Firstly, the scale of the work carried out by Royal Mail is enormous and this site is not here to blast Royal Mail. If you do have a problem, complain to Royal Mail first as they do (on the whole) try to be helpful.

Royal Mail (whose workers are largely represented by the CWU) also achieves a very high success rate given that they handle over 80 million items a day but for those of us who happen to lose items of mail, it can be a VERY frustrating, confusing and sometimes costly experience. The Royal Mail Complaints procedure isn't like taking your local shop to task because it sold you a mouldy loaf. Since the abolition of the consumer body Postwatch, Royal Mail is now required by law to deal with complaints fairly and within a reasonable amount of time.

However, Royal Mail is a big machine and although the parcel you were expecting may well have ruined your entire week, the best you can expect from Royal Mail in the short-term is some sympathy from customer services, a claim form and a fair wait whilst they investigate what has actually gone wrong.

Given that they are legally obliged to compensate customers (where relevant) when they have failed, like any insurance company they do like to make sure that a compensation claim is valid and you MUST adhere to the procedures involved in a claim or you may lose all entitlement. The Royal Mail Complaints deparyment does not stray from 'procedure'. Keep printed reciepts for everything - particularly Ebay items, ie proof of sale/purchase etc in printed format.

Royal Mail - Why has it changed so much?

Postal Deregulation - the brainchild of the European parliament has meant changes - and lots of them. Turning their domestic mail service into a profitable business has been their goal since deregulation in January 2006 and it has been a tough road. Not all the changes have been welcomed - particularly Post Office closures. Royal Mail continues to be a subject of controversy with respect to the ongoing drive by government to bring in commercial expertise and capital to help modernise the service. The present coalition government is also in the process of seeing how it can best introduce new investment and increase productivity with a 49% stake likely to be sold, and the remaining 51% in government hands. The process is ongoing.

What are my rights as a customer?

From a customers point of view, when we buy a stamp, we assume this creates a binding contract with Royal Mail. We pay our money and in return Royal mail ensures the safe delivery of our mail. However, it is important to understand that postal services do not fit into the same category as most consumer items and there is no binding contract as such.

If you do not receive an item, the dispute is between the SENDER and Royal Mail, meaning that as the recipient, your dispute will be with the sender. Only the sender can raise a complaint directly with Royal Mail. The exception might be if the delivery was placed in an insecure area and was stolen, in which case you might have good cause to complain.

The onus in more recent years has been for Royal Mail to sell it's more expensive insured 'Special Delivery' service where items being posted have some intrinsic value but customers still seem to purchase the cheaper 'Recorded Delivery' service which is primarily to record the delivery of documents, does not have insurance cover and does not have the same levels of security. For most mail, the most you would get in compensation (if at all) is a book of stamps, so it is important that you select the RIGHT service if the item you wish to post is something you cannot afford to lose.

Most of us have a kind of unspoken pride in the Royal Mail. Since its inception, the mail has enjoyed a Royal appointment. An Endorsement indicating the importance in which the British Isles hold the Post Office and its services. However, this is gradually changing as email and the mobile phone find greater use and Royal Mail is shifting rapidly towards a wholly commercial basis aimed primarily at business.

There is some evidence to suggest that as the service has become moire commercialised, there has been a rise in unwanted incidents (or media coverage of them) including Special Delivery items vanishing, mail theft, mail sacks abandoned and even credit cards stolen en route. The Royal Mail has had a major facelift over the last five years or so - much of it about steamlining to optimise profits and efficiency (in that order). It is a business after all - even if state owned.

These days we can now pay more bills at the Post Office - or at least the few we have left. We can buy our car & home insurance through Royal mail, have our telephone services run via Royal Mail, buy our Euros, dollars and Yen over the counter - all great services and essential to keep our ever shrinking number of local Post Office branches open but all these services are being eroded by the online world.

The Royal Mail monopoly on mail has now come to an end and Royal Mail has already lost business to rivals, either through downstream access or direct competitors.

Junk Mail

More recently, 'door to door' services, the junk mail side of Royal Mail has been given the go ahead to increase junk mail to five days a week as part of a 2.9% pay deal (plus an extra 1% incentive package). Since we already deal with a million tons of junk mail in the UK and the only way to stop it coming through your door is to write and ask them to stop delivering it, junk mail looks likely to snowball - at a time when we have to seriously consider just how much stuff we throw away and what can be recycled. The fact is we simply don't have enough demand for waste paper in this country and much of it still ends up in landfill. As things stand, only 25% of the materials we consume go to be recycled and it remains questionable just how much IS actually reused and how much still ends in landfill.

The move on the part of Royal Mail to increase junk mail was to help offset a decrease in mail volume for all the reasons outlined above.

So who is the Royal Mail officially accountable to?

We have often heard it said that Royal Mail is accountable to no one and that they hide behind their public service status. When you do wish to complain it can sometimes feel as though you're up against the might of a massive company and indeed you are, but Royal Mail certainly does have to be accountable - even if only on the larger issues. As an individual you may have less weight and if that parcel of shortbread that you were expecting from your Aunt in Scotland is missing, you generally have to complain to Royal Mail direct - at least in the first instance. The process is decribed here:

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=69800720&mediaId=84400738

Essentially if you get no joy with Royal Mail's customer services, you can contact the 'Postal Review Panel' and failing that, the Postal Redress Service (POSTRS).

Royal Mail is a plc and owned wholly by the British Government - for the moment. Basically we ALL own it. It is under licence from the regulator (PostComm) which requires that Royal Mail demonstrates that it has adequate measures/facilities in place to ensure the safety of mail and that they are complying with the 'Quality Of Service' agreement. Granted this may not help a great deal when it comes to the shortbread, but at least in the grander scale of things there is a body which can directly intervene and ensure that Royal Mail is on a reasonably even keel - or at least that is the theory behind it.

From the individuals perspective, any complaint still has to be dealt with by Royal Mail and tasty though the shortbread might be, lets face it, it probably isn't going to be top of the agenda for PostComm or Consumer Focus so it is important to stay calm, ensure you have any supporting evidence and allow Royal Mail to invesigate on your behalf. With lost or missing items, you'll need to allow a certain amount of time to elapse before Royal Mail regards your complaint as valid although theres nothing stopping you getting on to them as soon as possible and getting the ball rolling.

© Hellmail.co.uk (29th June 2010)