International Tracked and Signed sent to wrong country

[WoS]

I posted a large letter using the International Tracked and Signed service this Monday gone but found out yesterday that it had been sent to Australia (Melbourne) and not Austria (Fuschl am See) as clearly marked on the address.

Here's the breakdown of what's happened since Monday.

24/02/16 AM ON ITS WAY TO MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA
23/02/16 04:58 ARRIVED (MDN) AT HEATHROW WORLDWIDE DC
22/02/16 17:46 ON ITS WAY TO HEATHROW WORLDWIDE DC LONDON CENTRAL MAIL CENTR
22/02/16 15:49 ITEM COLLECTED LONDON CENTRAL MAIL CENTR
22/02/16 11:37 SENT AT POST OFFICE 205 Old Street EC1V 9QN

Have a couple of questions in relation to this.

The accepted policy of the country that receives the mail if incorrectly sent there is to forward on to the country marked on the address. Is that right? Given the tracked and signed nature of it, there is no way of it just sitting in the depot in Melbourne?

I rang up Royal Mail customer services who forwarded me to the International Dept. The lady taking the call said that internally on the tracking, the last thing she had received on the tracking for my tracking code was that "transport was received". Can anyone tell me what this means. She suggested the message meant that it may be in Melbourne and that it may now be out for redirection to Austria?

The letter had some documents from the HMRC that I was passing on to a company I work for in Austria. That company requires hard copy of the documents, so if this gets lost I will have to go back to the HMRC to get the same documents passed on again. As anyone knows, the HMRC can take four to six weeks to get to your request. I've been told by the customer services agent that I can only ask for Royal Mail to investigate if the letter hasn't been received by the company in Austria by March 19. Is there any discretion in certain circumstances that you can ask them to investigate before.

That said I will wait for the week to see if it turns up in Austria.

Many thanks.

[WoS]

Anyone help?

[Snaggletooth]

The accepted policy of the country that receives the mail if incorrectly sent there is to forward on to the country marked on the address.

Yes. This might take from a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

Given the tracked and signed nature of it, there is no way of it just sitting in the depot in Melbourne?

If I understand you correctly, then that would be against the law in this country and probably in most other countries too. However, mail that has been sent to the wrong country is generally at the bottom of the priority list for the people dealing with it, so it gets done when the mail centre is otherwise quiet.

I've been told by the customer services agent that I can only ask for Royal Mail to investigate if the letter hasn't been received by the company in Austria by March 19. Is there any discretion in certain circumstances that you can ask them to investigate before.

No, you can't speed it up, but then "investigating" won't actually achieve much in this case because we know what happened to it. It's there on the tracking. In this particular case, asking them to investigate is the same as applying for a refund.

While the letter might get there in the next week, I would say that the chances are less than 50%. Sorry.

[WoS]

An update to this.

Everytime I ring up Royal Mail customer services and get through to the International department I get some info supposedly as internal tracking gives some extra info than the customer facing info on the website.

Last Saturday, I was told by the Royal Mail Customer Services agent that my letter was with Australia Post with a message saying it was received by them on Feb 29.

I contacted Aus Post over last weekend on the basis of that info. Their customer service agent (via an online query) told me according to their scans the letter had been sent on on to Austria on March 7.

This morning I rang Royal Mail customers services and this time the agent was a bit obtrusive and wouldn't give me any more info on whether internal tracking information had picked up the letter on its entry into Europe or Austria from Australia and wouldn't even confirm the info that the letter was with Aus Post on Feb 29!!!

Is it a case of being patient for the letter to be processed having been sent on by Aus Post on March 7? Three days have passed so I thought it would at least update with info or a scan that it is with GLS or Austria's Postal organisation. Is it a case that GLS and Austria Post are two different organisations?

I'm going on this as the letter i sent contained tax documents that are hard to get from our own HMRC!

[Snaggletooth]

Is it a case that GLS and Austria Post are two different organisations?

Yes, GLS is a 'private' company which is actually owned Royal Mail, in the same way that you see DHL on British streets when DHL is owned by the nationalised German postal operator. Whereas Austria Post is probably (without checking) owned by the Austrian government.

These things can get quite complicated when Royal Mail uses GLS to deliver overseas but the letter gets sent to a third country. It might be that Australia post do not have a direct arrangement to send mail to GLS in Austria.

[WoS]

This letter finally arrived at its destination in Austria on March 11.

Once it left Australia there was no tracking information available and nothing on the Track and Trace on the Royal Mail website.

In the end I did a search on Austria Post and the tracking code surprisingly came up and told me it was out for delivery and then finally delivered the next day. A fact confirmed by the company that I sent the letter to.

A frustrating few weeks!

[Snaggletooth]

Once it left Australia there was no tracking information available and nothing on the Track and Trace on the Royal Mail website.

In the end I did a search on Austria Post and the tracking code surprisingly came up and told me it was out for delivery and then finally delivered the next day.

That corresponds with my earlier post: it should have gone from RM to GLS to the address, but instead it went RM to Australia Post to Austria Post to the address, breaking the links in the tracking system.