Tracked item missing part of address label

[philw]

Hi,
an item I ordered was posted as a Tracked item (RM Tracked 48 ????) and I naturally I have been tracking its progress. Yesterday morning, it appeared as.....

Status: Returned to sender
We were unable to deliver item JC323170615GB on the 2014-06-11 as it was not possible to identify the delivery address. We returned the item to sender on the 2014-06-11.
Last update: 11 June 2014, 08:10am

I immediately got on the phone to Customer Service as the tracking system should have the delivery name and address - which the CS rep did indeed confirm. She then contacted the delivery office in an attempt to stop the package being returned to sender and to attempt delivery using the address on the tracking system. After a brief pause, she came back to me with the message that the Delivery Office were not prepared to deliver as 'part of the address was missing on the package' and as a result 'they must return the package to the sender'.

Is there absolutely no room for common sense and use the delivery address on the tracking system - particularly as the customer has been in contact? I have now got to wait another week for an item that I paid to have delivered by yesterday just because part of the address label became unreadable!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

1. The delivery postman has no way of getting the address from the tracking system as they have no way of actually accessing it so they would rely on management direction .

2. Despite the best efforts of the CS advisor its unlikely that the physical item was still in the office at the time as ALL Delivery Offices operate a clear office policy and no items should be left in the office overnight (unless awaiting collection by customer). The item would have been returned to the Mail Centre by about 12pm in my office.

3. More importantly, Delivery offices do not have central locations for all parcels, they are sorted down to duties sometimes based on size, destination and service used. So whilst it seems a simple task from an outside viewpoint, its a nearly impossible task to find the physical parcel if that parcel does not have an address actually on it. At my office it would involve searching the tracked packet shrouds, 20 driver duties, 2 pre-9o'clock duties, 150+ walking duties and 30 P&L pairs.

[philw]

Thanks for your response. Much appreciated and I completely understand.

My only gripe is that according to the response given by the CS person, both my name and postcode were still clearly visible, but the rest of the address was missing [although given your response, how they determined that from the T&C entry is anybody's guess]. I thought that name and postcode was sufficient information to enable something to be delivered .

[SpacePhoenix]

Thanks for your response. Much appreciated and I completely understand.

My only gripe is that according to the response given by the CS person, both my name and postcode were still clearly visible, but the rest of the address was missing [although given your response, how they determined that from the T&C entry is anybody's guess]. I thought that name and postcode was sufficient information to enable something to be delivered .

A single postcode could cover a dozen or more delivery points (individual houses, flats, shops, etc, etc) so unless the postman covering the duty that covers your house is your regular postman, they've no way of knowing just based on the name and postcode. Even then it's theoretically possible for two addresses to have people with the same name.

What might have happened is that the company sending it has fed the label roll in the wrong way round so that it's printed the address over the pull-off bit where the barcode is meant to be. The pull-off bit has probably got caught on something and probably stuck to whatever that was.