Royal Mail Rant

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

Man of Honour
Joined
29 Mar 2003
Posts
57,748
Location
Stoke on Trent
For about 5 years at least all the delivery companies have my safeplace as the blue bin behind our gates, this has been a zero problem except for the off times somebody doesn't read the safeplace instructions and puts it on the step or takes it back.
Yesterday Royal Mail bloke rings bell, looks at the bin but takes it away.
Today I'm more prepared and talks to him on my doorbell camera.
"I'm sorry I can't put it in the bin, AI will detect it and I'll get a reprimand" :) WTF?
"Can you please just put it in the bin just like 100s of delivery drivers before you?"
"I can put it under the bin but not in the bin, I'll get told off" - 1 minute later "I've put it behind the bin but be aware it's raining".

WTF?

Are there any Royal Mail staff here who can verify what he's saying, especially the AI nonsense?
 
That is nothing compared to what I have seen them do, they sent a Special Delivery package worth hundreds about a quarter mile away from my house and left it in the other addresses "Safe Place" which was outside lol. Nobody ever signed for it.

It was there all night outdoors, I found the map of where it was left on the RM website and went hunting for it.

I asked the postman the next day who had done it and he denied all knowledge of it.
 
Last edited:
Kenai said:
Whether the AI thing is true I have no idea but it is Royal Mail policy that a bin is not considered a 'safe place' and they won't/shouldn't accept that as an instruction.
Click to expand...

So why have I just updated my safe place a month ago with 'inside the bin' and their wonderful AI hasn't detected it :)

 
There was a big story on the BBC about RM putting parcels in bins a few days ago - it wouldn't surprise me if they've punted a memo out to managers saying "tell your teams not to put stuff in bins" and then your guy or a manager somewhere has added some AI spin to it.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
So why have I just updated my safe place a month ago with 'inside the bin' and their wonderful AI hasn't detected it :)

Click to expand...

Because it's presumably a free text entry field and they're obviously not monitoring that as well as they could be

What is acceptable as a 'Safeplace'?​

Your chosen Safeplace should be a secure, weatherproof area of the property that is out of sight and easily accessible for us. Requests to place parcels in recycling bins are not considered as a Safeplace by Royal Mail.
Click to expand...

Edit - and yes, as @Jim99 points out, the fact it made BBC News last week because someone's parcel got recycled, has probably meant they've all been told to stick rigidly to the policy regardless

 
Last edited:
I've always been a defender of RM, they've been very good here and over the years, I've never had an RMSD fail.

There's a new estate near us and over the last year or so, our post has deteriorated. We've had the same postie for over ten years and he's great, but suddenly we stopped seeing him and the regular pattern changed. I asked one of them if our postie is still about and it appears he's been shifted to cover the new estate and our round no longer has a regular postie.

Yesterday, we had a parcel delivered just after 09:00 and the guy said they were getting all the parcels out from the van early and that there wouldn't be a letter post because they're so short staffed.

For goodness sake, there's a whole new estate to cover, stop faffing about RM and get a new postie or two employed. It's not rocket science.
 
You should consider just putting a parcel box outside, attached to the wall or house, would save a lot of these kind of problems. As above, a bin is not a suitable place and the postie isn't going to risk his job over a single parcel.
 
~Mike~ said:
What's special about a blue bin, I don't have one, am I missing out?
Click to expand...

Recycle bin in a lot of places.

As for Royal Mail, they suck in my experience. Frequently have letters & parcels take ages to turn up, if they do at all. Meanwhile Yodel and Evri, supposedly the worst in the UK, are always on time and have never lost anything for me.
 
Last edited:
It's a statement. Buy something from Amazon or Ali baba and straight into the recycling bin. Like life in the fast lane, swift fashion on steroids, the cost of living writ large.

Royal mail deliver post once a week here. I believe that I only got birthday cards on the day was because this year my day fell on a Thursday and that is the day we get post. Three cards, a bank statement and two bills. The rest of the week nada, nowt, nil.
 
i once had Amazon leave a box of chocolate in our paper recycling bin. In August. In the middle of the day. That made for a great birthday present once they’d all melted together.
 
dave28 said:
That is nothing compared to what I have seen them do, they sent a Special Delivery package worth hundreds about a quarter mile away from my house and left it in the other addresses "Safe Place" which was outside lol. Nobody ever signed for it.

It was there all night outdoors, I found the map of where it was left on the RM website and went hunting for it.

I asked the postman the next day who had done it and he denied all knowledge of it.
Click to expand...
I had this exact same issue a couple weeks ago with Royal Mail.

The photo that the RM person took of the parcel dumped outside the other address was so poor I couldn't work out what house it was from that alone, but thankfully the map helped. And to top it off, it was raining heavily at the time, so my high value parcel was left outside somebody else's house a couple streets away in the wet.

I actually called RM to complain - how they can do this with Special Delivery parcels in particular completely baffled me. All they said is that they'll speak to the local delivery office and a few days later, the RM person doing the rounds that morning knocked on my door and apologised.

Fortunately, the contents of my parcel was fine after I found it, so I couldn't really be bothered to take it any further, but that was some seriously poor service from RM. I was honestly quite surprised because prior to that, they've been generally good in my area at least, so I'd probably chalk this as a one-off mistake. Still though, this was a Special Delivery parcel, which I had to pay extra for, so I expected them to deliver it properly.
 
Last edited:
Minusorange said:
Says blue is for paper but in my council blue is for plastic/cans/glass
Click to expand...

Same here but mine is behind a locked gate so no council worker is going to take the bin away.
It's worked with all of them for well over 5 years except this idiot today.
So the parcel was put in between the bin and the fence :)
I also have 3x CCTV cameras covering it.

20251004-162334.jpg
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom