Ever tried to claim for a REGISTERED PACKET missing or broken?

We have this year, had 1 Broken Registered packet which took 6 months for the Post Office to refund for and that was only after we threaten legal action.

Now we have a missing Registered packet in Germany. The Post Office will not pursue a claim until it has been missing 8 weeks, the Post Office still haven't replied to our claim from 2 weeks ago, so the customer has now gone 10 weeks without even a satisfactory answer to where is packet may be, and is now quite rightly becoming angry about it. As we can't refund or replace until we have confirmation from the Post Office that it is missing, so it just leaves the customer and us "hanging".

The Post Office claims seem to be taking an "Insurance" company attitude of "going slow" in the hope that claimants give up. Has anyone else experienced this frustrating non-consumer-friendly procedure.

We are anxious to recompense our customer as soon as possible, which is a policy the Post Office don't seem share.

Stella @ John Manship Records

  On 12/10/2009 at 12:26, john manship said:

Ever tried to claim for a REGISTERED PACKET missing or broken?

We have this year, had 1 Broken Registered packet which took 6 months for the Post Office to refund for and that was only after we threaten legal action.

Now we have a missing Registered packet in Germany. The Post Office will not pursue a claim until it has been missing 8 weeks, the Post Office still haven't replied to our claim from 2 weeks ago, so the customer has now gone 10 weeks without even a satisfactory answer to where is packet may be, and is now quite rightly becoming angry about it. As we can't refund or replace until we have confirmation from the Post Office that it is missing, so it just leaves the customer and us "hanging".

The Post Office claims seem to be taking an "Insurance" company attitude of "going slow" in the hope that claimants give up. Has anyone else experienced this frustrating non-consumer-friendly procedure.

We are anxious to recompense our customer as soon as possible, which is a policy the Post Office don't seem share.

Stella @ John Manship Records

They lost two registered packages that I sent to Paris. Well they didn't, they confirmed that they had arrived in Paris but the French posties obviously nicked the items.

I think Royal Mail counters and The Post Office have been in disarray for many years now promising and charging for services they can not every give.

Unfortunately they have a monopoly on most things or at least alternatives are not cost effective.

They work on the basis of bulk to keep the prices down but they have far too many knob heads who can mess you around during the frustrating and many stages.

Too many disgruntled employees with too much power over your complaints.

John I just think you are going to have to grin and bear it.

This is how the system should work, you pay for your international signed for item and hand it over, the counter clerk should confirm you have addressed it both address and sender.

You should then be able to track it via their web site

https://track.royalmail.com/portal/rm/track?catId=22700601&gear=authentication

But as soon as it leaves blighty it is no longer their responsibility and international mail protocols kick in.

If it goes tits up you then enquire and a P58 form is completed, a copy of this is sent to all of the offices that handle the item and a search is made for the item of any packaging.

The addressee then has to sign a certificate of none delivery and this then is sent to the office of posting. The UK PIB (Postal inquiry branch) looks to see if there has been any tampering and then the form will end up at the claims department where compensation should be then given to you.

It can take up to 6 to 10 weeks to allow for customs seizures and appropriate enquires.

What they will never tell you is that the first thing they assume is that it has been delivered and the addressee is telling pork pies, this happens all too often that's why no one gets too worried when a customer complains.

The next thing to assume is the address is wrong, happens 50% of the time and causes delay.

Then there is the packaging, it only takes two or three broken packages to happen and the items can not be married up to their true packaging, hence the time.

Hope this helps?

Hi Stella,

I've had a few bits go astray or get broken when selling on eBay both in the UK and overseas, and the Royal Mail has always responded and refunded promptly within a fortnight of the claim. Mind you there's been nothing worth more than a couple of hundred quid, and the sale and value has been easy to document/prove as I just enclose a copy of the eBay paperwork.

Was it a really expensive item, hence why they might be stalling pending investigation? Where stuff has gone missing on arrival in another country, I've found that RM just refund me straight away as they know it's been nicked at the foreign sorting office and there's no hope of finding it.

But you're right, the complaints procedure is very impersonal and you've got no hope of talking to a sentient being. Where I know the buyer, I just refund their money straight away as I know they're not telling porkies.

