Tracking Number Scam

[dmz]

I was just a victim of a scam and part of it involved sending items via Royal Mail "tracked mail". I am wondering if it is a common trick?

Big fan of Royal Mail and hate them being used by scammers...I bought some tickets and provided my address and we agreed to use tracked mail.

(1) I provided my adress including postcode
(2) The person send you a tracking number
(3) It looks good - it shows your local post office
(4) But the person has put a fake name for the addressee and sends it to another address in your postcode
(5) The postman tries to deliver it but there is no one at the house with that name - never has been!
(6) The item is then returned to sender - and this seems to happen "on that day"
(7) No slip left (cause it does not come to your house) and/or it is clearly a bad address.

But to the victim, it is a valid tracking number and it looks like Royal Mail has made a mistake. He kept blaming Royal Mail. The person did this to me several times until I finally got lucky and the local post office had not sent the item back and as I had the tracking number, let me have the envelop.

(a) Obvious fake name and address several doors down.
(b) No tickets inside - just blank paper.

Is there something I could have done to see where the item was actually being sent? Even though you have a tracking number, and it is real, it is really not coming to you and you will have a very difficult time proving what is happening.

Would love to discuss with someone at Royal Mail to show what happened so others do not have it happen to them...Thanks!