Postal disruption and lost cheques

terry8591

mjm3346 said:

terry8591 said:

mjm3346 said:

terry8591 said:

mjm3346 said:

terry8591 said:

Hi, does anyone know what happens if cheques are lost in the post and not deposited? Thanks to the postal strikes I've had no post delivered for a couple of weeks and before that many things were delayed by the strikes. One ebay order was lost in the post and some letters were about a week late, and things are even worse now. When all the post builds up like that, the chances of things going missing increase, especially if they have to use temp postal workers to help with the huge backlog (which will be exacerbated by the Christmas rush). If a cheque goes missing, is it just tough luck for the winner? For many competitions the first and only notification of a win is getting the cheque.

Cheques are not high on the list of things that go missing as they are not much use to most other people - giftcards however are almost as good as cash and a fairly common prize - same as a cheque if you do not know about it then there is nothing you can do about it

It's been known for temps to keep the good stuff and just dump the rest though.

Only a small amount of the total number of items posted are dumped but being able to feel a gift card inside an envelope makes an attractive target and just lifting an occasional envelope (and resealing if required) is far lower risk than dumping lots of mail. 

If gain was the only motive then yes, but some are motivated by laziness, especially if they are just temping for a few days and don't really have a job to lose. This may be made more of a temptation because of the backlog from strike days and the Christmas effect. I've seen many cases, over the years, of dumping like this one a couple of months ago:
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/royal-mail-investigate-after-hundreds-7702300

There are over 90,000 postmen/women in the UK and there would need to be multiple cases of dumping every day to make it  anything more than a tiny amount of the total mail handled daily - and if it is dumped most could be delivered if recovered and of course mass dumping is easily detected.

If someone just put them in a bin bag they might never be detected. In 2004, 14.4 million letters were being lost every year. It's must be a lot less now, just because people don't use the post as much, but it does show the scale the problem back then. Some may be delivered to the wrong address and never be forwarded, but that is just as bad as them being dumped. But the point I keep trying to make is that this a very unusual situation right now, with a lot of industrial action coming at Christmas, by far the busiest time of year. That's why I started this thread, because this isn't a normally functioning postal service and I was wondering what would happen if you won and never even knew, because the cheque never arrived. Surely you agree that all the pressure of the strikes and Christmas will increase the likelihood of things going missing? I'm kind of wishing I hadn't bothered asking now.

mjm3346

To put the number into perspective

About 14.4 million items of post are lost every year, with 60 per cent simply put through the wrong letterbox.
Only about 0.07 per cent of the 21 billion letters they handle a year were lost or substantially delayed

So the overwhelming chance is you would not lose a cheque in the post - but if you did and also knew nothing about the win than that's likely to be the end of the matter same as with any prize you don't receive and don't know you have won. 

Only a very small number of prizes I have won just turned up without prior notification and that includes some cheques.

terry8591

I've only won a couple of times in the last two years, one was for £200 and another for £150 from two different magazine publishers. Both arrived completely unannounced, hence this thread. And as I've said before, I've already lost one postal item in the last couple of weeks, and I only knew because it was something I ordered from ebay, which was posted as a tracked letter that just disappeared from the Royal Mail postal tracking system, so the seller refunded me. BTW, I'm ending this conversation now, because it has become a futile exercise.

mjm3346

terry8591 said:

I've only won a couple of times in the last two years, one was for £200 and another for £150 from two different magazine publishers. Both arrived completely unannounced, hence this thread. And as I've said before, I've already lost one postal item in the last couple of weeks, and I only knew because it was something I ordered from ebay, which was posted as a tracked letter that just disappeared from the Royal Mail postal tracking system, so the seller refunded me. BTW, I'm ending this conversation now, because it has become a futile exercise.

Not quite sure what a tracked package from an e-bay seller has to do with ordinary 1st or 2nd class post.

Unnecessary worry - There is almost no chance of a particular individual letter being lost, if we combine that with the very little chance that you will be sent an unannounced cheque win then the result is almost as close to zero as you can get.

When I have won larger sums from magazines they have contacted first to say there was a cheque being sent and asking for a few words and a photo. ITV, C4 and MTV all phoned first and other 4 figure wins have all involved e-mail/social media contact before the prize was sent