Royal Mail - non service with a smile

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Royal Mail. You've probably heard of them. Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown are determined to put 30% of it into private (Dutch) hands because they say the company can't carry on running with public money. Forget the fact that about £175 billion of public money was used to shore up shareholder-owned banks - that's another story.

Anyway, Royal Mail is a big company and you would expect to have to wait when you call their customer service line. What you don't expect is to just be cut off after spending ten minutes just to get to the bit where you go on hold.

I experienced this when trying to track down an international parcel that's gone missing. Armed with my tracking number, I went to the website, which told me the parcel had been sent to the destination country for delivery. I followed the menus on the site to report it missing and it told me to call an 0845 number for help.

I then had to listen to about eight or nine different menus, at least four of which said "If your parcel is lost or stolen, press...". When I finally got to "Would you like to speak to a customer service adviser?" I pressed the number and was told there was a queue and I would have to wait.

The nice lady on the recording then took me through a plethora of instructions about what constitutes a lost parcel, and what has to be done, and advising me to use the website instead. After she had finished her spiel, and after I had been on the phone for 10 minutes without actually getting to go on hold for a rep, she said, "We've not been able to connect your call today because we're too busy. Please try our website or our virtual assistant or try again tomorrow."

That's it? No hold? No Four Seasons played through a 1w-per-channel speaker? No opportunity to mutter under my breath while I hold the phone under my ear and get a crick in my neck?

No, Royal Mail's policy seems to be to take you through a complicated maze of options before then telling you you can't actually choose to hold, you will just not be entertained holding up their line, using up their electricity, eating up their bandwidth. They have other customers waiting to call in and be bamboozled before being told to call back tomorrow.

If my postman wasn't so friendly I might give him a piece of my mind.

[stokes11eg]

just what we get when phoning in about non-delivered specials--without the music!

[jockstrapp]

Well that's what you get for using a crap company.

[stokes11eg]

'nuff of the toilet humour!!!

[k979aaa]

It seams like they have the complaints line sorted for two in a van up and down the land!. THROW A DEAF EAR TO ALL!. :cfo