Special Delivery item stuck in local MC

[Nebiroth]

I sent off some tax return forms last week, they have lot sof confidential and sensitive informatib, so I sent by them Special Delivery Guaranteed 1pm.

The document package still hasn't left my local Mail Centre. I finally got through to Royal Mail (25 minutes queue first call, which then diconnected me, 20 minutes queue second time) and apparently the issue is that HMRC's address isn't real. It;s literally HMRC with a postcode, but it'snot a geographical postcode, it just tells HMRC's document processing facility whch stort of documents have been sent. As in BX9 1Ht is Inhertiance Tax, but BX9 1AS is self assessemtn forms.

Wnad because the "postcode" isnot in RM's database, it can;t be machine sorted bt has to be done manually. They couldn;t actually say when my documents would be delivered "maybe tomorrow, maybe next day". I did get a refund on the postage though.

The whole thing sounds utterly crazy. It must impose huge delays, cause extra costs, and make a lot of peopel worry their confidential documents are 'lost'.

Why don;t HMRC give an actual postal address and just ask peopel to write which department, liek "Inheritance tax" or "self assessment" ?

What bright spark came up with such nonsense?


Will RM eventally give up...how would they know where to return it to, for exampe, would they open it to check for a sender address?

[yellowbelly]

Why don;t HMRC give an actual postal address and just ask peopel to write which department, liek "Inheritance tax" or "self assessment" ?

What bright spark came up with such nonsense?

HMRC maybe?

Will RM eventally give up...how would they know where to return it to, for exampe, would they open it to check for a sender address?

Don't think RM'll 'give up'. Should get there as I imagine it's a well used destination address.

However, did you put a return address on the rear of the letter/package? I always do this even if it's a Xmas card. Property number and postcode is all that's needed.

[SpacePhoenix]

If your local MC covers the HMRC site then it'll be part of a delivery that HMRC get direct from the MC. Firms or government departments who get an absolute load of mail every day will often get a direct deliver from their local MC. It can take a few days for the delivered scan to show up on the system.

[Nebiroth]

Well that is what I am wondering. In most cases it seems to go off to North West Midlands MC (and then get stuck there), but afaik the actual physical location is in Bexley, Kent: that's a long way from Southampton - 130 miles by road - but it's theonly thing I can think of. RM told me that there is so much mail addressed to there that it's put into sacks which means the individual items aren't scanned. So maybe Southampton is big enough that there are enough items sent to HMRC for them to be sacked up and sent direct to Kent.

The whoel thing is stupidity on stilts. HMRC say anything sent by courier has to go to an actual address in Newcastle Upon Tyne because all other carriers will regard BX9 xxx (the second part changes depending on the department of HMRC, for inheritance tax it's 1HT, for self assessemnts, 1AS) as invalid and will either not allow you to send at all, or will bounce it back.

The advice I got from RM was "wait a week or to, then call HMRC to see if it actually arrived or not". This is a Special Delivery Guaranteed item. It's just unbelievable.

I called HMRC and they said it;s too soon, as even if it has arrived it can take days before the stuff gets scanned and recognised as being processed, but they also said they are able to initiate a search vased on the RM tracking code.

The lady at HMRC was quite familiar with the problem so I bet they get lot sof calls about it.

I fnd it quite incredible that they created a postcode liek that in co-operation with Royal Mail, then RM don;t put it in their database and their automated sorting systems won;t recognise it!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

To be brutally frank ( and I can say this as I am retired), you would not be surprised if you worked for Royal Mail. This issue is merely a symptom of a badly managed business whose main focus is on profit. Sadly customer service, social issues, health and safety, treatment of workers, and uniform quality (the list is practically endless) come as a distant secondary consideration.

[Nebiroth]

I've just been notified by HMRC that they did in fact receive the documents and they've been processed. They do not record actual arrivals or delivery dates. The facility is one that scans documents electronically. It is probable that my items were scanned the day they arrived or the day after, but at that point they are just in a queue awaiting processing; as scanned images. they aren't translated into actual data so HMRC can't search their systems for them until they are processed, presumably by optical character recognition. I was told that at present, the queue time is 11 days from arrival and initial scan to enter the processing phase, which can itself take 4 days (working days)

An incredibly kind and helpful lady on the helpline hunted through the scanned documents manually, but there were over three hundred just for the one day, and I could not be certain of the day anyway, and she could only do the first hundred or so. But she said she'd keep an eye on things and check their system every day to see if my documents had registered.

She called me this morning to say they had and that all was well. Processed yesterday, so that means they almost certainly arrived on the 15th, which is the date I expected using Special Delivery.

The problem seems to be, that Royal Mail simply don;t scan or track these items properly, as I'm clearly not alone with HMRC destined items apparently arrving in Mail Centres and then not moving. It makes a complete nonsense of paying for fully tracke ditems. It has caused me endless worry, wasted my time, HMRC's time, Royal Mail's time. It would also mean that if the documents were time sensitive - luckly they weren't - I would have no way of disputing a claim by HMRC that they failed to arrive before a deadline.

Outside of the staff manning the RM helpline, who were unfailingly polite, understanding and did what they could, RM have been completely useless. I ran up abput £30 in phone bills having the repeatedly chase them.