Good old Royal Mail

[dave1]

I can't believe it I posted a letter bound for the US yesterday and it was checked at the post office but this morning it was delivered to me although my details were on the back of the envelope as the sender. About to take it to the post office and resend with no cost.

[hellocontrol]

Well at least they managed next day delivery.

[dave1]

Well you won't believe it but the letter came back again today. Perhaps it's the postmen in my area well I think they should get rid of them if they can't read the address on the front.

[railtechnician]

Jun 22, 2016 12:37:48 GMT dave1 said:

Well you won't believe it but the letter came back again today. Perhaps it's the postmen in my area well I think they should get rid of them if they can't read the address on the front.

I'm not suggesting that you haven't done so, however, clear From: & To: addressing is a must as it a stamp, home printed licensed pre-paid postage or business franking machine postage of the correct value.

There is much wrong with Royal Mail these days, although post codes were introduced more than 40 years ago to make delivery easier the post officers seem to ignore them most of the time and yet omitting the space in the postcode can send mail to the completely wrong area or wrong town regardless of the rest of the address being 100% correct. I have had many a ruck with RM since I moved to Lincs 11 years ago, the difference between my post code and one in the village half a mile away is one letter, S instead of Y and the only other similarity in the address is that I am at Cliff cottages and my not so near neighbour is at Cliff View cottages. My cottage is adjacent to the fields of Grange Farm and my mail sometimes goes to the cottages there while their mail comes to me, we are both No.2 and have exactly the same postcode as we are within half a mile of one another by road. There is also the problem that en route from Lincoln heading north on the main road there are 11 cottages all numbered No.2 and all on 'the Cliff' along the road to the next two villages north of me! We have different postcodes but the post officers don't use them and more than once I have found myself redelivering mail to the correct addresses miles away. After all these years I have met these distant neighbours and we just sort out the misrouted mail ourselves because putting it back in a local post box means that it goes all the way to the Sheffield Mail Centre to be resorted and sent back to Lincoln sorting (now only a delivery office) office for redelivery to hopefully reach the correct recipient at a second attempt.
What is really annoying is that rural locations are not difficult to locate with modern GPS systems such as Google maps but the problem with that is that putting my official RM postal address into a Sat Nav or other GPS reference device sends users to the adjacent farm because it happens to highlight that as the centre of the local postcode, it having a number of properties whereas there are just four where I am. My street address is not part of the official RM postal address, RM says the local council determines the postal address and postcode and the council said it is up to RM. My neighbours spent years trying to sort the issue before I ever moved here and got nowhere with it and I have hit the same brick wall. 
The official line from RM is that the postcode is a delivery instruction to the postal officer which ensures delivery to the correct address but as I have said the postal officers tell me that they ignore it and use only the street address, in fact they even ignore the name(s) of the addressee(s). Thus even if a piece of mail is correctly addressed in all respects there is absolutely no guarantee of delivery to the correct address, which makes signed for, recorded delivery and special delivery pointless and of course there is no real distinction between 1st and 2nd class mail these days, if there is room to load it on a vehicle it will travel and if not it will wait. Because of this sometimes packets and parcels will take a very circuitous route from sender to recipient, for instance I have known parcels sent to me from the West Midlands to reach the East Midlands via Scotland and apparently such is not an unusual practice since the closing of dozens of sorting offices and tens of mail centres in recent years as RM attempts to catch up with DHL, DPD (which now owns UPS and Interlink and possibly some others), Hermes and other delivery outfits.

Government meddling with regard to funding and privatisation, union activity with regard to failure to implement postal mechanisation 50 years ago, the Consignia fiasco, splitting the PO into RM, PF and PO, privatisation and the long overdue modernisation programme, implemented only in the last five years or so, have turned what was once the envy of the world with its universal service obligation into a shadow of its former self and I would expect it to be taken over by DHL, DPD or similar within the next decade but only so long as the pensions debacle is fully resolved.

 

[dave1]

RT you are correct in saying making sure that everything is done as it should be. I went to the local delivery office yesterday and asked what was wrong with the envelope the postman there said nothing is wrong but it might be the machine at the sorting office! I thought the postmen put the letters into the machines but agree things can go wrong. I also said at the local office did the postman not notice that there was no stamp on the side which had the return address he did not have an answer. The good thing today is that the postman has been and gone and no letter hooray, however, until I know the person has received the letter I will expect it to return.