Lost parcel and lost claims form. What to do now?

Fuzzy_Duck

Hoping for a bit of advice please.

In late October I posted a coat bought from New Look using their Freepost address and it got lost. I admit I was a prat because the coat cost £40 and I should have paid for a better service- I now know that Freepost is treated the same as Second Class post and if Royal Mail reimburse me I'll only get £32 max (although I fear they won't give me anything back as they'll say I used the wrong service). I have no excuse other than the fact that until now I had very good experience with Royal Mail and had only lost one item before which was compensated very quickly after I put in a claim.

Anyway, I was at least sensible enough to get proof of postage so I waited 15 working days and made a claim. I was a bit wary of putting in my original proof of postage but after a bit of research on the web found some people complaining Royal Mail wouldn't accept photocopies, so I scanned my proof of postage before hand along with my claim form and other evidence, and posted the originals... by Freepost. I know, I know. I'm too cheap for my own good, but at that point I still thought I'd just been unfortunate with the coat and the claim form would get there fine.

I waited a month as asked on the Royal Mail website and after receiving no response, went about looking for an email address to contact them as I was sick of using the post. I found one on the net (not customer services) and sent them an email explaining and apologising for sending it to the wrong place. They replied pretty promptly to say there was no record of my claim form ever being received, and then telling me to wait a bit longer as they were still investigating claim forms received in November?! Then they told me to speak to customer services and put the same rubbish contact information available on the website. So, I guessed the customer services email address using the same format and sent the same email again saying that apparently you never received the form, hope you can accept these scans as you lost my originals, and can I least have some confirmation of receipt as I've been waiting ages for this to be dealt with. As polite as possible as course, though I was getting pretty frustrated by this time.

Still no response, so this time I sent a letter with all my previous correspondence again, this one a slightly bit more miffed-sounding as I was utterly fed up at this point, not to mention missing my £40. As you can probably guess, I've still had no response and am regretting not sending it tracked.

I haven't a clue what to do. I know they've been horrendously busy with the snow and Christmas post but I've already been waiting patiently so long. The more months I wait to give them a chance to respond makes it seem less and less likely I'll ever get any of my money back. Is there anything else I can do? I don't want to ring as it's seemingly impossible to get through to a human being, and I don't want to bother New Look as surely it was my responsibility to get the parcel to them, not theirs- unless of course they have a procedure for this kind of thing?

Sorry for an extremely long rambly message

fishingcinema

I would have imagined that if new look provided a free post address to sent the coat back to them and you had proof of postage
(at the time pre claim form) then it would have been new looks job to chase royal mail not you as effectivly they have the contract with royal mail

I may well be wrong but that is what i would assume if it were me and will be interested to find out what would have been the right thing to do in this case.

Also i do hope you get it sorted soon

Fuzzy_Duck

Thanks for the response fishingcinema. I feel very daft, I should have asked New Look in the first place but at the time I thought it would be quicker if I went ahead and claimed myself. I'll ask them now anyway, as at least then I know what to do in future and their response may be of help to someone else!