OT: Post office.

There seems to be a new-ish? tracking service where the sender can give you a tracking number but when you look on line all it tells you is whether or not the PO have got it. The rest of the message says no more updates will be given until it is delivered. By then of course you don't need to track it as you have the thing. WTF!

The proof of posting that you have dave seems to belong to a similar class of service ie just tells you that at that time/date the PO had it and nought else. It might be useful to support a claim but you have to wait quite a while before you can start this process. From bitter past experience making such a claim as a sender, the compensation has the postage deducted from it - just to make sure they are covered for the cost of losing it! In my case this was an item I had made for someone on my lathe and so I could not establish a value other than the cost of raw material. They wanted a List Price for it as a commercial item. As a result now I only send bespoke items like this fully tracked and signed for as this seems to ensure delivery although it still does not help with establishing a value in the event of a claim.

Over the past month or so I'm sure that 2nd class packages are only delivered once a week. Irrespective of when the sender confirms dispatch most of the expected packages arrive in one hit in this once a week delivery and if anything is outstanding nothing will arrive until a week later.

Some of the Royal Mail tracking is a complete waste of time. You get a tracking number from a seller but the only time it is entered into the system is when the postman scans it on your door-step. The only thing that can be inferred is that if the tracking number has no details then the package is still in the RM system and if a delivery is confirmed and you haven't got it then it has been delivered to the wrong house.

It's a quandary. I bought this from Ebay - from a small seller I've used before and I'd say is telling the truth. But when offering free postage you'd need to work out how often anything goes wrong, against the higher costs of signed for, etc, which are going to come out of profits.

I get quite a large number of small packets delivered by letter post - and generally pretty reliable.

I know for some it has a bad reputation but any parcels I now send via Hermes (P2G) as it is cheaper and you get a tracking number en route, it also shows when it has been delivered. You can enter your own insurance value for cover. I have never had any issues in 4 years.

I was helping a mate sort out a Dymo printer to print some pre-paid postage labels and they too had a barcode. He told me at that time the barcode was meaningless (nothing ever scanned it) but at least it gave any recipient the peace of mind that it might have been. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Interesting. The seller did put the barcode as a tracking number on Ebay. Clicking on that gets to a page which merely shows 'dispatched' and no other progress. But does say estimated delivery Friday the 17th, now long since passed. Not in a rush, so hope it does arrive - as I said I usually get a card if out.

Here 2nd class arrives in pretty much the same transit time as 1st class.

Just had a "Royal Mail Tracked 48", could see when and where it had been:

No one was available to sign on Saturday morning, so as is normal the Postie did and left it hidden. So well hidden, in plain sight, that I didn't find it until midday Monday just before taking the details to the local DO to find who delivered it and where they put it. (Yes, I had forgotten it was a fing bank holiday).

Its to tell them which round it was on and to mark your name against it as a pain I'd imagine. Brian

Yes people tell me that the cards put through have barcodes too, but as I say who knows. it would be relatively easy to use the same bar code from start to end after all. Brian

When presenting a Royal Mail card at the distribution centre the staff often cannot decipher the address/postcode hand written on the card and have to ask for the delivery address. They don't scan any barcode although they do enter your postcode into their computer terminal to check something before disappearing to find the item.

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