My experiences with Royal Mail (Royal Mail)

Member Name: caz-3124

Product:	Royal Mail
Date:	18/03/09 (220 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: quick delivery with 2nd class sometimes

Disadvantages: recorded delivery unreliable

I was inspired to write this review after having used Royal Mail's Recorded Delivery Services to send out lots of packages to my buyers on Ebay and Amazon's Marketplace. Now I rarely use the post otherwise preferring email for communication due to its quick and convenient nature and I don't normally have any packages to send off but over the last couple of months I have used their services a lot.

Royal Mail works on a simple basis. You place the item in one of their post boxes in the street or you go to your local Post Office or you can have your post collected as some businesses do. Then the mail is all taken and sorted out and redistributed across the country (and internationally) and given to your local postman or woman to deliver on their rounds. Sounds simple enough right? And yet an awful lot of things seem to go wrong and they're probably in the top-100 list of complained about companies. What's worse is that they are basically a monopoly. Unless you choose to call up Parcelforce or any of the other courier services and arrange delivery of your aunt's birhday card which would probably cost you a fiver you don't really have much choice.

I have used Royal Mail to send letters here and there over the years without much problem but I know that this is not always the case. A lot of post seems to go missing according to official statistics and though this isn't so much of a big deal when it's just an invitation to subscribe to your favourite fashion magazine, it can cause serious problems when it is a letter from your mortgage company or an overdue gas bill. I think the prices are pretty reasonable, 40p to send a letter up to Birmingham is quite fair I feel and sometime when you pay to send a letter second class it arrives the following day instead of the quoted three-five days which is a bonus.

However, I have had a bit more difficulty with the Recorded Delivery Service they offer. This is for people who want to be able to prove that they sent the item out and be able to see if the item has arrived and who signed for it. When it gets to its destination the postie should knock on the door and get a signature on their electronic gadgets. Basically it's designed to give you peace of mind. To use this serivce you must take your item to the Post Office and they will charge you 72p on top of the normal posting price. This can be done on first or second class items. They record the destination postcode and you get a receipt with a reference number. Once your item has been taken in it goes with the rest of the post and in fact is not trackable until delivery. If you want to keep an eye on the progress of your item you can use the online Track and Trace system. You enter the reference number on the receipt and it will either tell you that it's simply still in the system or it will give you the information telling you it's been delivered and you can see the electronic signature. However though this is fine sometimes, I have had a few problems with this. Namely that the postperson doesn't bother to get the signature so on the system it shows up as never delivered which means that you never know if the person ever got it or not. I have also heard of postmen signing for the item themselves and also tearing off the recorded delivery label and sticking it through the letter box. Though it's all very well for the recipient if they get their item, it seems the sender had paid for a service not recieved. You can get compensation for this but they will not refund the fee you paid they will only give you stamps and for this you have to fill out a p58 form which you pick up at the Post Office.

As such I don't think I will continue to use this service because I have found it too unreliable. About 1/7 of my items sent have been received with no signature so it feels a waste of money. Bearing in mind that the compensation levels for lost items are the same as with standard post (£36) it makes more sense simply to get a free certificate of posting which allows you to prove you sent the item out. My dad sent something out recently using the Special Next Day Delivery service costing £5. Ten days later it's still not arrived...

So yes I will still be using Royal Mail as I don't have much choice but I think I will steer clear of their extra payment services as they don't seem value for money...

Summary: mixed experiences