Royal Mail stinks
Anja already described in her blog the Mail system in Australia which seems to be a good copy of Royal Mail.
Since we live here we receive mail for other people. We are used to that as most people in the UK do not care to get their mail re-directed to them after moving. So we get these letters and send them back with a note "return to sender, not under this address".
We also receive mail for people in another house in our street. We live in house number 13, flat 12 and get lots of mail for house number 12, always the same addressee which is Swift Housing Corporation. We had a few letters for them before and I already went there once to put these letters in their mailbox. There is only one door with a letter box so I have no clue if this company really is at this address. We are in the UK, so there are NO name tags on the door or on the letter boxes.
After a while we got these letter re-directed to us with a note on "please try number 13, flat 12"... Well, we sent them back to sender.
Last week, when I got home from my Chicago/Rome trip I tried to open our door but there was a bag behind it which obstructed the door. I thought "what kind of rucksack did Marc leave here? I have never seen this before" before I realised that it was a red bag used by Royal Mail to deliver large numbers of letters at once. There were about 30 letters in that bag - all for house number 12, Swift Housing Corporation... HELLO?? Can you not read, Mr Postman? This is house number 13!!
So I took the bag, put a BIG note on "This is not house number 12 and here is NO Swift Housing Corporation". The bag was gone the next day. So far, so good... HAHA, how wrong was I!?
A week later we had TWO of these bags in our letter box. I did not find them but Marc, and he got so upset that he immediately wrote 2 notes to put on our door, one on eye level and one for the letter box saying "Dear Postman, this is NOT house number 12, this is NOT Swift Housing Corporation, this is NOT post code of that house". He put the bags in the hallway with the same note. This time it took three days till someone took the bags.
But this is not the end. Today it happened, the straw to break the camel's back... I met our postman in person:
It was around noon when Marc was cleaning up in the kitchen and I was in the bathroom. The bathroom is at the end of the corridor opposite our flat door. Our corridor is not very long so it is obviously quite near to the door. I heard a knock and then the noise of the letterbox. "Mail, cool" - so I went to see what we got and saw this red card - the pick up card for mail that could not be delivered because I was not there. ??? I am here, we are both here!
So I opened the door, hoping the postman is still in the house. I do not want to and do not have the time to go to the post office. Ha, got him, he was just about to leave the house. I called him back: "Excuse me!" and waived with the card. He looked at me, totally annoyed, and started to come up the stairs - so slowly as if he was 100 years old. "Do you have something for me?", I asked him. Silence for 10 seconds... "Yes" and gets a folded letter out of his inner pocket of his jacket. He looks at me as if I want to rob him. Why was the letter in his pocket anyway? Why did he fold it? He gave me the letter and said "I knocked, you were not here". Yeah, of course, you knocked! Once at the same time you threw the letters through the door! He was really unfriendly.
"Well, I was in the bathroom. And we have a door bell", showing him our door bell which is much louder than his ONE knock. "Do I have to sign for this?" Why should I go to the post office to pick a letter up if I do not need to sign for it? "Yes" takes the letter and tries to pull off the sticker he needs to put on his paper that I should sign. He could not get it off, gave the letter back to me and said "You do not need to sign, I will sign for you if you take the letter". Of course I take the letter! It is for me, I already waited for it. It is a letter from the bank with account details and original documents from tax revenue which we had to hand in to open the account. Very confidential and important documents. He looked at me as if I was very unpleasant company for him and took too much of his precious time, off he went and left me with the letter.
At first I was too baffled but then I told Marc what happened. I wanted to show him this weird guy and we looked out of our bedroom window if he was still in our street. He was, he just left house number 12, what a coincidence. Marc watched him going down the street, the guy realised it and shouted at Marc: "What are you looking at, eh?! What do you want!?"
Now it was enough. We decided to complain, so we called the Royal Mail complaint hotline and told them our issues. The lady was really nice and she told us we will receive a formal letter with our complaint reference. She was very concerned about what happened because this guy broke nearly every rule. Not taking signature etc. She said she would write an essay and send it to the manager of our post office. Then she gave me a reference number. When anything else like this happens, we now only need to call again and mention this reference number. If it is always the same postman, he will be in big trouble. We will see... At least we felt a little better that we made this an official complaint.
