Royal Mail Signed For parcel thrown through open window!

Honeydog

Update this morning. I received a cut and pasted apology email which hasn't answered any of my questions about the unorthodox manner of delivery.

Dear **********

Thank you for contacting Royal Mail.

I'm sorry to hear that a Recorded Delivery item (reference ************) was put through an open window, startling one of your relatives and that no signature was obtained.

I fully appreciate the risk to the security of your mail and potential for damage if our postmen and women do not follow the correct delivery procedures. It's important that our customers have confidence in us to always deliver their mail securely and to a high standard, so I apologise again that we have let you down.

To deal with this problem, and based on the information you've provided, I have been able to take the following action:

. Logged and reported the full details of your complaint
. Passed these details to the manager of the Delivery Office.

The Delivery Office Manager will do all that is required to ensure you receive the quality of service you should expect in future. The delivery officer responsible will be reminded of their obligations to deliver mail correctly according to our agreed procedures and advised on the relevant disciplinary procedures.

I am sorry for any delay caused by my colleague requesting the item reference number by email rather than calling you. At present if a customer contacts us via email this is the medium we use to respond or request further information. A new email system and new handling guidelines due soon should help speed up the process.

Once again **********, please accept my sincere apologies on behalf of Royal Mail for the problem you've had, and our thanks for taking the time to make us aware of this. Please be assured that we take letting our customers down seriously and will use this information to make further improvements.

I hope you have found this information useful and that this explanation resolves your enquiry and concludes this matter for you. However if you are unhappy with my response you can contact the Escalated Customer Resolution Team who will re-investigate your complaint. They can be contacted by emailing: [EMAIL="customerresolution@royalmail.com"]customerresolution@royalmail.com[/EMAIL]. Alternatively you can write to: Escalated Customer Resolution Team, Royal Mail, PO Box 466, Plymouth, PL9 7HJ. If you do contact the team please can I ask you to quote your reference number ***************

Regards

***************
Customer Service Advisor


The email states that if you are unhappy with their response you can asked for it to be passed on to the Escalated Customer Resolution Team. So I have emailed them asking why the incident doesn't appear to have been investigated at all and pointing out that I feel that I have been fobbed off with a cut and pasted response and that they haven't taken it seriously.

.................................................................

I know some of you MSE-ers don't share the way I feel about this incident and that's up to you. You are entitled to post how you feel about it but don't expect me to get into a debate with you about it because it isn't going to happen.

HD

PS I LOVE how posties are now called DELIVERY OFFICERS!!! :eek:

System

They were always going to email something like that. As I have previously said its a very very minor complaint (which obviously the post office agree with)

Frankly I think the only way you would have been happy is if the post office had personally delivered the head of the postman in a box to your house (and asked for a signature to confirm receipt of the head)

custardy

what exactly were you expecting in your reply?
Its been logged and passed onto the line manager.
As I said,a minor complaint.
I think the cat o nine tails may have satiated your thirst

mazza111

Honeydog, it will now go to the manager for him to have a word with postie (at least). Think that's all you can really ask for along with a refund of whatever extra the sender paid to get it sent recorded delivery.

Honeydog

mazza111 wrote: »

Honeydog, it will now go to the manager for him to have a word with postie (at least). Think that's all you can really ask for along with a refund of whatever extra the sender paid to get it sent recorded delivery.

Hi Mazza,

I'm not interested in a refund.

What I am interested in is an explanation of why this chap/woman decided that not bothering with a signature and throwing my parcel through the window was the right thing to do! I don't think that that is expecting too much but we'll see what happens.

If it was an isolated incident then the postie will remember why he/she did it. In most jobs people are required to account for their actions if a customer enquires about it and I don't see why posties should be exempt from this.

Meanwhile I shall make sure that the window is firmly shut when I am expecting a parcel in future!

HD

dodger1

Honeydog wrote: »

What I am interested in is an explanation of why this chap/woman decided that not bothering with a signature and throwing my parcel through the window was the right thing to do! I don't think that that is expecting too much but we'll see what happens.

If it was an isolated incident then the postie will remember why he/she did it. In most jobs people are required to account for their actions if a customer enquires about it and I don't see why posties should be exempt from this.

Hopefully he/she will be required to account for their actions, but that will be with their boss and therefore they won't be exempt from any explanation. The end user is rarely given a specific answer to a complaint, just a letter confirming that the complaint has been dealt with.

If you escalate the complaint you will probably end up with "he/she can't remember what happened". I do know that when I worked in the service industry that complaints were looked at and the person would be spoken to and told of their responsibilities. Nothing more would happen unless regular complaints came in about the same person.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

Honeydog wrote: »

Meanwhile I shall make sure that the window is firmly shut when I am expecting a parcel in future

oh, and make sure you're at home to sign for it.

mazza111

Have to agree with dodger here. It's in the hands of his/her manager, hopefully they will get a slap on the wrist and that will be the end of it for them. The time to escalate it is if it happens again imo. As I've said before, they probably thought they were doing you a favour, look at the amount of people on here who think it's great that the postie signs for the item and leaves it in a safe place.

Damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Honeydog

I think the number of people who have said that they like their postie signing for stuff just points towards it being an 'unofficial' acceptable delivery method. Which is fine if you know and trust your postie. Sadly I've lost confidence in whoever mine was last Wednesday.

He had no way of knowing what was in that parcel and yet he chose to throw it through a window and let it crash to the floor. It is exactly like those cctv videos you see of courier companies whose employees chuck parcels over gates and call that a delivery! Except that given that RM delivered my parcel I somehow expected a better, more professional level of service. Shame I didn't get it. Sign of the times I suppose.

Anyway, I don't think anyone is interested in what happens next so I'll just let this thread sink. Thanks to those who provided considered opinions and to those who brightened my day yesterday with their wit. Cheers.

Grabs39

My postie puts things through my window quite often. I love it, well done to my postie for the initiative. About a 5ft drop, but amazons packaging is fine (it tends to be packages form amazon I get) and let's face it, how many times a day does someone, somewhere at royal mail drop something?

It saves a fortune in petrol and loads of time for trips to the sorting office. Which coincidentally is only ever open when I'm at work... which is why things aren't delivered in the first place!

As for things being left with neighbours - great, the private couriers round here (TNT, FedEx etc) always do this, dead helpful and I'm always happy to return the favour.