OT: Royal Mail T&Cs

[Davey]

I received a card from Royal Mail, telling me that I needed to pay £11 for customs duty for a package. The only clue to the origin of this package was that the reference number ended in '..US'. As to the identity of the Sender, there is no clue. However, I have recently ordered something from the US, so I think I know what this is. If it had been a gift from somebody, I would have had no clue. I went online, as suggested, to pay the fee. There was no option to make a one-off payment, as it usual with businesses, the only way to pay online was to Register for a new Account, with an e-mail address and a Password. Once I was through all that, and had got through the procedures for identifying my address, I was then asked to confirm that I agreed to to the Terms and Conditions. Yikes! Pages and pages of them, most of which did not apply to the business at hand. The first document I opened had 26 pages. All to pay an £11 bill for customs, on a package which has not been identified to me.

When I sent a message to complain, I quoted the Ref. Number of the advice card, ending in "..US", and it was refused, as: "All Royal Mail Reference Numbers end in GB". So I added that to my complaint.

How to run a business.

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes indeed. In the months since the private sector took over the free Articles for the blind first class service, paid for by our government has started to slip from next day, to anytime in the next week if we can be arsed, and the damage of packages usually robust enough for hundreds of passes is significantly worse. also do they not ever clean their machines now? They arrive as if they have been used to sweep the floor.

No pride in the work, and if they are heavy with legal types who write daft things very verbosely on terms and conditions pages, no wonder. Daft things like, and this might be different now, but.. a package sent 1st class cannot be reported as missing for fourteen days, and later compensation will be paid in first class stamps.

The point is, I'm not asking them to investigate a missing item, just a whole load of ridiculously delayed ones containing news which is supposed to be current. And as we do not use stamps what is the point of compensation in stamps, buy us some replacement pouches!

Also why do lost parcels all get sent to Northern Ireland, and why is any so called local office for complaints anything but local? Brian

[Chris French]

Yes, it's fourteen days, but when I claimed for something that went missing in the post I received a cheque (or maybe a BACS payment, but anyway - money :-)

I guess it makes sense for one central department to deal with lost items, no reason why it shouldn't be in NI.

In message , Brian-Gaff writes

[Peter Johnson]

Because that's where the dead (undeliverable) letter office is. It was centralised there quite a few years ago.

[Brian-Gaff]

No the parcels go to ni, the offices for customer services seem to be all over but neve is the nearest one the one you are talking to. I'm afraid that mail which is really important to get there next day on a saturday, for charities seems to cut no ice any more. Brian

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes, but W H Y? It seems a bit expensive to send it over a sea, when I'd imagine, most of the odd parcels come from the mainland. Brian

[Adrian]

Even though a boat's involved, it's all part of the UK, of course. And I'd imagine that the fixed costs of running a large depot there are considerably lower than many places on the mainland.

[Peter Johnson]

Given that RM will always have trucks going backwards and forwards across the Irish Sea I don't imagine that transport costs very much, if anything, at all. (And the overheads in NI will be less than elsewhere.)