Hope the RM get their finger out and either find or refund your package soon.

Theresa

STELLA i had a similar problem with Germany

sent 100 eros over concealed International signed for and I paid insurance on contents, it never arrived.

Made a claim, Royal Mail actually wanted me to prove where the £100 had come from giving photocopies of my bank statements. The cash was from my show box howevever I did prove that I took out £100 4 days before, they then said they wouldn't riemburse as I you should not send cash...after 14 months I got my money back, in the meantime I paid again for the record I had won on ebay and when it arrived it was a boot..LOL

Ive only had 2 in 8 years that were both broken

The first one went pretty straight forward but the second which was Gladys Knight - Gotta get a hold of yourself on maxx was a nightmare.

I sent all the documents they requested ebay- Paypal etc and they sent me a pack of 6 1st class stamps as compensation - I made a complaint and the complaints dept upheld my complaint and I got all the money back which was only £35 but it was the sheer audacity of the post office in sending me those stamps saying I had not complied with thier request that really got to me. It took nearly 3 months to get sorted.

I once sent a record registered and paid the inflated extra to make sure it got there 1st thing Monday morning only to find out it arrived Tuesday afternoon. They said I was wrong until I showed them thier own tracking system - Not even an apology

Just sent 3 records to you John Via Special delivery- Hope you get them allright

John, I'm sure you've thought of this but depending on when mailed may possibly hooked up in the backlog from the dispute.

It pisses me off. Royal Mail's customers pay a fee for a packet to get safely from A to B. Why do we have to pay extra to ensure they do what we pay them to do with the basic cost.

I mean you don't charge folks an extra £3.50 just in case you drop the record or lose it do ya.

Got £500 off Royal Mail for broken items sent Special Delivery by Henry Atkinson... No problems. Then again that was a few years ago. Alot has changed in The Royal Mail since then im afraid.

sent £1000 to US in Travellers cheques Insured them wth the post office, low and behold they went missing in NY.. Tried to claim them back through the insurance with the Postoffice took six months to get £7.80 back....

Had to open another claim through Am Express.. Still waiting.. Posted Jan last year...

I moved from London to the Netherlands nearly two years ago. I've had more packages go missing or get damaged in that short time than did over the last 25 years. Such is the poor state of service from the respective postal services that I always insist on 'International Signed For' unless the item is under about £10.

In something like the first six months, I think we lost about half a dozen packages, maybe a few more.

Earlier this year a 'signed for' package sent from Scotland went missing. The sender contacted the PO who informed him that they could track it from his local office to a sorting depot in Glasgow. Then it disappeared - it didn't even make it out of the country.

A couple of months ago I bought an acetate from someone here. It turned up in my post box with a huge warp in the metal plate. Someone must have sat on it, jumped on it, Lord knows what. What's worse is that it was supposed to be delivered to my door and a signature sought. No chance. Increasingly, small packets requiring a signature are just put in the post box having been delivered by the everyday postman doing his everyday rounds.

A got a 45 carved a couple of weeks back, from a place in Belgium. It was sent super-duper 24-hour insured delivery. It turned up in the post box ten days later. Again, no signature was sought.

There is one positive thing about getting packages from the UK though. We buy regularly from Amazon in the UK (there isn't one in the Netherlands) and have never had a package go missing yet. Nothing disappears when it comes via Amazon. Everything is bar-coded, tracked, traced and accounted for. All the many petty thieves inside the PO won't touch them. Well, that's the conclusion we've come to.

The difference is in attitude. Amazon can take their business elsewhere, and the Post Office are all too aware of this. Indeed, I believe that they do in fact use other services as well as the PO. And there lies the rub.

Amazon can take their business elsewhere - and, of course, the PO doesn't want this to happen; Amazon is too big a client for them to lose. For businesses smaller than Amazon the attitude from the PO is somewhat different. And God forbid that you should merely be a humble receiver of mail.

The only solution is to try and find an alternative to the one-time monopolistic dinosaur that can no longer deliver the goods - both physically and figuratively.

