OT: Postal charges for forwarding mail?

[Huge]

Why, did he actually *want* to be laughed at?

[Andy Burns]

I'm surprised you didn't get a "you were out" postcard, asking to visit the sorting office and pay the extra plus a £1 handling fee ...

[NY]

I bet if it had been my old postman he'd have done that. He was a stickler for playing by the rules. I was once bringing something in from the car so I left my front door open while I walked across from the car park. I'd seen he postie walk up to my front door but all he'd left was a "while you were out" postcard. When I walked a few doors away to challenged him he said that he wasn't allowed to put letters on a front door mat through an open door and had to put it through the letter box. He wouldn't hand over the letters even if I produced my driving licence as ID (although he knew who I was because he addressed me by name). With very bad grace he walked back with me and insisted that I should shut my front door and then open it with my key to prove I lived there. Even then he wouldn't give me the letters until I had closed the door so he could put the letters through the letter box. Very obsessive behaviour :-)

Interestingly I got a new postman a few weeks later. I commented on this to him "ah you're new" and he said with a mischievous wink "I'm not allowed to tell you why because that would be disloyal to a former colleague" which told me everything I needed to know, especially as he emphasised "former".

[Chris J Dixon]

Is it just my imagination, or does a far smaller percentage of stamps get visible franked these days? Once upon a time there would be the temptation to soak them off and re-use, but my Yorkshire roots must be wearing off.

I wonder if there is cancellation we can't see, or do self-adhesive stamps resist soaking off?

Chris

[NY]

They have vertical oval cutouts embossed in the bottom left and bottom right which in theory will stay attached to the envelope when you remove the rest of the stamp, though I've managed to remove the whole stamp before now when I've had to move the stamp onto a new envelope because I realise I've forgotten to put something (usually a cheque!) in and had to open the envelope.

The other option is to cut/tear the stamp off with a bit of envelope round the edge and then stick that onto another envelope of the same colour.

I'm only advocating doing this before posting. I wouldn't reuse an unfranked stamp that had been used to deliver a letter. No way. (By the way, did I tell you that my nickname is Pinocchio?)

[Adrian]

Sellotape the envelope closed again?

[damduck-egg]

Because he knew that I'm not inherently an arrogant bully like you sometimes give the impression of being whether or not it that is true. .

New on the job was just applying the rules as instructed and was barely weeks into it and probably on a probationary period. Jobs for someone about 20 were not that easy to get around here when the recession kicked in and he probably did not want to lose it. I had the choice of accepting the letter or not and as the long forgotten sender was of no importance I said take it back, if it had been from someone settling a debtl for a reasonable sum it would have been a worthwhile cost.

The previous older chap had chucked the job in as he could not get on with the new style of management. He was past retirement age anyway. That was six years ago and the young chap now has some experience and is quite sensible now ,leaves things in an agreed hidden spot if we are out . Fortunately compared to some we have a relatively early deliver at around 8.30 so that is rare. Must be on leave this week as a rather attractive young lady appeared this morning.

G.Harman

[bert]

In article , Chris J Dixon writes

They're supposed to have two strips that come undone if you try to soak them off.

[drbob]

Arise zombie thread! It's pretty scandalous that royal mail seem to have go tten away with this fairly major reduction in level of service. I found thi s thread whilst looking for a clear about mail redirection/forwarding. I re membered doing this in the past but friends were saying it had never been a llowed.

Citizen's advice certainly seem to think it's fine, the advice on their sit e is:

• cross out the address - but not the name

• write ?no longer at this address, please forward? and the ir new address on the front of the envelope

• put it in a post box

However this seems to be out of date, the current "Royal Mail United Kingdo m Post Scheme 30 November 2015" states in section 15.7

15.7 Forwarding ? unofficial redirections ? We are not unde r any obligation to do anything with an item that someone requests to be fo rwarded to another address other than the return to sender address on the cover. We consider these unpaid for, forwarding requests to be a form of unofficial redirectio ns request. Typically in this situation the original address is crossed out and a written request (e.g. ?please forward to?) is made o n the cover to forward the item to another address. This is normally attemp ted in order to try to get the item to the addressee who has moved to anoth er address. In these situations the person moving should take out a Redirec tion service with us or provide pre-paid stationery. If we find an item tha t someone has requested be forwarded to another address then the item may b e dealt with or disposed of at our discretion.

You can find it on the Royal mail website here:

f

Or in the London Gazette here:

I'm guessing that someone at Royal mail has tried very hard to purge the we b of earlier versions of the Inland Letter Post scheme as multiple google s earches for older version of the scheme brought up nothing until I thought to search directly on the London Gazette website. This turned up the 2008 s cheme in which the "section 6" referred to earlier in this thread can still be read:

1. FORWARDING A LETTER

6.1 A recipient of a Letter (except a Business Reply, Freepost, Special Del ivery or Recorded Letter) may forward it from its original address to anoth er address in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man by writing or printing the new address on the Cover or envelope of the Letter and re-posting the Letter. A Letter may only be forwarded in this way to t he original Addressee.

6.2 Except in the circumstances set out in section 6.3 below, Royal Mail wi ll not charge additional postage or fees for forwarding a Letter that has b een re-posted in accordance with section 6.1 above.

