Does Royal Mail really do this?

[cromirp]

Good morning!

I have experienced a very strange and unusual situation lately and would just like to confirm if this is the way Royal Mail does things.

So my remote controller for drone got broken and I have decided to send it for repair to the UK. I posted it from another EU country in January. Delivery time was estimated to be around 7 days but it apparently got lost. So I went and filled an inquiry at my sending post office. Last week I received an inquiry back and it said that my parcel was finally delivered on the 22nd of February. So I contacted the workshop I sent my remote to and received the following reply:

Hi there

We have received a parcel, that had been opened up by the courier services, and left empty.
They left a note in the parcel to state that the item was not allowed to the posted (due to some sort of restrictions) and therefore destroyed.
I have the letter here from the courier service that you have used to state this in writing. The letter was inside the parcel and the parcel was empty.

Since I am unfamiliar with how Royal Mail works, I would like to know if this could really happen and if that is the way of informing when they destroy parcels? Because it seems very unlikely to me and I suspect that workshop just want to get a free remote. Oh, and here is a tracking number that shows a completely normal process of delivery (RA414569813SI)

I am a foreigner and never heard or experienced anything like that before so I would really appreciate your help or some advice.

Thank you!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

This is the list for items that are banned from the post in the UK

https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app ... il/a_id/96" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My personal guess is that you had a lithium battery in it that didn't comply with the regulations.

[cromirp]

Ok, I understand that that might be the case. I would just like to know if that is the standard procedure for those occasions? That you just take the prohibited item out, put a little note in the parcel and mark it as delivered? I mean, that happened to me before with our national mail but you receive a letter saying that your item will be destroyed and on the tracking application you can clearly see that parcel was seized by customs and it is not marked as delivered. So if I wouldn't have contacted the workshop, I would have no idea what even happened to my parcel?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I am afraid I work on the streets of a medium size town so I have no idea if this is standard procedure, but suspect it is. You'll probably need to contact Royal Mail direct to get any confirmation. You can contact them on twitter @royalmailhelp

[Snaggletooth]

Ok, I understand that that might be the case. I would just like to know if that is the standard procedure for those occasions? That you just take the prohibited item out, put a little note in the parcel and mark it as delivered? I mean, that happened to me before with our national mail but you receive a letter saying that your item will be destroyed and on the tracking application you can clearly see that parcel was seized by customs and it is not marked as delivered. So if I wouldn't have contacted the workshop, I would have no idea what even happened to my parcel?

If you posted something that is not allowed in the international mail then your national postal service should have removed & destroyed it before it went on the plane. For something like that to get to the destination country before being caught is very unusual - so we are unlikely to know what the procedure is in this case. But they wouldn't be allowed to send it on anywhere, so they need to inform either the sender or recipient, and the latter is cheaper & quicker...

You should bear in mind when making a claim, or thinking about doing this again, that sending items in breech of international postal rules is a crime in the UK and is likely to be a crime in most other countries.