UKC

On 20th December I posted an item by First Class Recorded Delivery. It was posted in Kent to an address in Manchester but has not arrived. Every time I go on to the Royal Mail website to try to find out what has happened to the item this is the message I get:

"Status: We have your item
Item BZ.........GB was posted at (name of Post Office) on 19/12/14 and is being progressed through our network for delivery.
Last update: 19 December 2014, 10:05am"

I have checked this several times and always the "Last Update" is shown as 19th December. The "Time" appears always as the time I make the enquiry.

I phoned Royal Mail yesterday but the only(human) response I got was that "96% of items sent by Royal Mail are delivered on time". I'm not really interested about the "96%" I am only interested in this particular item.

Does anyone know how I can find out:
a) why it hasn't been delivered
b) when it will be delivered

In reply to mypyrex:

A) you can't
B) you can't

Recorded just goes in with everything else so is near enough untraceable. You can complain to customer services but that will get compensation at best.

In reply to dissonance:




Yes, that's much what I thought. What does mystify me is that there has been no variation in the message(apart from the time)

What the hell is the point of paying for a service that you don't get. I had reasonably expected the item to arrive by or shortly after Christmas but this is now beyond a joke.

OK, I know it costs me but I tend to send anything important by recorded first class but now it seems the only way to ensure any delivery is to use the Special Delivery service.

It's a travesty

In reply to mypyrex:
my experience is that they will stall you until you eventually give up and go away - they are very very good at it

In reply to mypyrex:

Mid-November I returned a camera to a UKC seller and he refunded me. Unfortunately, the camera was lost in transit, thanks to Royal Mail. It was only a cheap, 2nd hand camera, but I still claimed for compensation (after waiting the required 15 days) I only had a 'proof of postage' receipt, the original of which I had to send in along with my claim for compensation.

I've still heard nothing from Royal Mail, so it seems like that too may have 'gone missing'!

Good luck with any compensation claim.

In reply to Fraser:




Thanks, I'd would have preferred the item to have arrived though.

If I ran a business and provided this sort of "service" to customers I wonder how long I would survive.

In reply to mypyrex:


Its been a long time since I worked there but i doubt they have updated the system in that time and it was old then.


First of all you should be able to claim compensation. Secondly you arent actually paying for a service you didnt get, it comes with terms and conditions. Guaranteed delivery would be a tad expensive.


Sending by recorded is pointless from a mail delivery viewpoint. Its use is in having the delivery receipt or not as the case may be. Plus slightly higher compensation I think but cant remember the details.
Special Delivery would generally be a better bet since its handled separately or was anyway (one of the posties will be more up to date)

In reply to Fraser:

Similar here, sent one of many packages and ten minutes after delivery have upset email form customer with images of a parcel that had had the sh*t kicked out of it.

Compo refused because my wrapping is not to a standard that allows for RM to treat it like crap. Thirty odd cameras sent with three different firms, only problems were RM.

Never apologise, never explain.

In reply to Pepper et al:

What I find strange is that with the competition from courier firms and increasing numbers of people using e-mail etc Royal Mail don't seem to be providing a competitive service.

I order my printing ink cartridges on line. Without fail they have always arrived, by courier, within two working days.

In reply to mypyrex:

What do couriers cost? What does posting a letter cost? What proportion of letters go missing?

In reply to mypyrex:

An aside (perhaps) but given we all work during the day I don't understand why RM (and others) haven't changed their entire delivery model to evenings? Granted, it would take significant organisational change, but surely it's the way forward?

With a chance of 96% it is lost or destroyed. best you can do is claim. It will normally take you a month to get a compensation.

I was using RM for small business. They are ok for sending invoices and documents. But not for goods. It takes them one month to process claims and their rates for parcels are much higher than competitors. So after a year or so I switched away from RM and never been happier.

In reply to JMGLondon:

Not so; retired, unemployed, sick. Plus people who perhaps work from home and perhaps need a day time delivery.

In reply to mypyrex: Which courier delivers your ink?

In reply to Sir Chasm:


Can't remember to be honest but I'll check next time.

In reply to mypyrex:

Sure, I was generalising, but surely *most* are home in the evening.

In reply to mypyrex:

As already stated, Recorded Delivery is a proof of delivery only. It is not traced through the system. Only Parcel Force, Special Delivery and RM Tracked are traced.

Royal Mail continues to fall on it's own sword when it comes to loss. I'm sure if you went on a % of items that went through the respective systems, then RM has by far the best overall delivery success rate. You only have to look at the chaos that Yodel created with the Tower Poppy deliveries and add that to the fact that they more or less gave RM an open cheque in the build up to Xmas to deliver the parcels they couldn't cope with.

