Tag: Postwatch

Complaints about lost or misdirected letters will cost the Royal Mail nearly pounds 50 a time, under a new scheme for funding postal watchdog Postwatch. The watchdog, which handled 273,000 complaints last financial year and spent over pounds 10m, or pounds 37 a complaint, has always been funded by the Royal Mail through a licence fee. However, the Royal Mail said yesterday it would now pay Postwatch directly and in proportion to the complaints received. For the first 27,500 complaints received, Royal Mail will pay pounds 45. Any complaints after that will cost pounds 36.

On 29 November 2004 Postwatch recommended to customers that they use 2nd class stamps at Christmas because the 1st class service performance had dipped significantly in the previous two years to less than 70 per cent delivered next working day. At the time we called upon Royal Mail to publish its Christmas performance levels so that customers would be able to make an informed purchase. Royal Mail has now published on its website performance figures for the 2004 Christmas period. In line with previous years these show that the 1st class performance over the Christmas period was 66.1 per cent delivered next day (compared with a target of 92.5 per cent). 2nd class performance was 93.9 per cent delivered within 3 days (compared with a target of 98.5 per cent). Commenting on Royal Mail’s Christmas performance, Peter Carr, Chairman of
Postwatch said: “The Royal Mail’s own performance statistics vindicate the
advice we gave customers. The value for money option at Christmas is to use
2nd class stamps at a saving of 7 pence per item.

Royal Mail has today published in a low-key manner via its website its performance statistics for the quarter (October to December 2004). The service standard targets are cumulative for the year. The cumulative statistics for the first three quarters of 2004/05 show that performance against 13 of the 15 service standards is below target. Based on these statistics Postwatch predicts that Royal Mail will for the year as a whole fail possibly 12 of its 15 service targets, including that for 1st class stamped and metered, Special Deliveries and the Standard Retail Parcel. It is recognised that failing 12 standards will be an improvement on last year when all 15 targets were failed. Peter Carr, Chairman of Postwatch, commenting on Royal Mail’s performance said: “Whilst we are pleased that recent performance is on an upward trend, the results that matter continue to disappoint. Yet again, customers have paid for service levels that have not been delivered.