Please help! 5 days to find my missing passport so I can attend my best friends wedding.

[JemimaRobyn]

Hi all,

I’m urgently seeking help regarding a Tracked 24 delivery of my passport. I’m due to fly to Austria this Saturday (21st February) for my best friend’s wedding, and I'm terrified it won't show up.

My mother-in-law sent my passport from Cornwall to London, but the first two letters of the London postcode were incorrect. It said SE (incorrect) instead of SW (Correct). Everything else was accurate.

Tracking updates:

10 Feb – Item received at Croydon Mail Centre (multiple scans).

11 Feb – Item received at Walworth Delivery Office (9:05am). The message states the "item was incorrectly addressed and is being forwarded to the correct address".

There have been no more updates since 11 Feb.

I’ve spoken to multiple Royal Mail representatives and received conflicting information. Some have reassured me that the postcode correction is straightforward; others have warned that it may be sent to the National Returns Centre in Belfast since no return address was added.

I’ve also visited Walworth DO, Tooting DO, and Croydon Mail Centre in person, but no one can confirm its current location.

Is there anything that can be done to prevent it from being sent to Belfast and ensure it’s held in London for collection? I’ve been advised to monitor tracking and request a hold as soon as it updates — is this the best course of action?

Any help or guidance would be hugely appreciated.

Kind regards,
Jemima

[richietns]

Its one of them grey areas,it could be corrected and sent to the right office or like you said sent to Belfast,why not ring Walworth Delivery Office.

[SpacePhoenix]

I think a lot will depend on the MCs, if they use machines to sort packets. The machines will read the address encoded in the square barcode, hopefully at Walworth DO they crossed out the square barcode otherwise as soon as it sees a machine it'll get sent back to Walworth DO. I believe that the SE area and the SW area are covered by different MCs.

[JemimaRobyn]

Thank you for your reply.

I’ve visited the Walworth DO and the person on the customer service desk wasn’t sure what the “forwarding” message meant. They advised me to go straight to Tooting DO to see if the letter has arrived there un-scanned.

So I went to Tooting, and the person there said they weren’t sure why I had come, since the system had shown movements back to Croydon mail centre.

Perhaps I should go back to both Walworth and the Tooting DOs and have them do a physical check, as opposed to just reading the tracking info.

I will also phone Royal Mail on Monday and see if they can inform Walworth or Tooting DO of my situation. One chap I spoke to on the phone says he’d marked my case to say it was urgent and sensitive, but since calling back again, the new representative saw nothing of this on the system.

What do you think? Is there something I can say to help those on the customer service desks or on the phone? I will share your insights into crossing out the square barcode.

Finally, where is typically the last stop before it gets sent to Belfast? Would that be Croydon or Walworth?

Thank you so much for your help so far.

[richietns]

Absolutely go back and ask them to physically check especially Walworth DO.

[JemimaRobyn]

Hi all!

I'm almost out of time. Thank you for your help so far.

I visited Walworth DO, who confirmed that the most experienced workers take the initative to "scrub out the barcodes" and write on the correct postcode to break the chain of the machines passing the item between mailing centres, and it will have either got passed to the local Tooting DO, Croydon MC, or on the NRC in Belfast since no return address was added.

I left my contact details at Walworth. Those guys were super helpful. The guy at Tooting DO also did a physical check and took my contact details, also super helpful. And the folks at Cryoden MC refused to do any checks, but that's probably because the facility is very large, and maybe it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. What do you think? Could they still physically check?

The folks on the Customer Service phone lines weren't able to do much. After virtually begging, I managed to raise my case with the Escalated Customer Resolution Team, but was very shocked to receive this email response:

"I’ve been asked to investigate and respond to you as a part of the Escalated Customer Resolution Team.

When an item is posted, it is automatically sorted by our systems as it travels through the conveyance systems and the Postcode used to route the item to a local delivery office. As the Postcode on this item is SE instead of SW, it has been routed to the local office for Walworth and, when manually sorted, identified as having been routed incorrectly. While we make every attempt to re-route items with invalid details, as we're legally not able to amend the addresses on the item, this isn't always possible and so the item may be rerouted several times ahead of being either delivered or returned to the Sender (if a sender address was included by them).

At this juncture, I would recommend contacting the Sender to discuss if a return address was included as, if not, it would be redirected to our National Return Centre for processing, and we’d recommend they contact customer service directly to request its return, as they are unable to correct an incorrect address on the items

I hope this information provided resolves your enquiry. Once again, please accept my apologies and our thanks for bringing this to our attention."

I have, of course, confirmed with the sender that no return address was included, and that I have repeatedly contacted RM Customer Service since Wednesday, the 11th, to request a return. The Customer Service team does not have the capabilities to do this, hence why they have connected me with the Customer Resolution Team.

I'm not really sure what I can do at this point. If the "second-highest" team, who are supposed to be investigating my case, have told me to contact the Customer Service Team, who are non-empowered agents, I feel like there is really no hope. It just feels like customer churn, and I am being passed around because there'snothing aynone can really do.

Just to be extra clear, I confirmed with the sender that no return address was added, and we have contacted Royal Mail Customer Service directly to request a return, which they cannot initiate. They have advised me that it is unlikely that my passport would have reached Belfast NRC yet, and that the superior team investigating my case (i.e., the Escalated Customer Resolution Team) should have the means to locate the item by actioning a search at either Walworth DO, Croydon MC, or Tooting DO before the mis-addressed mail is forwarded to the NRC, but it doesn't look like my case will be a priority from the email reply I recieved this morning.

Anyway, I thought I would share this here, as I know that many of the Royal Mail workers are frustrated with the automation of the Royal Mail system, and each DO has its own workaround strategies to try and get the post where it's supposed to go. The man at Walworth said that the lost and misaddressed mail was actually far more likely to get delivered to the correct address before the installation of the sorting machines, as many of the local workers would identify address errors by eye and make corrections, unlike the machines that are stumped by a couple of incorrect letters.

Again, thank you for your help, I really appreciate it.

Kind regards,
Jemima