Complaints over mail deliveries reach 2 million a year
CONSIGNIA, the government-owned company that runs the Royal Mail, the Post Office and Parcelforce, has admitted that it receives almost 2m formal complaints a year, thought to be a record for a British company.
By comparison, the German postal service, which handles similar amounts of mail, gets just 500 complaints a year, equivalent to the number that Consignia logs every hour.
The figures paint a damning picture of the British postal system, which is fast becoming a national disgrace among consumers.
Even Britain’s train companies, which have become a byword for abysmal service and customer fury, received a combined total of only 1.25m consumer complaints over the past year.
A Consignia spokesman said: “Obviously this is something that we are looking at — to reduce the number of complaints. If we succeed in meeting our delivery targets then we will reduce the number of complaints. But if there are service failures, people have a right to complain.”
Royal Mail has an official target to deliver 92.1% of first-class mail the following day. It has consistently failed to meet the target this year in all but a handful of areas. However, it is planning a radical overhaul of its service at the end of January by scrapping second deliveries. It hopes this will lead to an improvement in reliability.
The majority of people are complaining about lost or late mail and Consignia has agreed with regulators to answer complaints within 10 days. However, most people receive little compensation.
It has also emerged that Consignia has spent £33m building a network of 11 customer call centres around the country that will mainly be used to handle the barrage of complaints.
About 2,000 people are understood to have been employed to deal with the 1.846m complaints received each year, equivalent to 5,057 per day. The figures include only complaints made formally to head office and not people who complain at their local post office if the grievance is not referred upwards.
Postwatch, the consumer watchdog, said official complaints may represent only a fraction of the total number. “We believe that 75% of people with complaints do not make it official,” said Peter Carr, the chairman of Postwatch. “But just the official figures show the huge level of dissatisfaction with the postal service.”
MPs say they receive sackloads of mail from constituents about the Post Office, and parliamentary questions are tabled every week about the growing postal crisis.
The Sunday Times
