Mis-Delivered post

FairlieRoads

We're in the middle of a saga involving Royal Mail and HMRC (Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue).

What happened was that a few times over the past year we have had mail delivered that has our house number on it but the wrong street address. When this has happened we have either popped it back in the post for redelivery or even gone round to the other house and put it through their door. I did occur to me that the same thing could be happening to some of our mail but assumed that the other people would do the same as us and redeliver to us. We also informed the Post Office and we were told the problem would be sorted.

Unfortunately, one of our letters that was wrongly delivered was the form from HMRC that you have to fill in and return to maintain child tax credits payments.

The money is usually paid into my wife's bank account and as she doesn't really check her bank statements properly (I know, I've tried telling her she should!) it was about nine months before she realised the payments had stopped. "I thought my money didn't seem to be going as far". When she rang HMRC to ask why, they said it's because the form had been returned marked "Not at this address" so they'd assumed we had moved and not let them know and therefore stopped the payments until we got in touch.

So it's been a right old palaver to sort it all out. Various phone calls, form filling and reapplying for the tax credit. HMRC have back dated three months' worth of credit and they are considering the other six that's missing, but it doesn't look likely that they'll pay it.

We have complained to Royal Mail right up to Headquarters in London level and had a letter telling us they are very sorry, it won't happen again etc. but as the missing letter from HMRC wasn't sent by special/registered mail they will not be paying any compensation for our financial loss and all the hassle they've caused because, quote "it would open the floodgates for everyone to claim compensation when things go missing"!!! WELL DELIVER THE BL88DY MAIL PROPERLY THEN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE PAYING OUT COMPENSATION!!!! was my reaction to that comment!

So it seems that you can send a letter that is properly addressed with postcode etc. and simply because the postman can't seem to read and/or know which street he's in and puts it in the wrong door, you have absolutely no come back on Royal Mail at all. Even when they investigate and admit that they were in the wrong.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I wonder what anyone else would do under the same circumstances?

RadoJo

Well, I would be fuming, but it seems that you have explored every avenue immediately available to you! What about Postwatch - they are the independent watchdog for postal services in this country, and they should at least be able to tell you whether you stand a chance of getting much further. The website is here: http://www.postwatch.co.uk/ an they have a whole section for complaining about misdelivered mail here: http://www.postwatch.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=558

Good luck - I know that by and large the postal service do a good job, but really, there is no excuse for not taking some action to remedy your problem!

pinkshoes

It happens alot to us too, although we get a couple a week of someone elses mail, which i either put back in the post box, or deliver through their door a few streets away.

That seems a bit silly that the people at the other house sent it back saying "not at this address" rather than "delivered to wrong address"!

I always make sure I write on the mail that it was delivered to the wrong address, so the people at the correct address are also aware of it.

Postwatch are helpful and can initiate a good investigation, but even after that, we still get the wrong post and have alot of post go missing!

custardy

i recommed when you return an item as delivered to wrong address that you write the street.
basically say i deliver an item to 6/5 dumdum avenue.it gets returned as delivered to wrong address.
now the person may live at 5/6 dumdum avenue but i would then redeliver the item to 6/5
also it shows the customer where it was delivered so if there is a complaint it shows what postie made the error.
nothing worse than getting a misdelivered letter marked delivered to wrong address so you get the blame :mad:

unfortunatly its an ongoing issue with RM.see my new postie thread in the ebay section for an inight into present 'training'

vetfred

We recently moved and paid for mail forwarding. We've been forwarded the new occupiers mail once and they've been delivered around ten pieces of our mail, one of which was an appointment for our baby's immunisations.

wishiwasarichgirl

Happens here all the time too, I get mail delivered with my house number but a differen street - they don't even look similar!!

I'm not sure why it happens but I suspect that a lot of postmen are in denial about needing reading glasses - I'm an optician and have seen a few postmen just in my area who admit that they find it difficult to tell the difference in 3, 6 & 8 etc, yet when I prescribe reading glasses they say they don't need them :rolleyes:

FairlieRoads

Thanks for your replies. It looks like it happens quite a lot to others aswell!