Edited October 12, 200915 yr by rigilbert

I tried to claim when three packages failed to be delivered a few months ago

They were all posted within days of each other - hence should have all arrived within days of each other

Two were from the UK from two different sellers - one a 45 the other a package some CDs

The third was from France including a £100 45 and a cheaper one

None were sent signed for btw

My main postman was on leave at the time, so there was a relief posty on

Clearly, there was something dodgy locally, or wider in the UK - otherwise 3 packages form three separate sellers, one overseas, would not have gone astray

Royal Mail made it very difficult for me, as did the seller from France who did not co-operate - a well known name too - and I just had to give up in the end

Cheers

Richard

If you are a very small record dealer then this advice isn't going to help much.

I think that if you are in the business of sending items by post then you have to factor losses via this means into your yearly accounts. You shouldn't have to but there is nothing worse than an ugly truth killing a beautiful lie and the reality of sending items via the mail is not 100%, 100% of the time.

Balancing the cost of mailing to the profit margin must be a nightmare, it's a shame there is no help for the small business man who is just trying to make an honest living.

  On 12/10/2009 at 19:42, rigilbert said:

I moved from London to the Netherlands nearly two years ago. I've had more packages go missing or get damaged in that short time than did over the last 25 years. Such is the poor state of service from the respective postal services that I always insist on 'International Signed For' unless the item is under about £10.

In something like the first six months, I think we lost about half a dozen packages, maybe a few more.

Earlier this year a 'signed for' package sent from Scotland went missing. The sender contacted the PO who informed him that they could track it from his local office to a sorting depot in Glasgow. Then it disappeared - it didn't even make it out of the country.

A couple of months ago I bought an acetate from someone here. It turned up in my post box with a huge warp in the metal plate. Someone must have sat on it, jumped on it, Lord knows what. What's worse is that it was supposed to be delivered to my door and a signature sought. No chance. Increasingly, small packets requiring a signature are just put in the post box having been delivered by the everyday postman doing his everyday rounds.

A got a 45 carved a couple of weeks back, from a place in Belgium. It was sent super-duper 24-hour insured delivery. It turned up in the post box ten days later. Again, no signature was sought.

There is one positive thing about getting packages from the UK though. We buy regularly from Amazon in the UK (there isn't one in the Netherlands) and have never had a package go missing yet. Nothing disappears when it comes via Amazon. Everything is bar-coded, tracked, traced and accounted for. All the many petty thieves inside the PO won't touch them. Well, that's the conclusion we've come to.

The difference is in attitude. Amazon can take their business elsewhere, and the Post Office are all too aware of this. Indeed, I believe that they do in fact use other services as well as the PO. And there lies the rub.

Amazon can take their business elsewhere - and, of course, the PO doesn't want this to happen; Amazon is too big a client for them to lose. For businesses smaller than Amazon the attitude from the PO is somewhat different. And God forbid that you should merely be a humble receiver of mail.

The only solution is to try and find an alternative to the one-time monopolistic dinosaur that can no longer deliver the goods - both physically and figuratively.

I sent Russell an acetate, bear in mind these are made of aliminium and are damn hard to damage, it was still packed in a mailer with the usual cardboard, when he got it it was almost bent in half!

  On 12/10/2009 at 20:12, Premium Stuff said:

...Royal Mail made it very difficult for me, as did the seller from France who did not co-operate - a well known name too - and I just had to give up in the end...

Richard

In most cases there aint much a sender can do once a registered but not insured package went lost after it went across the border.

I will always remember when I sold a record to the UK and it went lost in the shite British post system. The buyer contacted the BP, they searched for it, found it, testified that to the worried buyer..only to tell him (in fact her) a week or so later that it went lost again! Unqualified idiots.

No refund, nth.

It was send registered. But the German post said its not their responsibility once it has left the German post system. And rightly so of course.

Well, to cut it short I was made/held responsible (by the buyer) and to safe myself from more negative emails and such that started coming my way from the frustrated buyer I ended up paying back/refunding her 250 UKP out of my own pocket!

So I as the seller lost out on both sides, money and record!

Since then I am always (a-l-w-a-y-s) nervous when sending to the UK.

The German post is one of the best in the world though, fast and almost 100% reliable. Hopefully for some more time to come...I am afraid it will change over here soon too though...