It's the sheer size and popularity of RM that causes it so seem to fail all the time.

In reply to mypyrex:


When you find out put the name into google and look at all the disgruntled customers complaining about their parcels being undelivered, delivered to the wrong address, left behind the wheely bin, "we tried to deliver" notes stuck through the letterbox while they were in.

In reply to mypyrex:


Also how often do you order ink?

I have just heard from the recipient of the item I posted. They have confirmed that they received it last Friday! Yet the Royal Mail website still shows it as being "progressed through our network".

In reply to Sir Chasm:


That's solved now - doesn't happen any more. What you get instead is a "something for you" card that doesn't imply you were out. Problem solved!

In reply to mypyrex:

They really are a shower, I had a massive issue a year or two ago where they claimed to have delivered a parcel to an address that does not exist, then the driver changed his story and said it had been signed for by me, I had of course done no such thing and the signature was unreadable, in the end I had to conclude that the driver had stolen the package and RM were utterly and completely useless in trying to remedy matters. I gave up in disgust after months of stonewalling from them.
I hope that they lose out to more helpful and professional couriers, although that is a pretty low bar to clear.

In reply to mypyrex:


so are you going to retract your drama queen rants about the travesty that is the Royal Mail?

As you knew, recorded does not guarantee what you expected. There is a service that guarantees what is expected.

You complain they're not as good as couriers but made the concious decision to not pay for the equivalent RM service and instead go with the cheaper one.

Your package did get there.

Try not to be the epitome of grumpy old man in every post ffs!

In reply to Scarab9:

What rant? If you'd read my op you would have seen that I asked for information as to how to find out what had happened to the item?


I posted it recorded first class in the reasonable expectation that it would arrive, as first class is/was meant to, within a FEW day NOT three weeks. You are obviously too young to remember when we had a more efficient postal service.


Try not to be the epitome of a cyber bully tosser who has to pick an argument because somebody has asked a reasonable question.

In reply to mypyrex


They seem to be hitting their quality targets these days. What period of time is that you are harking back to when they were so much better?

In reply to Turdus torquatus:

Two deliveries per day, frequent collections - including Sundays. Post regularly delivered the following day for a standard flat rate postage(no first or second class) and local post collected and delivered second delivery the same day.

In reply to mypyrex:

Ah, OK. You're using "efficient" in a rather particular way there.

In reply to JMGLondon:

I'm usually out in the day and often in the evenings.

At least with Royal Mail I can pick up a parcel from a local sorting office or a post office (if I request that service). Some companies require me to pick up from the other side of Manchester, so 20 miles on the motorway at evening rush hour.

In reply to mypyrex:

If you read the terms of the service you paid for you would find that Royal Mail officially has 15 working days to deliver the item.

Also, the main brunt of your op is that you couldn't find out where the item was in the system. With the option you paid for you never would do until it was delivered. You got what you paid for. If you wanted to track it through the system you should have got special delivery.

While I agree that maybe scarab9 could have put it in a better way I do feel you're whining for the hell of it. Royal Mail did what you asked of them when you paid for recorded 1st class.

Are you complaining about a company doing their job withing the timeline specified, or having a bleary eyed sentimental rant about how things were so much better 'back then'?

In reply to tallpaulselfridge:

From the Royal Mail Website:
"Royal Mail Signed For 1st class aims to deliver your letter or parcel the next working day and gives you the added benefits of, proof of delivery including a signature from the receiver, the ability to check on line or on your mobile to see when your item has been delivered and compensation cover up to £50 for loss or damage. You get a certificate of posting free of charge when you post Royal Mail Signed For 1st class letters or parcels at a Post Office™ branch."

and

"Signed For is not a tracked product but you can use Track and Trace to see an electronic signature free of charge."

So, since the item has been delivered, but no proof of delivery is available (the OP says that the website says it is still in the system, despite having been delivered), then I'd say that he *hasn't* got what he paid for. He's got plain First Class delivery, not First Class Signed For.

In reply to mypyrex:

Yes, railways used to be like that too.

That was when employees got paid f* all so that RM could throw labour at the problem, when people were so desperate for jobs and had such low expectations of life they could be made to work all hours, when trains were so heavily subsidised that they could be used as mobile sorting offices. Etc etc etc. Go back a little further and in Victorian times they were 8 deliveries a day in London, for the same sort of reasons.

Happy days, indeed.

In reply to owlart:

You raise a fair point. He didn't get that part of the bargain and has every right to complain about not being able to see proof of delivery as he does in a latter comment.

However as his op was mainly getting at the lack of a location of where his letter was in the pipeline and its late arrival then he did get what he paid for.

To enable a precise forecast of delivery date the only options are the more expensive timed delivery postings.