Mail farce will cost me £10k

[TrueBlueTerrier]

ttp://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/local/display. ... me_10k.php

A BUSINESSMAN claims he faces losses of £10,000 after Royal Mail hoarded thousands of packages in a north London warehouse.

Trevor Angel, owner of Southend-based jewellery distributing company, Bubbles, sent out 156 parcels on October 10 - the day after the postal strike ended.

He later discovered companies from Southend and the south east London area were having their parcels taken by lorry to a warehouse in Barnet for temporary workers to struggle to clear.

The parcels were still sitting there at the end of last week, piled up haphazardly across a floor the size of a football pitch, and waiting to be collected.

Mr Angel said: "Thousands of businesses in Southend had their packets collected on the tenth of the month and their customers are probably, like mine, saying where is my order?' "What happened was Royal Mail in Southend shipped it all to a warehouse and left it there."

Parcels posted from October 11 onwards have been flowing through the system as normal, while those in the warehouse sat unsorted.

This has left some customers struggling to understand why they had not received their goods.

Mr Angel, 52, said: "When you phone customer service Royal Mail tell people everything is back to normal and, if you haven't had your parcel, to get back to the company and they should compensate you.

"If you are told that by Royal Mail customer service, you're going to try to get your money back."

Mr Angel said if this carries on for another four weeks he will have to pay his customers compensation, as he does not want to lose them.

Peter Matthews, 56, who owns Bridgwater Toys in Rayleigh Road, Eastwood, said sellers had been told there were problems with parcels sent on October 10 and 15, and new post was being dealt with before the backlog was attempted.

He said: "We had a few problems with stuff going out on those two dates, but all but one of the customers has received it now.

"The Post Office are catching up with the backlog. However, it was dealing with the new stuff first - which seems like a bit of a cack-handed way of doing it."

James Taylor, a Royal Mail spokesman, said the site had been used as a service to deal with backlogs caused by strike action and was often used at peak times such as Christmas.

He added: "The backlogs are clear and the office is being wound down."

12:50am Wednesday 31st October 2007

[Trends Guild]

I am in the same boat as Bubbles (though we haven't lost nearly as much!). We sell low cost jewellery (in my case, some items as low as £1). People will not pay £4.50 for special delivery unless they are determined to get their stuff quickly, so (like Bubbles and just about all ogther online jewellers) we offer first class and recorded for low value orders as well as Special - in spite of the ticket saying that compensation up to £34 is avaialable with Recorded, the goods are not covered if it is jewellery.
The FAQ on the RM website for Recorded has a question - am I entitled to compensation? There is no answer except to say that 'valuable goods' (surely that is anything that costs money to replace!) such as jewellery and money should be sent by Special Delivery! So who is actually entitled to compensation for RD lost in post and what item of value up to £34 would be compensated is a bit of a mystery.
When we lose a parcel, we have to just stump up the cost of replacing it ourselves. The big difficulty is at the moment, knowing whether a package is going to turn up or not - customers are not prepared to wait weeks and weeks for a refund or replacement, and I don't think I have ever had one customer return a delayed parcel that turned up at a later date.

[dvbuk55]

I am in the same boat as Bubbles (though we haven't lost nearly as much!). We sell low cost jewellery (in my case, some items as low as £1). People will not pay £4.50 for special delivery unless they are determined to get their stuff quickly, so (like Bubbles and just about all ogther online jewellers) we offer first class and recorded for low value orders as well as Special - in spite of the ticket saying that compensation up to £34 is avaialable with Recorded, the goods are not covered if it is jewellery.
The FAQ on the RM website for Recorded has a question - am I entitled to compensation? There is no answer except to say that 'valuable goods' (surely that is anything that costs money to replace!) such as jewellery and money should be sent by Special Delivery! So who is actually entitled to compensation for RD lost in post and what item of value up to £34 would be compensated is a bit of a mystery.
When we lose a parcel, we have to just stump up the cost of replacing it ourselves. The big difficulty is at the moment, knowing whether a package is going to turn up or not - customers are not prepared to wait weeks and weeks for a refund or replacement, and I don't think I have ever had one customer return a delayed parcel that turned up at a later date.

Believe me the ordinary postman has every sympathy with small businesses, large businesses and all our customers and the recent IA was in no small part about the service we are now compelled to provide.

If it's any consolation a recorded packet dated the 10th only arrived at our depot on the 24th we don't know why or if it was an isolated case.

[POSTMAN]

If it's any consolation a recorded packet dated the 10th only arrived at our depot on the 24th we don't know why or if it was an isolated case.

No not isolated strangely enough i had one like that today!!!
The backlog is horrendous!!

[dvbuk55]

If it's any consolation a recorded packet dated the 10th only arrived at our depot on the 24th we don't know why or if it was an isolated case.

No not isolated strangely enough i had one like that today!!!
The backlog is horrendous!!

TBH I've stopped looking at the dates - they're making me cringe. What seems to be acceptable now would have been jumped on from a great height in the past.