Royal Mail rant incoming...

Soldato
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Ya'll live in a dream land. Who is going to sign up to do a single hours work in the evening? :cry:

The person manning the counter in the delivery office is usually doing something else when no one is there to be served. Times I've been I've had to ring a bell and wait 5 mins for someone to pop up.
 
Soldato
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I ordered a oneplus phone at the weekend. My heart sank when the email came through with a royal mail tracking number.

NEVER, EVER, EVER! USE ROYAL MAIL.

They are worse than useless. That goes for parcelforce too. Those idiots forged my signature and threw a dell 4K monitor over my fence into the garden...it was raining.

What was spooky though, was that the forged signature actually looked identical to my actual real signature.
 
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Associate
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All suggestions which have flaws.

  • A lot of workplaces have problems with people getting personal deliveries
  • Would be fine if Saturday delivery didn't cost significantly more (it's almost as if they make the weekday hours deliberately awkward to try and extort more money out of you for this ;))
  • Same issue as above - this almost always comes with a higher cost, or at least severely limits the places you can shop at.
  • Sure, because having to take a whole day off to drive to a shop on the other side of the country is a better option than having to take a couple of hours to fit around the stupid hours of the sorting office.
If you have a parcel being delivered by Royal Mail either special or tracked you can request it to be delivered on a day of your choice. No extra charge so just get it all delivered on a Saturday.
 
Soldato
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I work for royal mail, Just over 6 years now. You learn very quickly that RMSD items are not to be messed with. Posties do no touch or steal these items, They are tracked end to end, We are tracked on duty all the time. Our stops are checked, Door time check and even our vans now have trackers.

It's honestly insane, Royal mail went for having aging techolongy to now tracking every single one of there workers. You will legit loose your job if you misdisliver a special delivery.

Perosnally I think whoever the buyer is, is in the wrong. Royal mail clearly have enough proof the item was delivered to the correct address, 200 quid in insurance is nothing to a company making profit during covid times. There's clearly more to this and royal mail is being used a scape goat.

My two cent.
 
Associate
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I've only read the first few posts an also work for RM. RMSD are fully tracked and are not to be left anywhere and are to be brought back to the office where they are kept securely. I don't know who you sold the item to but i'd hazard a guess that because the postie has signed for it they're pulling a fast one. That's my 2 cents.
 
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I work for royal mail, Just over 6 years now. You learn very quickly that RMSD items are not to be messed with. Posties do no touch or steal these items, They are tracked end to end, We are tracked on duty all the time. Our stops are checked, Door time check and even our vans now have trackers.

It's honestly insane, Royal mail went for having aging techolongy to now tracking every single one of there workers. You will legit loose your job if you misdisliver a special delivery.

Perosnally I think whoever the buyer is, is in the wrong. Royal mail clearly have enough proof the item was delivered to the correct address, 200 quid in insurance is nothing to a company making profit during covid times. There's clearly more to this and royal mail is being used a scape goat.

My two cent.

Thanks for your input. What would you suggest we do in this situation?

You mentioned no stealing, but nothing on signing for it themselves and then not actually passing to anyone, which is it what royal mail said they did on a day that no one was in the house.

My front door is 1 window width from neighbours front door (however those neighbours I think had fully moved out by the "delivery date" and the house is still empty). How accurate is the GPS?

How possible is it that they signed for it and left in a spot they deemed safe. Plenty users have shown Royal mail often leave in/by bins. My bins are by the front door, and I live with house mates.

Not one person was in that day at the time of it being signed for.

There are few options here as to what happened.

1. Delivery man signed and kept the item.
2. Delivery man signed and left in a safe spot which then
2.1 was stolen
2.2 was thrown away as it looked like an old box as op said he reused a box
3. House mates (I say house mate but they are actually lodgers) kept the item (neither have computers) and neither would be stupid enough to steal from us.
Or this one which has just come as a thought
4. They dropped to the neighbours and left it outside their door. Our numbers go up 1, 2, 3 rather than 2, 4, 6, and often get courtiers mixed up with deliveries when they say say 10, they assume next is 12 so us, but actually next is 11, then it's us after after 12.

So what do we do now? They said it was signed for and delivered to occupier (I forget the exact word on the website), but how when no one was in? This is the biggest issue when this is clearly incorrect from my side. If they said "left in safe spot", fine, clearly it wasn't safe, but they are wrong/lied about giving this to anyone.

They have failed to provide proof of anything other than the driver signed for the item at a GPS close to our door (and the neighbours door)

No matter how I see it, royal mail failed to ensure this got delivered correctly.
 
Soldato
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Probably sitting in the empty house next door. I have had 2 RMSD delivered to my exact address except its not mine it's 5 minutes away and is exactly the same just drive instead of place. Utter incompetence its a 85yo in a sheltered accommodation house. DPD also did that as well. Postie up here is also a moron who has been told by the depot to keep mail covered but instead walks around in the rain with my kids weekly magazine gets its soaking and we need to get another sent. RM are an utter farce not fit for purpose in everyway.
 
