Forwarding Occasional Royal Mail Letters

paperman_4

Has anyone recent experience of forwarding letters? My son is at university and a letter that was delayed arrived day after he went back to university. Is it still possible to forward for free by putting line through address on unopened letter and writing "please forward to" followed by his university address on? This used to be common in the past but there does not seem to be any definitive information on the Royal Mail website about it and even a lady in customer services I spoke to on phone seemed unsure and suggested speaking to the redirection department. But then phone number she provided did not work. It seems a bit unfair if I should have to pay extra postage for a delay and poor service by Royal Mail.

Voyager2002

paperman_4 said:

Has anyone recent experience of forwarding letters? My son is at university and a letter that was delayed arrived day after he went back to university. Is it still possible to forward for free by putting line through address on unopened letter and writing "please forward to" followed by his university address on? This used to be common in the past but there does not seem to be any definitive information on the Royal Mail website about it and even a lady in customer services I spoke to on phone seemed unsure and suggested speaking to the redirection department. But then phone number she provided did not work. It seems a bit unfair if I should have to pay extra postage for a delay and poor service by Royal Mail.

Sadly, this is no longer possible. If you do not pay for more postage, all that they will do is return to sender.

Unless the letter is confidential, you could use electronic communications to send your son a photograph of it.

paperman_4

Voyager2002 said:

paperman_4 said:

Has anyone recent experience of forwarding letters? My son is at university and a letter that was delayed arrived day after he went back to university. Is it still possible to forward for free by putting line through address on unopened letter and writing "please forward to" followed by his university address on? This used to be common in the past but there does not seem to be any definitive information on the Royal Mail website about it and even a lady in customer services I spoke to on phone seemed unsure and suggested speaking to the redirection department. But then phone number she provided did not work. It seems a bit unfair if I should have to pay extra postage for a delay and poor service by Royal Mail.

Sadly, this is no longer possible. If you do not pay for more postage, all that they will do is return to sender.

Unless the letter is confidential, you could use electronic communications to send your son a photograph of it.

Do you have personal experience of this happening? If not where did you hear this? Or is there anything on official Royal Mail website confirming this?

kalsha

paperman_4 said:

Voyager2002 said:

paperman_4 said:

Has anyone recent experience of forwarding letters? My son is at university and a letter that was delayed arrived day after he went back to university. Is it still possible to forward for free by putting line through address on unopened letter and writing "please forward to" followed by his university address on? This used to be common in the past but there does not seem to be any definitive information on the Royal Mail website about it and even a lady in customer services I spoke to on phone seemed unsure and suggested speaking to the redirection department. But then phone number she provided did not work. It seems a bit unfair if I should have to pay extra postage for a delay and poor service by Royal Mail.

Sadly, this is no longer possible. If you do not pay for more postage, all that they will do is return to sender.

Unless the letter is confidential, you could use electronic communications to send your son a photograph of it.

Do you have personal experience of this happening? If not where did you hear this? Or is there anything on official Royal Mail website confirming this?

I would be interested in answer to  this as well.  I have forwarded lots of letters when the tenants have moved away (to their new address).  I have never found out if they received these letters!

daddyelf

You will find that increasingly Royal Mail will surcharge the item as non paid postage. If however you were returning to sender then thats fine, if a bank statement or such where there is a return address on the envelope.

This is RM's official take on it all. Which can be found here: https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5156/~/ive-received-someone-elses-mail#:~:text=If%20this%20does%20happen%2C%20you,them%20to%20update%20their%20records

Flugelhorn

I never quite trusted the system of forwarding  Letters for students are rarely urgent and they often have a copy of whatever it is online (at  least that seemed to be the case) - if there were a few I would put them in an envelope and stick a stamp on it and send it. On occasions they were happy for me to open it and scan / photo it and send 

daddyelf

You make a very good suggestion @Flugelhorn put a batch together then send correctly addressed with appropriate postage in single envelope

Generally RM would red cross the mail bag with this sort of mail and its put on a "we will deal with it as and when" currently a surcharged item eg underpaid postage, will take in the region of a week to arrive at a sorting office, thats before the grey card is even issued. Forwarding mail would be treated similarly. They did have an exercise about a year ago where if the senders address was viewable they were returning mail with the surcharge to the sender. It didn't last long and was only in certain areas, but on occasion in our local PO we still see this.