If RM cannot deliver, they leave a slip. It is then the responsibility of the ADRESSEE to rearrange delivery. If they do not the it is returned.

The time a package is held for is dependent on the level of postage used - 1st class, recorded or registered.

The latter require signatures and cannot be left. HTH

 

One would think that they can now cross reference the address on the package with you enquiry as to the missing package. Surely they have logged the recipients address on a computer somewhere, so can match it up to you.

I did once have a package showing up on tracking as delivered to me a whole day before I got it. I guess the driver scanned my package instead of someone else's. Didn't recognise the signature either.

 

The post office over the years has become very bad with its service and what your saying sounds like the standard script, there is a large amount of theft going on within the service, I'm not saying that this is what has happened in your case, but I personally no of a posty who was having it away with mobile phones, well until he got caught, my daughter who wheels and deals on the net has had to claim for two packages that have gone astray in the last three months and this is going on all the times with lots of people, makes you wonder, oh yes and my wife sent a birthday card with a few dollars in it for a relatives bab in the states by recorded and yes when it got there the envelope was still sealed but the money had gone?

 

, i wouldn't of minded this but i never put a return address on it as i have never had any problems before.

:fishing: Being used to sending prizes every month I ALWAYS put a return address on the package, I've had some fail to arrive but never had one returned. No reason for failure to deliver but they cough up after time consuming form filling, designed to put you off making a claim?:fishing:

 

I'm a postie mate. If you sent the reel recorded delivery, and you have the tracking number, whether there's a return address or not that packet should always come back to you at some stage. If the packet does end up in Ireland, now that you have reported it missing, and you have the barcode, it should be returned to you at some point.

However that's not the point. The whole idea of having a tracking barcode is that it's scanned at the point of delivery and a signature is obtained. If that hasn't happened, and the guy hasn't received it, either it had an incorrect or incomplete address on it, or some donut tried to deliver it to the wrong address, couldn't get an answer and left a card, the item would have been returned to the local delivery office where they keep them for 7 days before returning them to the sender. If the address was correct there is no reason to return it to the sender so this is a possibility.

Get Mr TTLD to contact his local delivery office with the tracking number to see if it's sitting on the shelf.

 

I'm a postie mate. If you sent the reel recorded delivery, and you have the tracking number, whether there's a return address or not that packet should always come back to you at some stage. If the packet does end up in Ireland, now that you have reported it missing, and you have the barcode, it should be returned to you at some point.

However that's not the point. The whole idea of having a tracking barcode is that it's scanned at the point of delivery and a signature is obtained. If that hasn't happened, and the guy hasn't received it, either it had an incorrect or incomplete address on it, or some donut tried to deliver it to the wrong address, couldn't get an answer and left a card, the item would have been returned to the local delivery office where they keep them for 7 days before returning them to the sender. If the address was correct there is no reason to return it to the sender so this is a possibility.

Get Mr TTLD to contact his local delivery office with the tracking number to see if it's sitting on the shelf.

:fishing: Good point, IF they scan it at every point. I sent 2 bundles of 200 Sea Angling News to the IOW and they both failed to arrive,
2 x 18kg parcels, not the sort of package that gets stuck in with another one by accident, despite being trackable they couldn't tell me what happened to them, despite the IOW only being about 12 miles from where they were collected. Despite being insured they didn't want to pay out because they were FREE papers, so had no value!? After a solicitors letter and a pro forma invoice for printing and delivering 400 papers, £600 minimum run, they sent me a claim form and took over a month to pay out. A mate of mine tells me they were probably used as chairs at the depot. :sad:

 

First point on the comments here is that Recorded delivery travels with the normal mail ... it is not fully tracked and the only difference is that a signature is taken by the postie delivering it as proof of delivery so in a lot of respects it is no more secure than the normal mail - that's why its so cheap. As CmdrBond commented signed for services are not supposed to be left and a docket should have been delivered but I've had a few instances with NI customers who have not had one left by the postie when they attempt delivery - that problem seems common over there, though I've not yet lost a NI order ... they have all turned up one way or another eventually.

Ultimately the thing will take time to be dealt with if its sitting in the dead mail box ... not helped by you not sticking your return address on the outside I'd add (hardly an onerous task) ... if you don't label them properly then you do yourself no favours. My advice would be the same as Robs and this has worked for us in the past ... "Get Mr TTLD to contact his local delivery office (not customer services) with the tracking number to see if it's sitting on the shelf" ... my bet is that it probably is. We normally find that things take a little longer to sort with problems in NI simply because they have slightly different arrangements over there ... a result of the fact that they still have a unique security situation in NI.

