Why oh why royal mail??

I live in London. I've never bothered complaining about it because I read that they will only give you back the recored delivery cost, nothing more. And wouldn't it just be the sender/seller who would get the compensation?

 

Actually, good point. It would be the sender who would be entitled to compensation. Though it's typically British to not complain about lack of service on the receiver end.

Didn't consider that it would be the sender who would be compensated in the worst case tho, unless someone here knows any better?

 

Sender has to file the request for compensation, as they are the ones who paid and did not receive the service they paid for.

Stupid system

 

Honestly usps is actually a pretty solid service and there are high standards for it. Anyone screwing up or messing around is usually quickly axed. I have always gotten great service and packages estimated to take weeks to come in the mail usually come within a week. Only issue I had was packages from canada which would take almost a month and a half.

 

I laugh when they leave a box under our back gate (there is spae to slide a parcel under), and the parcel gets wet in the rain.

Luckily nothings been damaged yet.. other than damp outer box!

 

They don't even knock on the door in the USA. Just dump the package outside the door where everyone can see it.

I've never had a robbery as far as I know, but it's the same for FedEx, UPS and USPS.

 

That made me lol


My postman just dumps recorded parcels on the doorstep and trots merrily along to sleep with my neighbour's wife. Once he actually rang the doorbell and said "I don't have a pen today so here you go" he shoved the parcel into my hand and left before I could react. Oh yes and there is another "woodside way" a twenty minute drive from our house and despite the clearly completely different postcode, a large amount of our post ends up at the wrong woodside way...

Though parcel force aren't much better, every time we specify "DO NOT LEAVE THE PARCEL WITH THE NEIGHBOUR IF WE ARE OUT" and every time they do, until recently, both sides hated us for no reason and tended to throw away our parcels.

There was a pretty accurate joke on a Tv program a while ago "Royal mail parcel delivery, we called, you were in so we ran away before you could answer"

 

One of my postman left a parcel with my neighbour but didn't leave a card indicating this and the neighbour in question forgot to tell me he had a parcel for me until 2 weeks later after i had contacted royal mail who basically said they didn't have my parcel in the local sorting office and that they couldn't do much.

 

I feel sorry for anyone in the United Kingdom.. While the United State's mail system isn't all that great either, I've heard and seen some pretty stupid stuff with Royal Mail and Parcel Force when I was in England.

Not to mention, the taxes in the UK just make me twitch at the thought of it, but I can see why some of it is necessary, such as supporting the health care system.

USPS hasn't caused me too much trouble over the years, although I've had some annoying experiences with them being late for delivery. A PS2 game I bought from a seller just a few counties away from me (Literally, a 30 minute - 1 hour drive depending on the route you take) took over a week to get to me, when I was using priority shipping..

However, I'll choose USPS over UPS or Fedex depending on where the package is originating from. UPS is pretty much always spot on with their estimations for when it's supposed to deliver, but sometimes it'll get to the UPS warehouse sooner than expected, and they'll still wait until the estimated date. Oh well, I've worked in several warehouses, so I can understand that to some extent.

My main issue with UPS is that the drivers out in this area must be mentally deficient or something. I ordered a new powersupply and GPU from newegg awhile back, used UPS to ship, they set it on the side-door of my home, in the rain, and only put a plastic bag on it. Then they went on the site and said it was signed for, when they hadn't even knocked.

One time I had ordered Darksiders for the 360 from newegg, and used UPS since it was free shipping for a 3 day option, and the moron didn't knock to have it signed for, and threw it on the concrete. The case was cracked in several places, but luckily the disc was in perfect condition and I had a spare case for it.

I seen the same driver delivering a fairly large package to my neighbor's place, and he just tossed it over the wooden deck and let it fall several feet. I can understand this to an extent though, since my neighbor had two large breed dogs that didn't like other people what so ever. I had a friend walk over one day with his dog, and their dogs came into my yard and tried to attack it; nothing bad happened though, since my friend pimp slapped the dog (Not hard, just enough to get it to stop and run away, it was well justified in that situation)

I moved here recently though, about 5-6 miles away from where I was before, to a larger and better condition home. I haven't used anything but USPS here yet, and the mail person for this address is pretty good, so I'm happy with that. I've used them for some female to male jumper cables from sparkfun, my 64drive, a rumble pack and memory card for the N64 from amazon, and so on. Nothing was damaged, and it arrived in good timing.

Although, when it comes to overnight deliveries when I'm impatient, I'll use UPS since they're pretty spot on with timing when I don't want to wait too long. I had to overnight Dragon Age 2 Signature Edition from gamestop since Best Buy screwed me on my preorder. On the little preorder machine they have at the local best buy, it clearly said Dragon Age 2 BioWare Signature Edition for the PC, so I preordered it. When I went to pick it up on the day of release, they said that they never had preorders for that edition, and the preorder receipt even said that was supposed to be the DA2 SE.

After that, I completely refuse to preorder games from Best Buy. When I want a special edition of a game though, I'll just go up to gamestop a few days after release and buy a spare copy that they had left, haha. The local gamestop out here usually has preorder editions left that wasn't picked up for awhile, so that's pretty lucky for me. That's how I got the Special Edition of Dead Island nearly a week or two after release, and the DLC codes for the Ripper and Bloodbath Arena worked perfectly on Steam.

Anyways, I'm getting off topic, I seem to do that a lot. Before I go though, look up "Lee Evans - Parcel Force," it's quite funny.

Note: Even though UPS has bad habits when delivering stuff out here, I'll use them once and awhile. However, if I'm at home on the day of delivery, I'll just sit outside and listen to music around the time the truck comes around here, so they wont have the chance to break anything, because if they do with them clearly seeing me there, I'll chase them and falcon punch them.

If I'm not there, I'll just ask my neighbor to keep an eye on things for me, since I've known her for many years, even before I moved here.

 

Hahah! it's all so true
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4rSXqYjNGo

I think it's a shame that our governments (past and present) have let royal mail get so bad, they clearly want to sell it off (which I strongly diasgree with) but I don't really see how turning it into a total joke makes it a good prospect for corporate scumbags to buy.....

 

Its such a mixed bag with me, sometimes I get crap service, other times its really great - there's one Royal Mail post woman who knows me by name and really goes out of her way to get parcels to me.

I've had a parcel left in my neighbours recycling box, the day before it was due to be collected, with no card left, how the hell was I supposed to guess it was in there?

Many a time they simply haven't left a card, yet return parcels to the depot. If I go the depot and ask, the less helpful staff claim there must be nothing there, and the postman would surely have left a card if there was. I've had a parcel returned all the way to China, simply because they didn't leave me a card and I didn't know I had to collect it, such a waste!

I rarely actually sign for recorded delivery parcels, even if I go and collect them from the depot. Often the parcels I go collect could easily have been posted through my letterbox - either the postman is creating more work himself by carrying it back, or they never even try and deliver it at all.