Money grabbing Royal Mail

soco1

I am one month in to a 6 month redirection. As I am waiting for a house purchase to go through I now find myself unexpectedly needing to change my temporary address and therefore my redirection.
I appreciate, though don’t wholly understand given the computerised age we live in, that I need to stop the redirection and start a new one. However what I don’t appreciate or understand is why Royal Mail do not offer some form of rebate on the fee for the unused period.
Pro rata refunds are generally available for early termination of contracts.
I believe this failure to provide pro rata refunds constitutes unfair terms under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in the form of excessive cancellation charges.

If I was to cancel road tax, insurance, tv licence etc I would get money back though in some cases there’d be an admin fee deducted. So how is the Royal Mail still allowed to have such unfair t&c’s whereby the consumer isn’t entitled to anything back after the first 14 days. Smacks of profiteering. 

I’ve tried their complaints procedure and simply got a reply regurgitating their policy which didn’t address anything I’d raised. 

Is it just me or are their terms unfair to the consumer?

Alderbank

I suspect that practically the entire cost is for the initial administrative setting up and reprogramming to divert your mail.
Mail handling is almost entirely automated except for the 'last mile' and it won't cost any more for a postie to deliver to address A than address B.
Therefore the cost of setting up a redirection for eg. 1 month wouldn't be any less than for 6 months. 

soco1

How labour intensive & expensive can it be to program a system to produce stickers and then have them stuck on the letters?!
I understand that the post has to be pulled out when sorted in the local office but even so.

Alderbank

Apart from Christmas and my birthday, all my snailmail nowadays is from businesses. I expect that if I moved my mail would be heavily front-loaded, ie most of it in the first month, less the second month tailing off later to almost none as correspondents adapt to my new address.
You might be entitled to claim the estimated costs of any redirection in the later months of your contract minus the admin costs of cancelling the redirection. 
You could finish up worse off.

jon81uk

Its £33.99 for a three month redirection and £47.99 for six months. So at most you would only be entitled to the £14 difference refunded. As above most of the cost to Royal Mail would be in the set up.

soco1

It’s £36 for 3 mths and £53 for 6 mths.
It’s more the principle as I’ve only used the 6 mth redirection for 1 month and now had to buy another redirection to another temporary address. Obviously I hadn’t expected to move more than once otherwise I wouldn’t have committed to the 6 mth period.

HillStreetBlues

But isn't that the gamble?
You could have bought 3 months, then renewed it until you didn't need it any more.

jon81uk

soco1 said:

It’s £36 for 3 mths and £53 for 6 mths.
It’s more the principle as I’ve only used the 6 mth redirection for 1 month and now had to buy another redirection to another temporary address. Obviously I hadn’t expected to move more than once otherwise I wouldn’t have committed to the 6 mth period.

Prices must have gone up compared to the guide I found on Royal Mails site.

You can't pay for 1 month though so that fact is irrelevant. Its the gamble of paying for the six months in advance, if you do need it then you've saved £19 compared to getting three months and then another three months. But as you've found if you don't need it then you've paid £17 more than you needed to. Its not money grabbing when you know the costs upfront.

soco1

The price isn’t the point I’m making though!
I still think not facilitating pro rata refunds is unfair to the consumer and therefore contrary to the Consumer Rights Act 2015. 

Clearly no one else agrees though!

Alderbank

soco1 said:

The price isn’t the point I’m making though!
I still think not facilitating pro rata refunds is unfair to the consumer and therefore contrary to the Consumer Rights Act 2015. 

Clearly no one else agrees though!

No-one else agrees because it's not contrary to CRA 2015!

It's a service which you have used.
It's no different to taking a twelve month rental with Sky then saying after three months 'I've seen enough, give me 75% of my rental back!

soco1

I must be mistaken in my understanding of excessive cancellation charges then.
When I’ve had to cancel other services such as insurance, road tax, tv licence, council tax etc they’ve all provided pro rata refunds for time unused. Why should postal redirections be any different?