As an apology to the boss hit by months of postal delays… four 27p stamps

A BOSS whose company spends £20,000 a year on postage was furious
over continual late deliveries. Christopher James complained to the Royal Mail that its poor service was costing his building company money.
And soon he received some ‘compensation’ in the post – a booklet of four 27p
first-class stamps. A letter of apology said they were a ‘gesture of goodwill’ to make up for the ‘annoyance and inconvenience’ of late deliveries.

Mr James, 45, chairman of the Coulson Building Group, said: ‘The stamps are
an absolute insult. My business employs 160 people and turns over £10million
a year. All I expect is an efficient service.’ He went on: ‘I couldn’t
believe it when I saw the four stamps. At first I thought it was a joke.

‘I would have preferred the Royal Mail to have instead come up with a
sensible explanation.’ Mr James said he and his staff had repeatedly
complained about late deliveries at his firm’s offices in Cambridge. ‘The
last straw came on January 22 when my group administrator made several calls
to ask when the morning post would arrive.

‘It finally turned up at 3.15 pm. The delivery included cheques worth a
total of £58,000, and it was too late to bank them.

‘Apart from the inconvenience, the delay meant the cheques had to be paid in
the next day – so we missed out on interest on the money.

‘It could just as easily have been cheques for £500,000, or even a million,
which were delayed, then we could have lost much more.’ The letter of apology
which arrived with the £1.08 worth of free stamps stated that the normal
delivery officer had been off sick on January 22 and there were no temporary
staff available to replace him.

This meant deliveries had to be undertaken by staff after they finished
their normal rounds, and further delays were caused by a delivery van
breaking down. Mr James said: ‘Every time we complain to the Royal Mail they
come up with a different excuse, blaming things such as the Hatfield rail
crash. But the problems started before then.

‘We first protested last October, when the morning post began arriving as
late as 1pm and suddenly there was no second delivery.

‘We rely on the postal service, and if we don’t get our deliveries on time
it could result in us losing business. It is totally unsatisfactory.’ A Royal
Mail spokesman said: ‘We apologise to Mr James for any slight he may have
felt as a result of our gesture of goodwill.’ Cambridge MP Anne Campbell is
due to meet postal chiefs later this month to discuss the city’s postal
problems.

She said she found it ‘absolutely amazing’ that Mr James was sent a book of
stamps as compensation. ‘It just shows the Royal Mail’s insensitivity and
lack of realisation of the inconvenience they are causing their customers.’

Last autumn there was a backlog of 750,000 postal items in Cambridge, said to
have been caused by staff shortages and problems with new sorting equipment.

DAILY MAIL, 09th February 2001