Scammed with the assistance of Royal Mail 21 December 2022 at 2:22PM in Consumer rights 27 replies 1.8K views

ambergeorge98

Hi, I posted a parcel and was scammed out of a phone worth £450. I contacted the police and action fraud team. I also contacted Royal Mail as they hadn’t delivered the parcel yet. I asked them to stop the delivery but they said only the police could. I rang the police and action fraud team who told me Royal Mail can stop the delivery if given crime reference numbers. I did this and Royal Mail still delivered. This has cost me a phone worth £450. What are my rights in this? The police and action fraud knew I had been scammed and said Royal Mail could stop the delivery but they chose not too. Can I claim against Royal Mail for this?

user1977

Did Royal Mail say they could somehow intercept the parcel? I wouldn't expect them to be able to do anything once it's in their system.

Your rights are against whoever scammed you.

elsien

It’s Christmas. Due to the Royal mail strikes there is a huge backlog of parcels and post building up all over the country. Asking them to track down one specific parcel amidst all the chaos is being a tad optimistic.
What service did you send it by?

Jumblebumble

ambergeorge98 said:

Hi, I posted a parcel and was scammed out of a phone worth £450. I contacted the police and action fraud team. I also contacted Royal Mail as they hadn’t delivered the parcel yet. I asked them to stop the delivery but they said only the police could. I rang the police and action fraud team who told me Royal Mail can stop the delivery if given crime reference numbers. I did this and Royal Mail still delivered. This has cost me a phone worth £450. What are my rights in this? The police and action fraud knew I had been scammed and said Royal Mail could stop the delivery but they chose not too. Can I claim against Royal Mail for this?

I am not convinced that it is useful for you to believe that the police know Royal Mails processes better than Royal Mail do.
The Police can only tell you that RM might be able to stop a delivery not that  RM 100%  will be able to do so.

Aylesbury_Duck

The title of the thread is inaccurate, and the target of your annoyance is misplaced.  The scammer is the culprit here, no-one has assisted or enabled the scam.  RM didn't "choose not to" stop the delivery, your expectation that they can guarantee intercepting one parcel in the middle of industrial action in the busiest period of the year is unreasonable.

I presume you've been the victim of a scam where the buyer sends through apparent confirmation of payment, you send the item and then realise no payment was ever received?  What details, if any, do you have for the scammer?  You have an address (although that's probably not his/her address) and presumably you have some correspondence?  Time to start doing some detective work to track them down.  You have no claim against Royal Mail.  Why should they pick up the cost of your mistake?

powerful_Rogue

There is no come back on Royal Mail. They are fulfilling their legal obligations.

Many interesting articles/threads on the net asking similar, this one stands out from an ex postal worker.

It is against the law for Royal Mail to hold on to an item, to return it to the sender or to give it to anyone except their delivery partners or someone at the recipients address. There are various caveats on that, such as undeliverable items.

If Royal Mail stopped the item on your say so, what would they do next that wasn’t against the law? My guess, based on process of elimination, is that they can only stop the item if the police produce a warrant for it and remove it from RM’s hands, once found. Hence they kept referring you to Action Fraud, so that you could register a crime with them, and the police could get a warrant.

Even with all of that, it would still be hard for RM to retrieve the item. Tracking doesn’t show you where an item is, it shows you where it has been...
https://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/community/viewtopic.php?t=90641

born_again

From my experience of the police, they say many things that people want to hear, despite not being true.

But unless it was a tracked parcel. How would they given the backlogs at the moment.

TBH. If police gave you a CRN (not action fraud) then they should be investigate the issue. Given they have the address involved.

SergeantBaker

born_again said:

From my experience of the police, they say many things that people want to hear, despite not being true.

But unless it was a tracked parcel. How would they given the backlogs at the moment.

TBH. If police gave you a CRN (not action fraud) then they should be investigate the issue. Given they have the address involved.

Correct, Action Fraud don't actually investigate, they do intelligence work on systems the Police can access themselves.  

Appliance_engineer

elsien said:

It’s Christmas. Due to the Royal mail strikes there is a huge backlog of parcels and post building up all over the country. Asking them to track down one specific parcel amidst all the chaos is being a tad optimistic.
What service did you send it by?

It wouldn't be too difficult for them to put an alert on deliveries to the address to which the parcel is being delivered.

The parcel will literally end up at the local delivery office with a label on it with the address it is being sent to. Not exactly hard to locate now, is it?

It isn't beyond the wit of man to flag and put aside parcels for the address in question, check for the return address which will presumably be on the parcel to be delivered and to hold it back for police investigation. 

You make it sound like they are going to have to sift through the entirety of their parcels in transit.

born_again

The CWU has formally notified Royal Mail they plan to call on their members who collect, sort and deliver parcels and letters to take national strike action on Wednesday 14 December, Thursday 15 December, Friday 23 December and Saturday 24 December 2022.

So not knowing just what dates you are talking about. Sadly RM will have been more interested in delivering the mail that was backed up, than searching for a parcel to stop.
Sorting at local depot is done by hand, with items just thrown in sacks for the rounds. I'm afraid expecting a postie to remember one address & stop a parcel when they are dealing with hundreds of items & under pressure to get them delivered is a bit much.

But why are police not dealing if they know you were scammed? 

user1977

The OP hasn't even logged back in since they posted the question 9 days ago, so I guess they've either resolved the issue or aren't interested in our advice.