I'm still cross about the "It's just tough luck if your stuff goes missing" attitude from Royal Mail. Can't believe how they get away with it!

RadoJo - thanks for the links to Postwatch. I'm going to contact them and see what happens.

custardy

wishiwasarichgirl wrote: »

Happens here all the time too, I get mail delivered with my house number but a differen street - they don't even look similar!!

I'm not sure why it happens but I suspect that a lot of postmen are in denial about needing reading glasses - I'm an optician and have seen a few postmen just in my area who admit that they find it difficult to tell the difference in 3, 6 & 8 etc, yet when I prescribe reading glasses they say they don't need them :rolleyes:

tbh once you are out on a duty,you tend to just look at the numbers as the mail 'should' just flow with the route.
obviously if you know the route then youi know the names so missorted items stand out to you.
i once almost started to deliver a whiole street wrong!!! i was new and the walk had been put up/tied down for me so i took the next bundle out and assumed it would be the next street i came to. only reason i noticed the mistake was the street sign was overgrown so i went over ot double check.
someone less bothered or maybe in a hurry could have easily just delivered the whole street as the numbers matched

FairlieRoads

custardy wrote: »

tbh once you are out on a duty,you tend to just look at the numbers as the mail 'should' just flow with the route.
obviously if you know the route then youi know the names so missorted items stand out to you.
i once almost started to deliver a whiole street wrong!!! i was new and the walk had been put up/tied down for me so i took the next bundle out and assumed it would be the next street i came to. only reason i noticed the mistake was the street sign was overgrown so i went over ot double check.
someone less bothered or maybe in a hurry could have easily just delivered the whole street as the numbers matched

Before we got to the official complaint stage there were a couple of the times I've taken the wrongly delivered mail out and handed it back to the postman. He did say that someone else at the sorting office must have put it in the wrong bag. I didn't realise that there are so many different stages when sorting the mail. Quite interested to find out actually.

custardy

well its like a filtering process
so mail is collected from post boxes,post offices etc
then put on vans/lorries to the nearest mail centre
they sort the mail into postal areas,regions etc then send it on
so for example the edinburgh mail centre recieves mail for edinburgh (eh 1 to eh17),livingstone,dundee e
tc

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/51802574.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A68900734426FA6536FF3FE211717AB081
but also mail for london and anywhere else and seperates it down for sending to the appropriate local mail centre.

so in edinburgh,the mail centre splits mail into postcodes areas and sends the mail to the correct(hopefully)delivery office.
so all the EH1 mail goes to the eh1 offices etc



you have 'machine' mail or coded/codas as we call them
these are letters seperated into individual walk duties.so the postie puts these into his delivery frame.
average day for me on a 750 call walk is 7 to 10 coded bundles
RM have walk sequencing machines where mail comes in delivery frame order but these have yet to be fully implemented.
the rest of the maiul comes in unsorted so has to be manually sorted into each walk.so posties go to the mail sorting area(ips/inward primary sorting) and sort the mail into the individual walks.

imagine the above with more than 2 posties lol(my office has IPS about 5x this)
in seperate areas other posties manually sort the flats(a4 size)
in another area the packets are sorted into walks/drivers packets


so in the end all packets,letters and flats should be sorted into walks

so the postie clears all that mail off to their delivery frame and puts it into the appropriate slots.



once its up you have condemns,redirections to do.
then 'flat it up' to confirm any stairs are in order
sort your packets drop bag and mark ltters to show any packets

you also get intra missort deliveries(so local missorts that went to the wrong office)
that come in a set times during the morning and require sorting.

then the duty is tied down into seperate bags depending on how many pouch boxes/dropoff bags you have.

ive obviouly skimmed here as it varies.
in most offices during IPS ,some posties dont sort but put up other duties for the part timers who come in later

wishiwasarichgirl

thanks for that reply custardy

I'd never really thought about who sorts out the mail for the posties to deliver, I suppose I'd always assumed they get a big bag of it in the morning and have to sort it out themselves!

I think royal mail do a pretty good job, even despite the regular bashings they get. It still amazes me that I can put a letter in a post box in East Anglia at 5.55pm and mum will recieve it in Northern Ireland by 8.30am the next morning :T