Royal Mail says deliveryd, but it wasn't

Merlin5 · 9 Jun 2018 at 13:44

I was waiting on a delivery today from Royal Mail. My tracking said they aim to deliver by 3pm. It now says delivered, but it wasn't. No card, nothing through the door and they're closed now.

The tracking page says '5:33am Due to be delivered today by Finchley Church End DO', that's my local postal office.

Now at the top of the page it says 'Your item was delivered on 9-6-2018'

And below that it says '12.10pm Delivered by Finchey Church End DO'

I phoned and got an automated service as they're closed after 1pm, and after saying my tracking number a voice reads back that it was delivered 12.10'AM'

Not sure what's going on. Tracking says delivered 12.10pm, but automated voice says 12.10am. Either way, it wasn't delivered to me. Anyway, it seems I can phone Royal Mail tomorrow till 2pm.

Merlin5 · 9 Jun 2018 at 13:57

muon said:
Is this special delivery or parcelforce? Royal Mail don't normally give times for delivery unless special.

If it is parcelforce they may have dropped it off to your local post office. Although they are supposed to actually try deliver it to you.

Well it says delivered BY Finchley office, so that sounds like it was apparently delivered by them to my house.
It's Royal Mail Tracked 24.

Merlin5 · 9 Jun 2018 at 18:13

It probably will come Monday. It's an online order for a pair of £80 IEMs.
Seller was very efficient. Shipping is free for me but I feel sorry for the seller if he paid extra for 24 hour delivery.

Merlin5 · 10 Jun 2018 at 01:26

dcsarge said:
I am a bit late to this party but any chance it was delivered to a neighbour and they didn't notify you. That appears to be quite common these days, especially with tracked but non-signature items.

Well I did go to the neighbour to my left today but he didn't have it, and I said hello to my other neighbour who presumably would have said something if he had taken it for me. The sender had the correct house number on my order details and invoice so one way or another it should find its way here eventually. Just annoying when you're excited about receiving something and the seller has done his best to fast track it to me as I originally didn't expect it till next Friday.

Merlin5 · 10 Jun 2018 at 11:48

I just spoke to Royal Mail who apologised and said they would start an investigation as to who the postman was and where it was delivered to and this could take up 3 to 10 working days and they'll let me know. I said to her maybe it wasn't actually delivered anywhere and it'll still be delivered tomorrow and she said no sir, it says it's been delivered so we'll need to look into it.

Great, so I might have to wait ages for my item because of someone's incompetence.

Merlin5 · 10 Jun 2018 at 11:58

Kronos said:
I have never understood why such things take so long to investigate?

Me neither. I guess it's standard for them to inform customers it could take this long. If it does take several days before they locate it and before I receive it, without wishing to sound like a ****, should I be entitled to some compensation for being inconvenienced, or, if not me, should the sender be reimbursed for his tracked 24 postage?

Merlin5 · 11 Jun 2018 at 10:47

So now they've updated the tracking. It's been delivered and they're going to deliver, lol.

Merlin5 · 11 Jun 2018 at 12:07

So it's just been delivered and it turns out that the reason for the delay was the printed address label was missing the first digit of my house number and first letter on each line of my address and they had to return it to their office on Saturday. Where I've scribbled out on the left of the label is where they wrote my full address when they found out which one. So fair enough, they could see the address but only the last 2 numbers of my 3 digit house number. But pretty poor it wasn't checked when the label was stuck on.

Merlin5 · 11 Jun 2018 at 12:41

kthula666 said:
Find out where that printer is and look for the letter box. Job Done

Lol. Actually it turns out none of this is Royal Mail's fault at all, although it was misleading to say delivered on Saturday instead of something like address unknown. The label would apparently have been printed by the sender. Nevertheless, the sender still got the item to me very quickly so basically, case closed.

Merlin5 · 11 Jun 2018 at 17:27

Vanquish-Storm said:
Strange Amazon using Royal Mail was it direct from Amazon or a seller using FBA?

A robot will have stuck that label on.

Yeah I bought directly through a small seller in scotland where they have site wide 10% discount. They'd just run out of stock and he told me their amazon warehouse has 25 more of the item. One of my emails from them said 'Picking via Fulfilment Warehouse'. So yeah, it was FBA.

Merlin5 · 13 Jun 2018 at 22:50

I've got another strange royal mail thing. I've been waiting on two shipments from one seller in china and a single shipment from a seller in hongkong.
Just found out that the royal mail tracking pages show all 3 shipments have arrived, one had arrived on the 5th June and it says due to be delivered on that day, and both the others arrived yesterday, 12th June and due to be delivered yesterday. None of these tracking pages have been updated and no attempts were made to deliver. Huh?

Merlin5 · 13 Jun 2018 at 23:01

Steeps said:
Good chance it's sitting in customs, Royal Mail doesn't have an option for sitting in customs in their tracking for international parcels but a phonecall usually has more info.

The 5th June tracking page says released from uk customs 4th June and the other two say item had left international processing centre on the 10th and 11th June. All items had apparently arrived at my Finchley depot on the 5th and 12th. I'll call them tomorrow.

Merlin5 · 14 Jun 2018 at 16:12

I called Royal Mail this morning and they couldn't explain it but have started an investigation. She asked If I'd checked with the senders if they have my correct address. I said no but I've used one of them before and am a registered member, plus I doubt two sellers would both have my address wrong.

I popped into my local delivery office and they're also going to look into it and call me. He showed me 3 sheets he'd printed off all confirming the same details of my 3 tracking pages.

He said "I know what's happened, the postman probably couldn't scan the barcode as it's international and would have put it through the letterbox." I said they wouldn't fit through my letterbox.

He then said I should have received an email saying my items were ready to collect. I said I didn't get any emails and he sounded surprised and then said he would check it all out and took my phone number. Quite the mystery!