Damaged and stolen parcels cost R M 20m in compensation

[POSTMAN]

Damaged and stolen parcels cost Royal Mail £20m in compensation

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ROYAL Mail bosses have paid out more than £20million in compensation to customers who have had their post damaged or stolen.

It also emerged nearly 600 posties were caught stealing since January 2010 and some customers are still waiting for their Christmas cards.

Over the last three years nearly 3.75 million complaints have been lodged against the national courier service.


Royal Mail claimed one of the reasons for the increase in thefts or damaged goods was that staff were being targeted by criminals while doing their rounds.

But campaigners said postal workers have to “get their act together” in order to justify increasing postal charges.

The startling figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, show £20,421,848 was paid out between 2009 and 2012.

Compensation was paid out for mail that was either lost, misdirected or damaged.

Other handouts were given for stolen goods such as Christmas cards containing money and valuable parcels.

Post bosses also claimed any worker convicted of was dismissed from Royal Mail.

The statistics also show an increase in claims as £4.4million was paid out in 2009/10 compared with £6m in 2011/12.

Robert Downey from Forum of Private Business said: “Many businesses rely on the Royal Mail to get their wares to customers safely – these figures suggest this is happening less and less.

“This increase in compensation comes despite hefty price hikes by Royal Mail not 12 months ago.

“Royal Mail have to get their act together when it comes to delivering items on time and, preferably, in the same state as when posted.”

Gary Kinghorn, a postman from Musselburgh in East Lothian, escaped jail despite hiding 2,500 letters in his loft and car.

The 46-year-old failed to deliver the mail and blamed it on the stress of dealing with his brother who was charged with murder.

He was discovered after a customer complained he hadn’t received any birthday cards – Kinghorn was handed a 200-hour community payback order last year.

In July last year Christopher Scott admitted stealing Tesco clubcards from people’s mail.

The Aberdeen postie was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.

In 2010, Aberfeldy postman William Harvey was also given community service after he was caught stealing money from birthday cards.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We take every complaint seriously and continually strive to provide the best possible service.

“If something goes wrong our aim is to promptly deal with the problem and rectify it as soon as possible.

“We remain very vigilant to any risk to the operation, including any threat from criminals outside Royal Mail who target postmen and women to steal mail they are carrying.”

Sian Jones, a spokeswoman for the Communication Workers Union that is responsible for post workers, said: “We do not condone theft and thankfully only a tiny percentage of mail items are affected.”

[TrueBlueTerrier]

3.75 million complaints in 3 years - that's not that bad when you consider that is less than 6% of the DAILY traffic for Royal Mail.

We delivered an average 68 million items per day during that time - so over 3 years that's roughly 62,220,000,000 items making your figure around 0.006% of the total. As to the staff, 600 over 3 years or 200 a year is again a small percentage of the 160,000 that do an honest job ( 1/8 of 1% or 0.125%) -

Any theft should be investigated and the guilty party given a prison sentence in my opinion, and all items should arrive in as good a condition as possible, just like any journalistic article should be balanced and show context.

However when you just show raw numbers as you have done then this article just becomes sensationalism rather than journalism.

[ashadd]

3.75 million complaints in 3 years - that's not that bad when you consider that is less than 6% of the DAILY traffic for Royal Mail.

We delivered an average 68 million items per day during that time - so over 3 years that's roughly 62,220,000,000 items making your figure around 0.006% of the total. As to the staff, 600 over 3 years or 200 a year is again a small percentage of the 160,000 that do an honest job ( 1/8 of 1% or 0.125%) -

Any theft should be investigated and the guilty party given a prison sentence in my opinion, and all items should arrive in as good a condition as possible, just like any journalistic article should be balanced and show context.

However when you just show raw numbers as you have done then this article just becomes sensationalism rather than journalism.

[fishtank]

To be fair it should say...

ROYAL Mail bosses have paid out more than £20million in compensation to customers who say they have had their post damaged or stolen.

We have no way of telling how many bogus claims go through but i would imagine it's quite a few,not helped by the idiots who don't get a signature.....

[justdeno]

How many DSA packets do we have to pay compersation for? If we do how do we know if Citylink etc have not lost it? RM always are blamed, the amount of people ask me to deliver a packet for a competitor as its not theirs, or in the office people complain that we had delivered it wrong and they try explaining this it falls on deaf ears.

[postietaz]

thats what happens when you employ agency staff to do posties work

[TrueBlueTerrier]

thats what happens when you employ agency staff to do posties work

Well in this case ---- Of the 3 posties named, KInghorn had worked with RM for 7 months, William Harvey (aka as the Human pelican if its the same one) had 13 Years in, but you might be right about Christopher Scott as I can't find anything about how long he was at Royal Mail,

However even if your right with Scott I think its unfair to tar all agency staff with the same brush. The public do that enough when Royal Mail posties are caught and we don't like it, so I think its wrong when we do the same.