Marc

Edited October 13, 200915 yr by Marc Forrest

...as it fits the current topic in a way...

I just recieved a new spam mail...seeing many of us get packages from the US I thiought I`d better warn you

the senders adress is customer@dhl-usa.com, headline is "DHL delivery problem 20943" this is a "spy" spam mail, don´t open!

Marc

Edited October 13, 200915 yr by Marc Forrest

If anyone wondered why his package to Germany didn't arrive: https://ibnlive.in.co...y/73230-13.html

edit: don't read this if you're an avid collector with heart problems!

Edited October 13, 200915 yr by Diggin' Dave

I must say I sympathise with you. I will now only send records recorded or special delivery in the UK and depending on value by International signed for or Airsure tracked. These are the only services that provide insurance but you still have to jump through hoops to get it.

First class does cover you up to £39 with proof of postage but you have no way of proving an item didn't arrive.

The only systems that really work (nearly) all the time are the tracked all the way items, but even they are not always perfect. In London I had an item sent insured and tracked from the states left under my car on the drive! I also came home one day and saw a Special Delivery item leaning against my front door.

Unfortunately most of the signed for systems, particularly the international ones don't work. This is because they are tracked until they leave the country of origin and then not tracked at the other end until they are signed for. The receiving country's posties know this and they also know the package contains a valuable item so stuff goes missing - Like my Troy Dodds issue that got sent from the states but didn't arrive in this country (yeah right!). I lost the record and £30 as paypal's refund was in dollars and the exchange rate had changed.

Recorded in the UK - a lot of the time these packages just get posted through people's doors without the signature. I have had this happen a few times to me but I am honest and so don't claim that things haven't arrived when they have. I have had two recorded packages go "missing" in the last 6 months, both took over 3 months for the post office to refund and the max refund is now £39 (although at the time it was £37). They also now insist on proof of value ie what you paid for it not what you got paid, so really the person who didn't get it should claim.

My worst experience was receiving a Billy Kennedy (special delivery) from Pat Brady that I had seen a week earlier and knew was mint. It had a big boot print on the package and I feared the worst, yep! it had cracks at the edge going into the playing surface. I spoke to Pat and he was brilliant advising me how to claim etc and providing me with proof of value. The PO sent a guy round to my office to view the record and started off by offering me £25 compensation (it had cost me £200). After some "negotiation" I got £175 back and kept the record (which plays both sides). The guy said I could have the full £200 but he would take the record - god knows why. The record plays but I would still rather of had a mint one than paid £25 for a copy that will die a death at some point.

The whole thing sucks and not just in the UK.

  On 13/10/2009 at 10:30, Diggin said:

If anyone wondered why his package to Germany didn't arrive: https://ibnlive.in.co...y/73230-13.html

,

see, thats what those bl**y foreigners do to us...even ruining our once so reliable German Post!

,

  On 13/10/2009 at 10:30, Diggin said:

If anyone wondered why his package to Germany didn't arrive: https://ibnlive.in.co...y/73230-13.html

edit: don't read this if you're an avid collector with heart problems!

"It's worth mentioning that the 23-year-old didn't deliver mail addressed to himself either,"

Now that's just plain fcuking lazy

Actually, I had a similar thing happen to me when I moved into our current house

Our postie seemed really decent....I clued him up about the records and gave him a nice tip at Xmas....never had any problems.

About a year later we had a new postie and thought nowt of it until a PO van pulled up with 3 bin bags full of old mail for my address.

The guy had hoarded literally thousands upon thousands of letters and packages from his round....hardly any of mine had been opened, and most were old mail addressed to the former occupants...including a tow bar bracket for his car.

In all this time I never had one record go missing though.....so best remember to tip you postie well if you collect records

Edited October 14, 200915 yr by Mace

  On 12/10/2009 at 17:47, munchkin said:

sent £1000 to US in Travellers cheques Insured them wth the post office, low and behold they went missing in NY.. Tried to claim them back through the insurance with the Postoffice took six months to get £7.80 back....

Had to open another claim through Am Express.. Still waiting.. Posted Jan last year...

thats a nightmare, kin horrible experience, hope you get sorted...you really do have my sympathy with that one