Freepost cheats make a monkey of the Royal Mail
Customers are taking advantage of incompetence at the Royal Mail by sending letters free of charge to residential addresses across Britain by simply marking them “Freepost” -normally used by businesses that have paid for a licence.
The scam is thought to be used by a growing number of people and could be costing the postal service thousands of pounds a year in lost revenue.
Checks are so lax at Royal Mail sorting offices that some customers are even abusing the system to send out dozens of Christmas cards without a stamp every year.
Last week The Sunday Times posted 10 letters -unstamped but with the word “Freepost” either typed or handwritten on the envelopes -from two post boxes in London to residential addresses across the country, including Inverness and Bristol.
Nine arrived at their destinations the following day -the delivery target for all first-class post, which costs 28p for a standard letter. The tenth letter arrived two days later.
Last Thursday, a further 90 letters were posted to destinations across Britain from seven towns and cities, including Chichester, Liverpool, Reading and Newcastle. They all bore the recipient’s name and address and the word “Freepost” written below. Again, no stamp was used.
By yesterday afternoon 59 of the letters -almost two-thirds -had been delivered.
Many of them arrived within 24 hours.
One customer in her twenties, who did not want to be named, said: “I have done this for ages. Why pay the price of a stamp when you can just write the word ‘Freepost’? I receive so much Freepost mail I figured nobody will notice a little more.”
Royal Mail said it would investigate our findings. “Any deliberate attempt to send mail without the proper postage is an abuse of the postal system and is akin to fare-dodging,” said a spokeswoman. “Our message is clear: don’t do it.”
The Freepost system is mainly used by Royal Mail’s business customers, such as banks and utilities companies. Firms pay a one-off licence fee and deposit, up to the value of Pounds 207, for each address they use.
The companies are charged 28p or 21p, depending on whether the service is for first or second-class post, for each letter they receive from their customers.
They can also be charged an additional handling fee of 0.5p for each item sent.
Freepost items are supposed to go through separate channels in sorting offices to ensure that this money is deducted from a business customer’s account.
When items are posted without a stamp of the appropriate value or with no stamp at all, Royal Mail can force the recipient to pay a hefty surcharge to take delivery of the item. Last year 19.6m wrongly stamped letters were held, the bulk of which were released after a surcharge had been paid.
However, none of the people who received letters during the The Sunday Times investigation was asked to pay a fee.
The existence of the Freepost scam will do little to restore public faith in Royal Mail, which recently admitted that more than 1m items of post were stolen last year. A further 16m items were lost.
Next month Postcomm, the industry regulatory, is expected to fine Royal Mail at least Pounds 80m after it failed to meet any of its 15 service targets last year.
Last night Postwatch, the consumer watchdog, described the scam as “appalling” and warned it could force up costs for the majority of honest customers.