I hasten to add here that you will be unlikely to get the "money for a new reel" ... the maximum insurance value on Recorded is £46 and if the reel was worth more than that it should have been sent by Special Delivery which is fully tracked and covers a much higher value.

Personally ... as an ex-postie (my old man was an honest postie for over 30 years too) these kind of threads tick me off ... while every organisation that big has its bad pennys given the volume of mail they deal with, they do bloody well quite frankly and at a price you just wouldn't get anywhere else - you wait till the Govt sell it all off, then you'll wish you had the old organisation back again.

I'll also add that the Royal Mail take a lot of flack they don't deserve over mail going missing when its often down to people not packing or addressing things properly, valuable items being sent by the wrong service ... and a huge amount of blame over international items that go walkabouts oversees. Anybody that sticks cash in a card, then sends it oversees is asking for it to go missing ... and if you send it to a lot of countries, undeclared cash is just seized by customs if its found.

 

+1 to that

I have never worked for RM, but did work for a rival carrier. So know the issues.

 

How about international signed for i sent a package to the states, paid extra for this service, when it did not arrive i was told "we have not got an agreement with us post to get sigiture" all they could tell me was passed to overseas postal service but as they said they could prove that it was given to an overseas postal service they were not responsible for its loss

 

Newt[/MENTION]own;3574497]How about international signed for i sent a package to the states, paid extra for this service, when it did not arrive i was told "we have not got an agreement with us post to get sigiture" all they could tell me was passed to overseas postal service but as they said they could prove that it was given to an overseas postal service they were not responsible for its loss

I think you'll find they do have an agreement with the US postal service, what they don't have the agreement with is the "contracted out" parts of the US mail system (which is very fragmented by all accounts?) .... can't say I've ever lost a signed for or failed to get a track on one in the US. The mail hell of the world is Italy with two seperate mail systems I'm told ... tracked that supposedly works in the usual way (or doesn't in most cases) and untracked where they will just throw the packet on the street in front of the address (I kid you not).

Ultimately if they fail to get the track then they can't argue over it being lost - well they can try, but they are on a loser from the start - certainly the ones I lose for Italy that show as passed over have all been paid up for by RM, without exception.

The biggest downer for us has been that the US stuff takes longer to get there because of their increased security measures ... you'll find it does speed things up a bit through US customs though if you use the correct commodity codes on the customs forms and detail anything that might show up on their "radar" to arouse suspicion ... syringes, small electrical items etc.

You'll also find that stuff "disappears" for a while while it sits in US customs ... things are not tracked until they pass customs over there and that means if a parcel is seized (and it can be seized if it doesn't have a customs form on it or it is incorrectly labelled) it never re-appears and that is that.

 

Be thankful they are shipping overseas, otherwise you would pay silly money with an overnight outfit.

As Blackdog said Italy is a nightmare. It was the ONLY country that we would not offer insurance for. Despite the issues mentioned above, a lot of stuff gets "lost in the system", read into that what you will.

 

As above, recorded delivery is purely for proof of delivery, if you want something guaranteed send it Special Delivery, although you would be amazed at the number of SD items I've had that have incomplete addresses on them, had one last week with no house number on it for a street that had several people with the same name living there. I might dress like Miss Marple but I'm not a detective.

 

I am the person in question like crazycoot said i waited in for two days without the parcel getting delivered.he sent me the tracking number the day he sent it out..the day after i typed it in to the royal mail website and it said has (been returned to sender)wtf!! iv recently been to the main post office to see what was going on and if they had it...they told me that it had not been sent there and that it had been sent to ireland on the 29th..

The next stage will be to find out the details of the po in ireland to see if they can arrange to post it back over to the previous address on the package or back to crazycoots.

 

Newt[/MENTION]own;3574497]How about international signed for i sent a package to the states, paid extra for this service, when it did not arrive i was told "we have not got an agreement with us post to get sigiture" all they could tell me was passed to overseas postal service but as they said they could prove that it was given to an overseas postal service they were not responsible for its loss

Just to add with this one ... you need to go back to Royal Mail. I've just had two claims paid up (very quickly I hasten to add) ... the first was for a lost order to the states which shows as handed to the US postal service ... the other was a refund of postage paid for a packet to Italy which was just sent back for no reason (it was delivered in 4 days when re-sent) .... so that excuse was absolute rubbish.