TNT says unclear if it ever had British data

[The Smoking Gnu]

Maybe they'll turn up stamped
"Condition 9 Access Mail Received out of course
at Aberdeen Mail Centre"!

[The Postal Avenger]

Radio 1 reporting them lost 'in the post'. Get your facts right ffs.

Can you imagine the outrage towards the Royal mail had we lost them? Why do TNT seem to be getting off lightly about this?

[F0zziebear]

The items did get lost in the post, there is more than one postal provider in the country now.

It will take time for people to realise this in the way in which they report.

For exampe a power failure could have been casued by numerous companies.

A rail strike could happen on various lines owned by various companies (to be fair they normally name the company)

I appreciate it msut be annoying, but that's life. The media in general are fairly badly informed about most topics and therefore it is prudent to treat their reporting with the scepticism it deserves.

F0zz

[Funked!]

That Richard Parks div on 'The Wright Stuff' implied it was Royal Mail, spouting on about strikes etc.
He starts off by saying 'when the story broke last night i looked it up on the internet', well if you did Parks you made a poor job of it.


Obviously i rang them up & pointed out their error of employing half-wit, gob shites.

[Stormproof]

i emailed bbc breakfast, they had some idiot on there going on about postcards turning up 60 years late, not once did they mention TNT, all they kept saying was 'lost in the post'

[meoldcocker]

Shouldn't the RM machine be galvanised into some form of action
Either an official denial or a full fledged attack on postcomm and TNT

[PostfromNotts]

Shouldn't the RM machine be galvanised into some form of action
Either an official denial or a full fledged attack on postcomm and TNT

They love it!!

They want us run down and this just hastens the flow.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Sorry Guv we aint got it

AMSTERDAM, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Dutch mail company TNT said there was no way of verifying if a shipment with personal data of 25 million Britons and believed lost was actually sent through the mail system it operates.

TNT runs an internal mail system for HM Revenue and Customs, the tax authority, that carries up to 100,000 mail items each night.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling told parliament on Tuesday that two discs containing information on 25 million Britons had disappeared after being sent through the mail system.

TNT said the system offered the option for the sender to choose a service that offers full track and trace of a shipment, but for the shipment in question, that option was not selected.

"General mail does not carry a track and trace mechanism and hence it has been impossible, in this instance, to conduct an audit to identify if the item entered the system," the company said.

TNT said it was cooperating fully with the tax authority and the Metropolitan Police in the investigation into the missing computer discs.

TNT shares were down 3.3 percent at 25.62 euros by 1540 GMT.

"It's embarrassing, it was sensitive mail," ING analyst Axel Funhoff said.

Funhoff said it was unlikely, however, that TNT would lose customers as a result.

"Fundamentally it probably doesn't mean a whole lot, but the reputational damage is there to a certain extent." (Reporting by Niclas Mika; Editing by Paul Bolding)

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economic ... 60,00.html

Allegra Stratton
Wednesday November 21, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Revenue and Customs today said that the individual responsible for sending the two CDs that went missing acted "completely outside their job remit" and had made "a colossal error".

A spokesperson for HMRC said: "This individual should not have been involved. It was none of their business. They should have forwarded it on to someone else - another group of civil servants at a more senior level."

"The HMRC office is a huge office with 200 people and there is a nominated team that send items between us and other departments. The individual in question had nothing to do with that team and it was completely outside their job remit."

"More senior people than this individual should have transferred the information. They shouldn't have been involved in the sending of the documents. [They] should have passed the request onto a specific office.

"There are a specific group of people who are trained to follow set procedures."

The department appeared to be in confusion about whether the individual, thought to be a junior official based in the HMRC's Washington office, was still in position.

One spokesman said the individual was still at work and would be until the results of an independent inquiry being carried out by Revenue & Customs into both the conduct of the individual and the team within which they work.

This was contradicted by another spokesman, who said he did not know whether the individual was still at work, and that it was "completely irrelevant".

In total there are three inquiries being conducted, the one by the department itself, one by the police and an independent review by Kieran Poynter of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The HMRC official said that the "the inquiry will take into account the individual's experience. However, in the staff handbook there are guidelines and they include using common sense".

The official described the situation as being like "going to a bank clerk to ask for a £15m loan when I should really be dealing with the manager".

Meanwhile, the private company that handles all HMRC's internal post said there was no proof the package had indeed left HMRC's Washington office.

"Because the individual responsible did not chose the track-and-trace option [TNT's way of recording delivery] we don't even know if [the package] went into our system," a spokesman said.

TNT manages many government accounts and handles some 100,000 HMRC packages daily.

"Options exist for the sender to choose a consigned service - eg full track-and-trace. General mail does not carry a track-and-trace mechanism."

"It is important to note that the replacement discs were despatched on a consigned service - eg with full track-and-trace visibility on October 24 and subsequently delivered within the required timeframe the following morning."

TNT also rubbished the postal strike excuse the civil servant gave his department for why he'd taken three weeks to raise the alarm. "The postal strikes would have affected the passing of this item in no way," the TNT spokesman said. In fact, the company recorded an upturn in business during the postal strike period.

There were numerous strikes in the period around and before the official posted the package on October 18.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 910635.ece

A junior official who appears to have been asleep on the job burnt the child benefit database onto two discs – and posted them
Sean O’Neill, Francis Elliott, Rajeev Syal and Rhys Blakely

Perhaps his mind was elswhere that Thursday morning. England's hopes of qualifying for the European Championships had been dentged the night before by defeat in Moscow — still, there was the Rugby World Cup Final to look forward to at the weekend.

Certainly, when the request came to send child benefit data to the National Audit Office in London, the junior official’s mind does not appear to have been on the job. He burned the entire national child benefit database on two computer discs, popped them in an envelope and sent them to the post room for collection by TNT couriers.

“He messed up, it was treated as a normal piece of mail,â€

[saru]

[quote="TrueBlueTerrier"]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 910635.ece

A junior official who appears to have been asleep on the job burnt the child benefit database onto two discs – and posted them
Sean O’Neill, Francis Elliott, Rajeev Syal and Rhys Blakely

Perhaps his mind was elswhere that Thursday morning. England's hopes of qualifying for the European Championships had been dentged the night before by defeat in Moscow — still, there was the Rugby World Cup Final to look forward to at the weekend.

Certainly, when the request came to send child benefit data to the National Audit Office in London, the junior official’s mind does not appear to have been on the job. He burned the entire national child benefit database on two computer discs, popped them in an envelope and sent them to the post room for collection by TNT couriers.

“He messed up, it was treated as a normal piece of mail,â€

[johno47]

If it had been us we would have took a right battering in the press...UNITY IS STRENGTH.

[DGP1]

TNT song for losing post -http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=n0auMZTRR1o

And some poor junior clerk at HMRC will be taking most of the blame

[Ex RM Manager]

he'll lose his job if he hasn't already done so.

No way should any mail like that have been sent any way but by secure, registered, fully trackable mail - if it should have been sent at all.

[DGP1]

he'll lose his job if he hasn't already done so.

No way should any mail like that have been sent any way but by secure, registered, fully trackable mail - if it should have been sent at all.

But the point I was trying to make was that some junior person will be made a scapegoat and those who should have been responsible for ensuring that correct procedures were followed will get away with it.