Post office, Postal Order Fees and Refunds

itchy83

Hi,

I got a postal order for £65 (which cost me an extra £8.13) but as it turned out I didn't need it so I thought I'd just take it back and get my money back. They said they'd give me the £65 but I couldn't get the £8.13 fee refunded which I thought was a bit unfair as there hadn't really been any admin done...

After the postal clerk being quite rude and saying either take the £65 or get out I took the £65, came back and phoned the post office. Customer services told me that the £8.13 was an administration fee to which I asked what administration was done. She could not comment on this as it was the complaints department so she put me through to the postal order department.

So, through to the postal order department with me and after him trying to give me a big spiel about administration fees and I signed up to this agreement at the time of purchase and knew that the fee was non refundable, and this is company policy, etc. etc. - by the way none of that was explained to me before I had paid for it...

So, I asked him a straight forward questions about what admin is involved that costs £8.13 - he could not answer this.

I explained what I thought I had paid £8.13 for i.e. less than 5 minutes for a woman to write £65 and who its paid to on a piece of paper. He didn't disagree with this and continued to say he understands my grievance but it is company policy, and I accepted and paid for this charge. I thought the fee would be covering what ever admin is involved when cashing in the postal order but there is no cost for doing that - just writing the amount on the paper.

Now, surely this is part of her job and part of her salary pay and customers should not need to pay extra for this - am I out of order thinking this?

It took her less than 5 minutes to do so this works out at about £90 to £100 an hour - I think this is absolutely outrageous and something should be done about it.

As I believe, this service is mainly used by people who have no cheque books so really it is the "less-off" (no offence meant to anybody) people who need to use this service, and the first thing that springs to my mind is they are robbing off the vulnerable because they have no alternative method to do this. I think it is low to charge someone £8 for 5 minutes work, especially when she is already being paid to do that bit of work, to top it off the person purchasing the postal order already (more than likely) struggles to pay for rent/bills/food etc...

Is there any way of reporting this or anything that can be done?

Thanks for reading,
Regards

stevemLS

But you're not just paying for the assistant's time, there is a whole infrastructure that needs to be in place to support their availability and encashment as well as, presumably, a bit of profit.

The "prices" are clearly displayed on the web page for postal orders.

BillJones

itchy83 wrote: »

Is there any way of reporting this or anything that can be done?

Well you've done the reporting bit, by posting it on here.

As to what can be done, you've had your £8.13 "administration" by tying up the staff member in a pointless argument when they could have been selling other services, so there's not really anything left to do.

May I ask, though, how exactly you think the counter, building, lighting, heating etc are to be paid for? Do you imagine that it's all charitable, or do you perhaps think that it comes from customers, in the form of admin charges?

innovate

They also have to fund the time they have to dedicate to non-productive activities, such as people repeatedly complaining about not getting a refund for an item that was clearly advertised as non-refundable.

SurfKing

I never understand why people like standing up for big companies on this forum.

OP - you're right, the right thing for the Post Office to do would be to refund your postal order fee. They've really done no administration. The "admin" involved on the Post Office's part in creating a postal order is really no more than is involved in paying a bill or buying a tax disc, and those can be reversed without them docking your refund by the amount of their "admin" charge. Postal Orders are a total cash cow for the Post Office, but their policy is not to refund the fee. That sucks, but that's the way it is. Perhaps this experience should make you question whether you choose to use the Post Office's services in future.

k12479

SurfKing wrote: »

I never understand why people like standing up for big companies on this forum.

Probably because a lot of complainants are just wrong and also show a surprising lack of knowledge/common sense of how businesses function, well illustrated by this particular case. As already pointed out, costs have been incurred in supplying a service which someone has to pay for.

Horseunderwater

http://www.postoffice.co.uk/postal-orders - prices displayed here.

custardy

Cracking post

stevemLS

k12479 wrote: »

Probably because a lot of complainants are just wrong and also show a surprising lack of knowledge/common sense of how businesses function, well illustrated by this particular case. As already pointed out, costs have been incurred in supplying a service which someone has to pay for.

This, and very often when service is described as "shocking", "disgusting" and any other number of adjectives, what in fac they mean is that the business refused to meet their unreasonable demands.

Amazing how many assistants are "rude" in those circumstances which in fact, I imagine, means again refusing to meet demands.

BillJones

SurfKing wrote: »

I never understand why people like standing up for big companies on this forum.

Really? It's simple enough; sometimes the big company is in the right, and the customer is in the wrong.

What I don't understand is people who will ignore who is right in any given situation, and make the idiotic assumption that a "big company" must be bad, and acting poorly.

System

You bought a £65 PO for the face value plus handling charge. Ypu have now encashed it not returned for refund.

Once bought the only options for a PO is encashment