Royal Mail settles out of court after failure to deliver Leighton Buzzard Art Society leaflets

[GizzardPuke]

https://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk ... ts-4856129

Leighton Buzzard Art Society threatened to take legal action against the Royal Mail after it failed to deliver a large number of leaflets for their exhibition.
The company recently came to a settlement out of court and agreed to pay the society 60 per cent of £2,600 – the total cost of the delivery contract and the total cost of the leaflets.

The art society has claimed it was difficult to get Royal Mail to investigate the problem – and that they didn't receive an apology or an acknowledgement of fault.

But after the LBO got in touch, the Royal Mail apologised for what happened and is reassuring customers that this was an "isolated incident".

Sally White, chairman of the Leighton Buzzard Art Society, said: "I'm really, really sad that we had to go through all that. It was quite stressful – and frustrating dealing with a large company who were so dismissive of their customers.

"We're lucky that we could monitor what was going on, but a large business might not have a clue if Royal Mail hadn't delivered their leaflets."

The company had posted flyers for the art society in 2022, which "went brilliantly", so Sally asked them to deliver a larger number – 37,000 – in 2023.

But before the event, members, their friends and families reported that they hadn't received leaflets. Sally raised the issue, but says she was told to wait until after the two-week delivery period to make a complaint.

After two weeks, and with the exhibition over, Sally got back in touch and claims Royal Mail wanted all the addresses of people without leaflets. A tricky task, Sally gathered as many as she could and sent them.

She said: "On the same day, I got a complaint from a lady saying that she'd had a leaflet delivered [after the exhibition] and was upset because she'd missed it."

With this isolated incident easier to focus on, Sally went back to Royal Mail and requested an investigation for just the lady's complaint.

"They confirmed failure to deliver and offered £50 as a gesture of goodwill," explained Sally.

Not giving up, she asked the Royal Mail to look into the many other addresses – but says she was later told it hadn't received them. After sending them again, she claims she was eventually informed that it was "too late" to do an investigation.

Upset, the society threatened to take the Royal Mail to court, with Sally claiming that the company constantly "refused mediation" during the small claims process. The matter was settled out of court this autumn. The society believes that 60 per cent of the leaflets weren’t delivered.

A Royal Mail spokeswoman, said: “We apologise to the customer who received a service that wasn't to our usual high standards.

"In this case, we fully settled the claim via a payment for the number of leaflets the claimant said were not delivered, as well as paying for a portion of their printing costs and the court fee. We take such deliveries very seriously and would reassure the customer that this was an isolated incident.”

The art society also wishes to thank former Leighton Buzzard MP, Andrew Selous, for his support.

[ted_e_bear]

I'm assuming undelivered door to doors, hope many others follow.

[Bowiefan]

"...this was an isolated incident.”

No it wasn't.

[Mr Rush]

How soon till D2D is added to the hierarchy of things we need to clear daily? Obviously (knowing looks, no words exchanged) Tracked is at the top; but if a mandate about clearing D2D is going to come out of this, why not just make the damn duties achievable? Don't dare cart out a mirror when we ask to see who is responsible for the permanent exile of QoS.

[Londonsburning]

How soon till D2D is added to the hierarchy of things we need to clear daily?

Every D2D would need a unique '2D' barcode never going to happen unfortunately. I read the article about the small company that took RM to small claims court and am glad they got a payout for the mismanagement of their time sensitive households even though it was a pittance for putting trust into RM. I assume global businesses like dominos and pizza hut don't give a f**k if only 20 or 30% of their shitty leaflets get delivered for a couple of grand a pop

[Pidleypoo]

Couple of frames on our section have got between 10-15 d2d’s that haven’t been delivered.

Some going back months.

[moon71]

Boxes of unopened d2d sit in the corner of my mailcentre.

[ted_e_bear]

Boxes of unopened d2d sit in the corner of my mailcentre.

What, you mean that have been returned from do's ?

[moon71]

Yup

[dazzler123]

Depressingly corrupt company we work for. Rip off and lie to the public and business'

[ted_e_bear]

Yup

It's a joke isn't it, not as though they were a few excess items, mail centre management should have sent them back to the do and reported to someone up the chain.