6,000 calls that say Scotland is fed up with postal failures

PUBLIC dissatisfaction with the nation’s postal service is running at an all-time high – with a hotline set up to take complaints about wrongly delivered mail receiving more than 6,000 calls in four days, The Scotsman has learned.

Postwatch, the consumer watchdog that represents the interests of Royal Mail customers, was overwhelmed with calls after the launch of its "Stamp Out Misdelivered Mail" campaign.

Angry customers complained about receiving letters addressed to strangers, having their post go missing and only receiving important items, such as bank statements and credit cards, because strangers forwarded them on.

Postwatch had been expecting about 1,000 calls in the first week and was shocked by the scale of public response.

"There is a reticence about complaining [in Britain], so we were taken aback by how many people picked up the phone to us," said Tricia Dow, director of Postwatch Scotland. "Personally, I believe misdelivery is even more of a significant problem than we understand at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg.

"If I don’t receive my mail, often I don’t know about it. It’s very important that people who are in receipt of misdelivered mail tell us about it, so we can put some realistic figures on the cost of this to customers and motivate the Royal Mail to improve."

The Royal Mail has been on the back foot since it emerged that it will miss all 15 of its performance targets this year. The Channel 4 programme Dispatches delivered further misery last month with an exposé alleging theft, widespread fraud and ineptitude.

Postal workers were caught on camera at a London sorting office playing football in the office, while one sold mobile phones when he was supposed to be working. The documentary also filmed a gang sifting through letters in search of credit cards, cash and passports.

Confidence in the postal service has plummeted to such a degree that Postwatch has warned the public not to send cash by ordinary post because of the large amount going missing. Internal Royal Mail figures show postal workers stole 70,000 items of post last year, resulting in 300 prosecutions. The company says the stolen items are just a fraction of the 82 million letters delivered each day, and the vast majority of its 105,000 delivery staff are conscientious and honest.

Postwatch launched the UK-wide misdelivered mail campaign, which is set to run for six months, on 4 May.

Susan Mathieson, director of Edinburgh-based firm Event Consultants Scotland, said her courier bill had doubled over the past 12 months as she sought to avoid using regular post. Our company moved within Edinburgh in February and we paid for a redirection service. But after weeks of people saying ‘the cheque was in the post’, I went back to my old premises and found 49 letters behind the door – including a cheque for £9,500.

"There were important letters, Inland Revenue documents. I missed a lot of deadlines.

"When I contacted Royal Mail they said it was human error. I was offered a first-class stamp for every letter that went astray."

A recent survey of businesses by the Inverness Chamber of Commerce concluded that Royal Mail’s move to a single daily post delivery had been a "disaster".

Analysts say recent problems can be traced to disruption caused by wildcat strikes last autumn – resolved in February when an agreement was signed by the main union – and the complexities of moving to a single delivery. Growing criticism led to a management re-organisation in which the chief executive, Adam Crozier, took responsibility for the letters service.

Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said he was "not surprised" by the level of public anger over misdelivery.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "We halved the amount of mail loss and delay in 2002-3 from 2001-2. Only around 0.07 per cent of the 21 billion letters we handle a year were lost or substantially delayed in 2002-3 – around 280,000 letters a week."