The Royal Mail Strikes Back

I’m delighted to inform all of you who read my previous blog post, PO Box Bollocks, that the Royal Mail Twitter Team wrote to me via email to respond to my concerns. That was after I had been asked by @RoyalMail to ‘follow’
them on twitter, so that they could send me a ‘private’ message to ask me to email the link to my blog post to the Royal Mail twitter ‘back office team’… although they forgot to send me their email address.

Why they couldn’t simply forward the blog link on to their own team I have no idea, unless it was all a ruse to get another twitter follower. Anyway, I did what I was told in the vain hope that there would be some kind of positive outcome. Here’s their message in its entirety with my comments interspersed:

Hello Twitter Team.

Do you mean the trade union colleagues who are balloting whether or not to go on strike over the plans to privatise the Royal Mail?

Good luck with that.

And thank you for cutting and pasting a number of stock replies, the last one of which doesn’t actually address any of my original comments. But I know it must take simply ages to read through all these letters of complaint and reply to them all individually. Anyway, now we come to the real bone of contention…

No, it’s not correct. It’s blatantly wrong.

Well no, actually, the difference between £222.00 and £303.60 is £81.60, not £59.40. You’re getting confused because the current price of a PO Box is £244.20 (it’s gone up since I renewed my PO Box service). So actually, if you’re billing me for PO Box Delivery back dated to the start of my contract, shouldn’t you be charging me the prevailing rate at the time I renewed the agreement, which I believe was £276.00, not £303.60? So perhaps you meant to be charging me the difference between £222.00 and £276.00 which is £54.00, not £59.40.

But, honestly, I really don’t think you should be charging me any extra at all. I’ve already spoken to your PO Box team, which is why I sent my original tweet. They, like yourself either didn’t understand my complaint, or chose to ignore it because well, what the PO Box team says is the absolute truth and cannot be challenged. Customer service isn’t simply repeating company policy over and over ad nauseum.

My point is that you have no legal right – or certainly no moral right – to charge me the entire difference (or indeed any difference) between the advance payment for my PO Box Collect and the PO Box Delivery, as I explained to your PO Box team, and as I explained in my earlier blog post.

So, let me try again:

I renewed my annual PO Box account with you in March this year on the understanding that I would be able to collect my mail from the Leigh-on-Sea delivery office at my convenience. You have now closed down that sorting office without any consultation with the local authorities or local community (you have merely notified us). There is nothing (so far as I can see) in your terms and conditions that might cover such an event.

Therefore I see it as a breach of contract. My “change in circumstances” to which you refer, is not my desire or choice, but has been forced upon me by the Royal Mail. I have now been given the choice of either, (a) collecting my mail – which I have already pointed out is now a ten-mile round trip, with all the inconvenience and travel cost that implies, or (b) paying an additional charge for my PO Box mail to be delivered.

This would be fair enough – but only when and if I decide to renew my PO Box account, which will be in March 2014. The Royal Mail have withdrawn a service to which I signed up in March 2013 – namely to collect my PO Box addressed mail from the Leigh-on-Sea delivery office.

I would think any fair-minded company would at least offer to deliver my mail for the remainder of my current service period. But no, not only have you withdrawn the service I paid for in advance, not only are you insisting that I pay a further fee to have my mail delivered, but you have the sheer effrontery to backdate the additional fees to cover a five-month period during which I have already collected my mail.

So no, it’s not correct. I believe that if you can’t honour your agreement with me, then you should at least deliver my PO Box mail to me free of charge for the remainder of our agreement. If you must insist on adding insult to injury (by closing the local delivery office and then charging me for the inconvenience) then can you please explain how the Royal mail can justify charging me for delivery of mail that I have already collected?

I’m not confused in the slightest. I am, however absolutely livid.

Yes, I’ve got one question. Seriously, are you still going to bill me for £59.40?

Even if I accept the Royal Mail’s faulty premise of the delivery charge being backdated for the whole of the twelve months (even though I collected my own mail for five of those months), I should only be charged the difference between those two services at the prevailing rate at the time of the start of that contract, i.e. £54.00.

Of course, I reject that premise and assert that it’s probably illegal for the Royal Mail to try to charge me for those five months, so the maximum I believe you should be able to invoice me is for seven months delivery, which I calculate to be approximately £31.50.

But I’m sure by now you’ll understand my position a little more clearly, and you will have no option but to conclude that the Royal Mail should have an obligation to deliver my PO Box mail for the rest of my agreement free of charge. It’s a no-brainer, right?