Saturday, March 13, 2010
USING THE ROYAL MAIL - A BOND OF TRUST?
Some years ago I posted a Christmas card with enclosed cheque to my Goddaughter in Essex from our home in Dorset. It never arrived. My Goddaughter's father remarked that post was always being stolen in his area (Wickford) and I remember thinking at the time that the bond of trust between sender and the Royal Mail was fragile and easily broken.
I've never forgotten the lesson of that incident, so when I sent my son a birthday card to his flat in Finsbury in February, I put the telltale coloured envelope inside a boring-looking C5 business envelope to make it look less interesting, in the hope that the £20 note I'd enclosed might make it into his hands, rather than those of some dishonest postie.
Sadly, my precautions were in vain: the card never arrived. So I started the Royal Mail's complaints procedure, more as a matter of principle than in hope. After a few weeks I received a response advising me that the matter had been investigated as far as possible, but that as I had only used first class post I was not entitled to any compensation for the lost £20. I was sent a book of six 1st class stamps, however.
My point about making the complaint was not to get back the £20, although that would have been good, but to alert the Royal Mail to an incident of mail being pilfered by delivery postmen. The fact that the vast majority of mail is not stolen is testimony to the basic honesty of nearly all posties. But it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the barrel, so when I needed to return a DVD to my son by post, I felt I had no choice but to send it recorded delivery - what should have been an unnecessary additional expense.
I don't know whether it's a coincidence that my experiences of postal theft involved London and the London area. I've never had an item sent to or by me me fail to arrive elsewhere in the country, so are our capital's more militant postal workers also our most dishonest? I'd like to hear the Royal Mail's thoughts on the matter.
Some years ago I posted a Christmas card with enclosed cheque to my Goddaughter in Essex from our home in Dorset. It never arrived. My Goddaughter's father remarked that post was always being stolen in his area (Wickford) and I remember thinking at the time that the bond of trust between sender and the Royal Mail was fragile and easily broken.
I've never forgotten the lesson of that incident, so when I sent my son a birthday card to his flat in Finsbury in February, I put the telltale coloured envelope inside a boring-looking C5 business envelope to make it look less interesting, in the hope that the £20 note I'd enclosed might make it into his hands, rather than those of some dishonest postie.
Sadly, my precautions were in vain: the card never arrived. So I started the Royal Mail's complaints procedure, more as a matter of principle than in hope. After a few weeks I received a response advising me that the matter had been investigated as far as possible, but that as I had only used first class post I was not entitled to any compensation for the lost £20. I was sent a book of six 1st class stamps, however.
My point about making the complaint was not to get back the £20, although that would have been good, but to alert the Royal Mail to an incident of mail being pilfered by delivery postmen. The fact that the vast majority of mail is not stolen is testimony to the basic honesty of nearly all posties. But it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the barrel, so when I needed to return a DVD to my son by post, I felt I had no choice but to send it recorded delivery - what should have been an unnecessary additional expense.
I don't know whether it's a coincidence that my experiences of postal theft involved London and the London area. I've never had an item sent to or by me me fail to arrive elsewhere in the country, so are our capital's more militant postal workers also our most dishonest? I'd like to hear the Royal Mail's thoughts on the matter.
Labels: lost in the post, postal theft, Royal Mail, thieving posties
