The postman always rings twice

A customer’s incessant complaints about his late mail have won him a daily
special delivery. David Sapsted reports
By David Sapsted Section: News
THE Royal Mail is making personalised, early morning deliveries to the home
of a man who complained endlessly about the lateness of his post. While his
neighbours have to wait until later in the morning, or even until after
lunch,for their letters, Michael Edwards has his delivered by a Royal Mail van by 9.30am every day. The postal service finally cracked two months ago after
the 51-year-old business consultant bombarded them with letters and telephone
calls, and finally enlisted the help of his local MP. “My daughter calls me a sad old Victor Meldrew because I complain so much about postal problems, but it has got me a result,” he said yesterday. “It is incredible that I am getting this first class service while the rest of the community has to put up with the
standard system. I never set out to get special treatment for myself. I wanted to see improvement for the whole neighbourhood. “It is just rather sad if the Royal Mail thinks it can solve its problems by simply fobbing me off with better
treatment.” Mr Edwards, a widower, began complaining last November that the
first post was arriving as late as 1.30pm at his detached home, which stands
250 yards from the sorting office in Ipswich, Suffolk. Not satisfied with
excuses about staff shortages and promises that things would get better, he began sending weekly reports to officials detailing delivery times. Mr Edwards,
who works from home and says early deliveries are essential to his business,
also persuaded Ipswich’s MP, Jamie Cann, to take up his case with Royal Mail
managers. On Feb 19, Mr Edwards received a letter from Royal Mail, saying it
was introducing a “special interim arrangement” to ensure his mail arrived by
9.30am every day. “I did not understand what they meant at first,” said Mr Edwards, “but then my mail started arriving first thing in the morning in a special van.
“I later realised that I was the only householder in the street getting this
marvellous special service. It just shows what you can achieve by making a
fuss.
“It is a bit laughable because the people who send me letters pay the same
price for their stamps as everyone else but now I have my letters first thing and, later in the morning, I watch the postman walking past delivering mail to
the other houses.” A Royal Mail spokesman said that Mr Edwards’s post had begun
arriving late last year after a reorganisation of rounds meant his home went
from being one of the first to one of the last on the round. “He complained
to us and we were able to help him with a temporary special measure,” she said.
“By happy coincidence, we had a post van going past his road carrying small
boxes of business mail early in the morning and we were able to arrange for it to stop at his house with any items of his post which were ready.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH, 19th April 2001