Royal Mail’s delivery crisis is biting hard, with the one-time national treasure and iconic British institution now ranked among the UK’s worst companies for reputation.
The 2025 Annual Corporate Reputation Index from The Harris Poll UK, a Stagwell company, based on feedback from more than 10,000 UK consumers, placed Royal Mail 98th out of 100 of the UK’s most visible companies, highlighting long-standing concerns around trust, reliability and service; only Evri and X are viewed as worse.
The findings suggest that the challenges now facing Royal Mail are not new, but instead reflect deeper, ongoing issues that have been shaping consumer perceptions for some time.
While recent reports have brought renewed attention to delivery delays and missed targets, the Harris Poll UK data shows that consumer confidence in Royal Mail was already extremely low.
The results will do nothing to ease the pressure on Royal Mail, which is already under the cosh from the direct mail industry amid fears that clients are questioning the reliability of the channel.
Harris Poll reckons the results point to a consistent pattern: companies that struggle to deliver reliable, transparent service are among the most likely to see their reputations suffer.
The findings underline that while reputational challenges can develop over time, they can also be addressed through sustained improvements in customer experience.
For essential services such as postal delivery, reliability and transparency are key. Consistently meeting customer expectations and communicating clearly when issues arise can help rebuild trust.
Lego leads the field in first place, followed by Lush, Patagonia, Sony and Marks & Spencer.
Social media companies were also viewed dimly, with TikTok (93rd), Meta (94th) and X (100th) all slumped at the bottom of the table.
The report maintains that brands which perform strongly in the index demonstrate that focusing on customer needs, clarity and service delivery can have a positive impact on reputation, even in competitive or challenging sectors.
Harris Poll UK chief research officer Steve Brockway said: “Reputation is a currency that can make or break a company in today’s UK market. Results from our corporate reputation study show that profit follows a clear and consistently well understood and delivered purpose, giving companies a sustainable license to lead their category.
“We’ve also seen that investing in your customer experience drives reputational ‘credit in the bank’, enabling a company to both endure and navigate their way out of a crisis.
“In today’s polycrises of cost-of-living challenges and global instability, consumers are seeking havens of easy in a sea of hard – so it’s more important than ever to be seen as ‘on the consumers side’.”