currently using the Royal Mail redirection service no problem. Maybe give them a call and see what the problem is?

carolinosourus

Thanks for the response, I've tried to call but they're not open on Sunday. Did you do it all online? Or did you have to send things off/go into the post office?

custardy

lol when did RM and the post office become seperate?
its 2 different ways to use the same service

carolinosourus

Lol I know! This is why I was so confused! I started to think that they'd separated and I'd just somehow missed the news...

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2?mediaId=600008&catId=5200021

http://www.postoffice.co.uk/portal/po/jump2?catId=63800711&mediaId=19100252

The thing is, the Post Office website doesn't give the option to apply online, whereas the Royal Mail site does... See?

dzug1

custardy wrote: »

lol when did RM and the post office become seperate?
ts 2 different ways to use the same service

They ARE separate businesses and have been for a fair while.

But it is just two ways to use the same service - the Post Office are acting as agents for Royal Mail when they handle the forms and send them off on your behalf.

custardy

thats because the postoffice is there to provide the service at.........................the post offce

custardy

dzug1 wrote: »

They ARE separate businesses and have been for a fair while.

But it is just two ways to use the same service - the Post Office are acting as agents for Royal Mail when they handle the forms and send them off on your behalf.

you think i dont know?
however who handles the letters entering the system,the post office
who deals with delivery,RM
so the only people who can do redirection is RM
the businesses are only seperate on paper,the two are intertwined in ther daily business

carolinosourus

OK, that's great

But WHY can you only apply online through RM? And WHY doesn't it work?

456789

The online thing never worked for me it always says cannot verify your details

fill in the form and take it to the post office they can check your id there and give it back to you and then send off the form

also they need 5 working days notice before the redirection can start

Kyrae

We signed up for redirection through the Royal Mail website earlier this week, and initially filled out the forms in my name as the main occupant and my also asked mail to be redirected for my partner too. My partner entered his credit card details. It said it couldn't verify my application details and I would need to apply in a post office.

So we immediately filled the form out again with my partner as the main occupant and it worked with no problems.

Only differences I can see are the second time the credit card name was different from the main occupant's name, and when i applied i had only lived at this address for a couple months, whereas my partner has lived here a couple of years. So perhaps if you've lived at the address for less than a certain period of time you can only apply in a post office branch, or the credit card must be in the name of the main occupant?