Sad tale of the missing presents

[Geezer]

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/cardi ... -25399875/

Dec 16 2009 by Jonathan Evans, South Wales Echo


Christmas presents

TEDDY bears, video games and presents from grandparents are among the gifts that won’t make it to the right homes this Christmas.

Along with thousands of other presents and cards, they are currently sitting in the “heartbreak corner” of Cardiff’s Royal Mail sorting office.

Every day, the office receives around 500 cards and gifts with damaged wrapping or no postal address, meaning they cannot be sent to the right place.

And while staff try desperately to work their magic and find out where the gifts are meant to be heading, around 85% will never make it.

One unaddressed card in the Penarth Road sorting office, which has little hope of being identified, reads: “To my best friend nanny, I love you and I hope you love me. Lots of love from Cerys.”

A wrapped present with no address has a tag saying “Merry Christmas Sebby, lots of love Nanna and Grampy”.

Among the other gifts are a box of Nintendo DS video games which have been bought on eBay and a woolly fleece which has not been properly wrapped.

There are also hundreds of unaddressed cards, often simply written to “Uncle Harry” or “Grandma and Grampy”.

“It’s likely these have been accidently popped in the letter box with a bunch of stamped and addressed cards,” said Val Bodden, media relations manager for Royal Mail Group Wales.

“It’s heartbreaking when parcels come in wrapped in Christmas paper and addressed ‘Dad – Merry Christmas from all of us’.

“What has probably happened is that they haven’t wrapped it in strong enough paper, they haven’t used enough sticky tape and the address label has come away from the packaging.

“Because there is no return address label, we haven’t a clue who to send it to, or send it back to.

“It is so heartbreaking for those who have sent it and for those who should have received it.

“But there is some festive cheer when the team manage to track down a full address from a partially written one.”

Royal Mail has taken on more than 3,800 “address detectives” as it prepares to handle more than 300 million poorly addressed and badly wrapped presents and cards over Christmas.

The items are kept for a month before being sent to the Royal Mail’s national returns centre in Belfast, where items can be opened in an attempt to track down the sender.

They are kept for a period of time before either being returned to the sender, auctioned, disposed of or donated to charity.

In total, the Royal Mail expects to deliver more than two billion items during the festive period, with 50 million of these in Wales.

Roy Allen, the address detectives’ general manager, said: “Mail volumes almost double on peak days in December and it is important that people properly address their Christmas cards and use the postcode.

“Letters and cards that have clearly written addresses and a postcode can be read by our machines and handled 20 times faster than by hand.

“Many millions of items of mail handled by Royal Mail every year are incorrectly or poorly addressed.

“But people who take care with their addressing and use the postcode will help Royal Mail at its busiest time of the year.”

If you’ve sent an item which may have ended up in heartbreak corner you can call the Royal Mail customer care hotline on 08457 740740, giving as much detail as possible about how the item was wrapped.

The Royal Mail will be delivering parcels on Sunday and will be carrying out parcel deliveries on the evenings of December 21-22 to get items to people in time for Christmas.