Soldato
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Though this article was written 12 years ago,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1198023/One-postman-sacked-stealing-mail-EVERY-DAY.html Is the theft still as rife? A friend’s mum had her 70th in Nov 2019 and most of her cards never arrived. About ten days before the first lockdown, a small group of litter pickers found a black bin bag and a supermarket bag for life at the bottom of a ditch. Pulled both out and there were loads of envelopes most opened and contents missing or damaged.

Litter pickers contacted the police and RM. RM did an investigation. Friend has no idea what happened due to lockdown. Though her mum got whatever could be retrieved.
 
Soldato
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I reckon seller is going to have to refund buyer, and just write it off. Not sure what else you can try.

Next step I guess would be taking legal action, having a solicitor look at royal mails evidence that the parcel was delivered, but you are then throwing more money at the situation.

I lost £250 a few years ago when I sold a monitor through ebay. It's very annoying!

It's all well and good royal mail saying they have enough proof, but what is that proof? data on a screen. Photo evidence? DPD take photos now to avoid this.
 
Soldato
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Birmingham
I work for royal mail, Just over 6 years now. You learn very quickly that RMSD items are not to be messed with. Posties do no touch or steal these items, They are tracked end to end, We are tracked on duty all the time. Our stops are checked, Door time check and even our vans now have trackers.

It's honestly insane, Royal mail went for having aging techolongy to now tracking every single one of there workers. You will legit loose your job if you misdisliver a special delivery.

The problem is, how is the customer to prove that it was "misdislivered"?

  • Postie signs for parcel outside customer's door, postie steals parcel, postie has nice shiny new toy, customer says "where's my nice shiny new toy" and RM says "well postie signed for it, you must have it".
  • Postie signs for parcel outside customer's door, postie leaves parcel on doorstep which then gets pinched, customer says "where's my new toy" and RM says "well postie signed for it, you must have it".

The whole point of the "signed for" service is that it is proof that the item was delivered to the recipient. The whole point of paying extra for that signed for service (whether it's 1st/2nd or SD) is that you are covered in case it ISN'T delivered to the recipient. So essentially what you have here is not only negligence (giving the benefit of doubt to the postie here) on the part of the postie, you also have false advertising by RM by charging for a "signed for" service with compensation which actually provides neither a signature nor compensation.
 
Soldato
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The problem is, how is the customer to prove that it was "misdislivered"?

  • Postie signs for parcel outside customer's door, postie steals parcel, postie has nice shiny new toy, customer says "where's my nice shiny new toy" and RM says "well postie signed for it, you must have it".
  • Postie signs for parcel outside customer's door, postie leaves parcel on doorstep which then gets pinched, customer says "where's my new toy" and RM says "well postie signed for it, you must have it".

The whole point of the "signed for" service is that it is proof that the item was delivered to the recipient. The whole point of paying extra for that signed for service (whether it's 1st/2nd or SD) is that you are covered in case it ISN'T delivered to the recipient. So essentially what you have here is not only negligence (giving the benefit of doubt to the postie here) on the part of the postie, you also have false advertising by RM by charging for a "signed for" service with compensation which actually provides neither a signature nor compensation.

agreed, but where does the OP go from here?

would citizens advice/trading standards help at all?
 
Soldato
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Soldato
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It confuses me why people assume posties would nick these parcels. Risk loosing your 500 quid a week job over some hair straighteners with a amazing pension plan. We all get background checked before applying, we are not Hermes or amazon where they aren’t actually hired by the company.

But yes to a degree it’s unfortunate that covid has meant that customers can not sign for the parcels but that’s the same for all couriers right now. The only difference is our systems are not set up for photo on delivery.

At this stage the seller to my eyes has done his investigation and Royal Mail states they delivered it. The buyer if he honestly didn’t get it should now take legal action against Royal Mail, normally this means the police show up and interview the postal worker with gps and tracking information provided. Honestly be quite a hard case to win but yea.
 
Associate
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Probably sitting in the empty house next door. I have had 2 RMSD delivered to my exact address except its not mine it's 5 minutes away and is exactly the same just drive instead of place. Utter incompetence its a 85yo in a sheltered accommodation house. DPD also did that as well. Postie up here is also a moron who has been told by the depot to keep mail covered but instead walks around in the rain with my kids weekly magazine gets its soaking and we need to get another sent. RM are an utter farce not fit for purpose in everyway.

bit harsh calling him a moron. You try delivery mail in the ******* rain and keep letters dry. It’s just not possible, even the bags are not water proof, I can have bundle of mail in there and it will be soaked through within 10mins.

as for the op questions can you see in to the empty place next door. If it fitted through the letter box the postie might have signed and posted it there by mistake. Not meant to but does happen.
 
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as for the op questions can you see in to the empty place next door. If it fitted through the letter box the postie might have signed and posted it there by mistake. Not meant to but does happen
From what the OP said, it was well packaged and bigger than an envelope slot.

On top of that, the (edit) neighbours house has had many open days and viewings since then with the agency and the landlord doing work so any hope of it being there is extremely slim. I'd need to check when back in UK as to when I catch someone viewing the (edit) neighbours place to see if anything inside the door.

Edit
I also can't remember if people were still living there back on 15/09 as they only just moved out. It may have been they were still there but for the life of me can't remember. It's been too long now.
 
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