Our first blog is a negative one and is directed at one of the countries’ biggest companies. So big in fact, the queen has put her name to it. Now usually I wouldn’t start a page off with something negative and trust me, in future, the posts will be more upbeat.

Royal Mail. Yes, the super efficient Royal Mail.

Recorded Delivery

We have recently been doing lots of Credit Control work and signed up a new client a while back which would involve sending lots of important letters, Invoices and Legal documents to their suppliers and clients all over the UK. Now, I must add here that we have agreed to send everything Second class Recorded Delivery as the Royal Mail website states this ‘guarantees’ delivery within 3 -5 working days and has the added bonus of being trackable, it also allows you to claim compensation if the items get lost. So due to the importance of the documents involved, this was our only options it seemed.

Moody!

So…off I go to the post office, pay my monies to the moodiest woman in the world who calls herself a ’sub postmaster’ and moans at me every time for some reason or another. The last time I visited her I was scorned at from behind the counter for using online postage rather than buying my postage in store and according to the lovely lady in question “It is people like you that are causing our local post offices to close down”.

It couldn’t possibly be the fact that her face screams ‘I hate my job and I hate you too’ every time someone approaches the counter.

Now being the efficient worker that I am, I always check the Royal Mail website a week later to ‘track’ the item and make sure the package has been signed for and safely received. There never used to be a problem with this but over the last 3 months I must have spent around £200 on online postage and sent around 50 recorded items.

So it was quite a shock recently when I logged on and started the arduous task of tracking 30 or so items, that 4 of them presented me with a message stating. “Your item was received at ****** Post Office on the 8th September and is currently working its way through our systems”.

Faster than Santa…

Through our systems! Some of these items were posted 30 days ago! Father Xmas delivers quicker than these guys!

So I call the Customer Service number and after listening to an annoying robot make me choose around 50 different options, I am eventually allowed to speak to a real person who doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about. They tell me that once the item is 15 working days late, I can complete a 3 page claim form and send it off to the ‘Security’ department who will take a look at the whereabouts of the item and get back to me within 30 days. They also told me that they know of parcels sent well before mine that are still ‘lost in the system’ and they aren’t sure how long it is going to take them to catch up with deliveries. Brilliant, just brilliant.

There are a number of issues I have with this along with millions of others it seems, but will our moans get us anywhere? I imagine not. All I can say is – sort yourselves out Royal Mail, you are a joke.