Clearly until quite recently Royal Mail had a legal obligation to redirect mail to a forwarding address at no charge, though as the confusion on this thread shows they kept very quite about it. I expect the privatised royal m ail hated providing this service and so lobbied hard for the change to the current rule. Personally I think free forwarding is a pretty essential part of a proper postal system (where you can reasonably expect a letter to be delivered to the addressee even if they've moved elsewhere) and they should not have been allowed to make this change.

[News]

In message , drbob writes

Nothing has changed as far as I am aware. RM were under no obligation to redirect mail without charge for the 15 years I was local sub postmaster.

Why free forwarding? When people don't pay for their mail to be redirected why should they expect mail to follow them?

[Brian Gaff]

Its very hit and miss nowadays. I got somebody elses radio times a couple of weeks back, and since I could not read the address I left it sitting on my table till a sighted person came around and she gave it to a postman, so we have no idea where it went after that, Suffice to say that the posst code and name were not mine, but the road was right and the number unreadable as printed by some automated process lacking ink. Brian

[Martin Brown]

What about the situation so common in rural villages where there is a Home/Glebe Farm, Cottage, Cottage in every hamlet and postcodes that are not very different. I frequently get mail addressed to one of the nearby Dopplegangers of my premises address.

I stick them back in with "NOT my village" scrawled across them and the recipients village name in much larger letters.

Almost anything addressed to any "Brown" in my village comes to me - which was a bit of a problem when another Brown moved into the village. If you have moved house then it probably makes sense to use the paid for mail intercept and redirection service rather than rely on the goodwill of the new residents to manually forward stuff. If you do the latter at least leave them with a good supply of printed sticky labels.

Regards, Martin Brown

[gbdrbob]

That's what I mean about Royal Mail keeping quiet about this aspect of the service. You were a sub-postmaser and unaware! Free forwarding was part of the rules as recently as 2008 (2010 according to earlier posts in this thre ad though I can't find the exact date things changed) Take a look at the 20

08 version of the Inland Letter Post Scheme from the London Gazette I linke d in my previous post. That sets out the rules under which Royal Mail opera tes the postal service. It used to clearly state in section 6 that letters could be forwarded for no extra charge.

I'm not talking about automatic redirection of all mail which I think has a lways been chargeable, rather someone manually crossing out the wrong/outda ted address and adding the correct one before dropping the letter back in t he mail.

Because a fixed term mail redirection only covers the situation when someon e has moved home. Most people will pay for automatic redirection anyways in that case as the number of letters arriving for the previous occupier of t he old address is usually quite high in the first months after a move and t hey can't reasonably rely on the new occupier to forward them all.

However what about the card or letter from an elderly relative trying to ge t back in touch that arrives a year later? What about mail sent to someone who is traveling addressed to their hotel or boarding house that arrives af ter they have moved on?

It's also easy nowadays to forget to update one or more service providers w ith a new address when you've switched most communication to e-mail/online

- except the really important communications they still send via the post ( e.g legal documents/court summons, fines, final bills) This makes it more l ikely today that an important letter will get sent to an old address months after a paid for blanket redirection has ended.

Essentially it was a very useful aspect of the service that helped ensure p eople actually received their mail, I can only think RM got rid of it becau se they didn't want the expense of policing what was probably a tiny number of people abusing the rules.

[gbdrbob]

people actually received their mail, I can only think RM got rid of it bec ause they didn't want the expense of policing what was probably a tiny numb er of people abusing the rules.

Thinking about it a bit more I believe the real reason is probably the oppo rtunity to exploit people's fears of missing an important letter for profit .

In the past you only really needed the 3 or 6 month blanket redirect from a n old address, as long as the new occupants are reasonable people you could expect them to forward the odd bit of misaddressed mail that arrived after that, especially if it looked important.

Now that the new rules say forwarding must be paid for or Royal Mail can ju st bin "unofficaly redirected" mail they've probably got many more people c oughing up for the maximum two years of redirection with 12-18months of tha t pure profit in most cases.

[tim...]

The charge isn't for the work of redelivering , it's for the work of intercepting it and writing the new address on the front

if someone else does that, why shouldn't they deliver it for the original postage?

tim

[tim...]

I used to live at Flat 11, No. 8 XXX street

I got all the post for no 11 XXX street because No. 11 had been changed to ABC house and no longer had a number on the front door

the fact that it had a different postcode made no difference

tim

[tim...]

Not IME you can't.

And the more "professional" the new occupiers the less likely they are to do it

tim

[NY]

Do the Royal Mail undertake to re-deliver mail that *they* have mis-delivered in the first place?

I have received several letters over the years for someone in a completely different town with a completely different postcode (and a different surname). How can mail for "5 XXX Avenue" in one town, with one postcode (which is the correct postcode for that address) get mis-delivered to "5 XXX Avenue" in a different town/postcode?

What are the rules about a letter which is addressed to my house (by number) but to a neighbour (by surname)? Is the postman required to deliver all letters as addressed, or can he use his discretion and say "ah, I know that Mrs D Smith lives at number 3, not number 5"? I had a letter addressed to out house but for a neighbour whose surname I didn't know, so I asked the postman the following day "Is there a Mrs D Smith near here" and he told me, so I popped the letter through their box. But I wondered whether our normally very conscientious postman might have been obliged to delivery the letter to the wrong address even though he knew it was wrong.

[Bob Eager]

No, they recognised new income streams:

- excess charges

- new customers for the redirection service

[Davey]

The 'Merkins have a more liberal approach:

and