Special Delivery delays

vometia · Post by **vometia** » 23 Oct 2018, 13:24

Hello,

Just wondering about something. I've sent a number of letters by Special Delivery to a particular address (okay, it's one that starts with "HMP") and of 10 or 11 of them, this is I think the fourth that has been delayed in transit and not delivered on time. That seems to be an unusually large number so I'm wondering whether or not there may be more to it. There's two ways of looking at it: a friend of mine thinks all this stuff is monitored etc and I dare say sometimes it may be if there's really good cause, but when the sender is somebody like me who's really not very interesting and just blathers away about nothing in particular I suspect it's unlikely. Even if I am an opinionated old cow it still doesn't make it interesting enough for anybody official to bother with.

Conversely, I am "that person" who always gets red lights when I'm out driving. As much as I could try to make a case that most traffic lights are members of their own version of the Masons... well, anyway. I do have an unlucky streak a mile wide.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anybody had any input about that sort of thing. Though a small sample, it does seem to be an unusually high level of failures and only one of them was due to the address in question being "inaccessible" ("we left a 'while you were out' card" seemed wonderfully inappropriate) whereas the rest were delayed somewhere in transit.

Also, were I of the paranoid disposition, there's been something unusual with my own letters being delivered over the past week (e.g. sending a van round specially just for routine 1st/2nd class stuff etc) but I guess that's just some random catch-up stuff. I'm much too lazy to be a conspiracy theorist and random stuff happens. Which I guess is the answer here but I figured I'd ask.

vometia · Post by **vometia** » 23 Oct 2018, 14:49

Just did another search: last update at 9:29pm yesterday, left one of the mail centres and then nothing. I'm assuming the Royal Mail tracking system isn't down so this is a bit curious and as mentioned I think this is the third of probably 10 items to the same address where it's disappeared within RM's network, which I understand should never happen. Judging by my other experiences of the same thing I imagine it'll be delivered as normal a day late and they'll refund postage but I am curious about why it keeps happening.

Post by **Snaggletooth** » 23 Oct 2018, 15:04

Prisons are a law unto themselves. Both figuratively and literally.

Most prisons have a Prison Visitor’s Association or similar who are the best people to ask about sending mail to that prison.

vometia · Post by **vometia** » 23 Oct 2018, 15:08

I understand that's the case when my letter has actually been signed for and is then under the control of the prison's own post room; but the problem is that so many of my letters are disappearing within RM's network. So at this point it's gone astray between two of RM's mail centres, which is becoming a bit of a habit. They haven't even attempted to deliver it to Her Majesty's Luxury Apartments yet. The one time they couldn't do so they made it quite obvious.

vometia · Post by **vometia** » 23 Oct 2018, 16:06

Starting to get quite stressed about this. The whole reason I used Special Delivery is for certainty (I'm autistic, so it's kinda of a big deal with me) and there's no updates at all. But apparently it isn't late until it's five days late, or something.

In the meantime I have my Special Delivery tracking number that went cold yesterday evening and don't know whether it's disappeared altogether or if it might eventually rematerialise. The previous ones did but only after completely falling off the radar for 24 hours or more: I'm surprised it happens so often as I thought it was supposed to be tracked every step of the way.