Suspended , After appeal

[Kasia1603]

This post is for my wife she has been a post woman since Jan 2020 , she received no official training and her training record is empty.

She accidentally scanned a box to empty the mail 10mins too early , she can empty this box anytime on her route as she passes it multiple times. It's last collection is 9am she scanned it 8.51am but was still present at the box until after 9 waiting for the other postie to turn up.

Either way she made a mistake , there was no warning on the pda saying it was being emptied too early as she knows about this and this never came up.

She was hit with a 12 month serious warning for this , we questioned what evidence do they have that this was willful and not lack of training. They acknowledged this was lack of training but disciplined her anyway ? We wrote an appeal and literally a week after handing in the appeal request on her return to work she was suspended, this time for the same box, being scanned at 9.12am but the GPS data was showing her at the depot ?

Which is impossible, she was at the box at 9.12am we have a witness who speaks to her every morning who's address is at this box , I have looked for cctv footage in the area but not looking promising, what's weird is it's not just showing she allegedly scanned a box while elsewhere , all the tracking data up till her second box after 10am Is missing !

She came home in tears feeling victimised she's never been in trouble at any job before and doesn't bend the rules , it's starting to feel like targeting.

I've tried to research how these pdas collect their data do they use cellular tracking? , I use similar GPS tracking in my job and ours are notoriously unreliable at times.


She had nothing to gain whatsoever by scanning this deliberately early , she can empty it anytime and it wouldn't allow her to finish earlier or anything...

[postman2014]

I thought they couldn't use the pda gps data against us?? Why would they search where the pda was at 9.12am if nothing flagged up? Means they intentionally looked for that pda data. Bit suspicious if you ask me! Get the union involved. If no training was given how do they expect you not to make mistakes!!

[redlen]

Anybody who is under the impression retained data will not be used need a dose of reality if the employer suspects misconduct.

Employees agreed to this data monitoring and took the golden carrot

It is well known people take a photograph of box bar codes and scan at a different location. That is why the PDA now pings your GPS position every 10 seconds

Not saying the OP did this but they have your previous location already in the system since you logged in with the PDA

You need to request a copy/print out of that GPS location data prior to any formal interview

Suspension is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about

[Haditup]

If your wife is innocent of 2nd offence then PDA actuals will back her up.Did she scan any other item after box mail?
The manager has probably got it all wrong ,suspension is normal for this type of alleged conduct.
Tell her not to worry and enjoy the time off and get a Union official involved.

[Kasia1603]

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[SpacePhoenix]

If the post box is very close to the depot, is it possible that it was in range of the depot Wi-Fi and so possibly the PDA has used Wi-Fi rather than the normal mobile connection to send the scan data?

[CharlesG]

Royal Mail have only recently got the technology in place to alert management where the GPS of postbox and GPS of scan are not the same.

GPS data is normally accurate but sometimes out by few metres which has been factored in to alerting systems.

Where there are discrepancies this will be taken very seriously and trying to con the collection system is gross misconduct.

To support your case you could pull up your own phones gps data for day in question, get CCTV, witnesses?

[Kasia1603]

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[Post_Alone]

This post is for my wife she has been a post woman since Jan 2020 , she received no official training and her training record is empty.

She accidentally scanned a box to empty the mail 10mins too early , she can empty this box anytime on her route as she passes it multiple times. It's last collection is 9am she scanned it 8.51am but was still present at the box until after 9 waiting for the other postie to turn up.

Either way she made a mistake , there was no warning on the pda saying it was being emptied too early as she knows about this and this never came up.

She was hit with a 12 month serious warning for this , we questioned what evidence do they have that this was willful and not lack of training. They acknowledged this was lack of training but disciplined her anyway ? We wrote an appeal and literally a week after handing in the appeal request on her return to work she was suspended, this time for the same box, being scanned at 9.12am but the GPS data was showing her at the depot ?

Which is impossible, she was at the box at 9.12am we have a witness who speaks to her every morning who's address is at this box , I have looked for cctv footage in the area but not looking promising, what's weird is it's not just showing she allegedly scanned a box while elsewhere , all the tracking data up till her second box after 10am Is missing !

She came home in tears feeling victimised she's never been in trouble at any job before and doesn't bend the rules , it's starting to feel like targeting.

I've tried to research how these pdas collect their data do they use cellular tracking? , I use similar GPS tracking in my job and ours are notoriously unreliable at times.


She had nothing to gain whatsoever by scanning this deliberately early , she can empty it anytime and it wouldn't allow her to finish earlier or anything...

The PDA warns you that the box is being scanned early. It goes against the USO which is government regulated(not company). Training or not ... the pda tells you.

[Clappedoutpostie]

On your first point of scanning a box early (before 9am) the PDA will actually warn you and u have to click a box to acknowledge the warning it’s given you.

[Kasia1603]

Im aware of that but I never got any warning. Just scanned and left like usual. PDA never gave me any warning. I told them that but no one seams to care. I actually thought if someone was brave enough to press ignore button it will highlight on manager computer but looks like no because they couldn't provide it. I told them to check if is something wrong with PDA as we got all new ones before Christmas and no one was bother to do it. I even told them to go and scan box before 9am and see if warning will show up because it didn't worked for me.

[mattick]

Doesn't matter if it seems a good idea to you, you need to go back to the office at the end of your duty to sign-out and scan the consolidation code for your PDA. Also, if you log into your PDA before 9am it will flash a pop-up message warning you not to scan boxes before 9am.

Is it possible a colleague who has her PDA is scanning pictures of the box codes of their phone? End of the day, don't trust anyone with your PDA, especially if you logged into it with your personal ID. You log in, you log out, and no one else handles it.

Is there no Union Rep in your office? I can't see how you get a 12 month serious warning without first going through coaching and counselling before conduct. If management haven't followed correct procedure, then the case is dropped.

GPS technology works by triangulating your location between base stations. I've never known for there to be any issues for location and time-stamps to be off for me or any other OPG's in my office.

What I will say is the Royal Mail app on the PDA is glitchy, I've scanned tracked items and collection boxes, only to be pulled into the office by management the next day to be told I haven't.

Another issue is poor coverage by the service provider to the PDA's, think it's EE. If you're in a black spot, your PDA can't submit the job after you scanned. This will cause lag for data. The servers for Royal Mail crash all the time.

https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/en-gb/mobi ... 109&vw=map check to see if there are black spots where these incidents happened?

[Kasia1603]

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[Blaine]

Get the GPS data in real time, a print out of a map with coordinates is not sufficient. I know this because I use RON a lot (our GPS tool) and I've driven a mile out before it correctly updated from being stuck at the office to where I actually was. I'm not the only one that has noticed this either, a couple of colleagues had the same issue. You need to watch on the computer the exact tracing of the GPS to rule out GPS inconsistency and you should see jumps, rather than a slow progressing line to know there has been a problem and your box scan has sent off the wrong coordinates.

[Kasia1603]

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