Postman Pat Fell Flat

April 23, 2009 6:42 AM

UKPostalFilter: One of my friends was supposed to receive a package today via Royal Mail. The package was too large to fit the letterbox, so - without knocking or ringing - they dropped a delivery failure note through her door. Can they do this?

To dispel the obvious "They just DID do that" answers, a clarification. Their note stated that "We tried to deliver"; the way I see it this is a blatant lie as an attempt to deliver involves an effort to put the item into the recipient's possession. UK letterboxes are a in the vast majority of a very standard size, and it is relatively easy to tell if a given parcel will fit through them so when they took the item they should have been well aware that delivering would involve more than a letterbox.

Does their pathetic excuse for effort constitute a delivery attempt? I know most of you aren't lawyers but maybe there're one or two, or someone with previous experience. The item's not big enough to make any kind of legal fuss about, I just want to know what language to use when I help her drag an apology out of them.

posted by fearnothing to law & government (14 comments total)

For better or worse, this is entirely normal and beyond a boiler-plate apology, you're not likely to get much out of them. I don't know whether their regs say they should be trying to get the resident's attention, but considering most post delivery happens duringwork hours, the average postie isn't going to want to add minutes of delay each time they deliver a package waiting to see if someone'll come to the door.
posted by teresci at 7:00 AM on April 23

They do this all the time. Just live with it. It really isn't worth getting worked up about.
posted by permafrost at 7:03 AM on April 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

UK letterboxes are a in the vast majority of a very standard size, and it is relatively easy to tell if a given parcel will fit through them so when they took the item they should have been well aware that delivering would involve more than a letterbox.

Royal Mail are entirely useless, but the size of the package relative to the size of the letterbox isn't really their concern.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 7:10 AM on April 23

My reading of their licence is that they have an obligation to meet certain aggregate delivery targets but there is no legal obligation to knock on your door. I think the key definition is that "a letter is 'delivered correctly' if it has been delivered either to the named recipient or to the address on the letter". So, my understanding is that until the letter is delivered it counts against their performance stats - so they should (at a Royal Mail level) be keen to get you and your package together.
posted by patricio at 7:18 AM on April 23

and you'll be glad to know that in the last reporting period 22,733 complaints were made about the Royal Mail's delivery procedures. (See last page of this Quality of Service Report)
posted by patricio at 7:22 AM on April 23

This is what happens in the UK. You now go to the depot with a form of ID and collect the parcel. I have caught them doing exactly the same thing on several occassions. I see the postman walking up to my house, there is a period of silence, I run to the door to find him filling out the delivery notice without having knocked the door.

You won't get an apology, forget it.
posted by fire&wings at 7:24 AM on April 23

My impression when this happens is that they don't bring the parcel on their round at all, so as to save themselves the bother of carrying a heavy parcel and then finding they can't deliver it. When I had this problem repeatedly, I made a phone complaint to Royal Mail, and parcels were actually delivered after that.
posted by beniamino at 7:39 AM on April 23 [2 favorites has favorites]

Advice for the future: if it's in any way possible, have anything larger than a letter delivered to where you work. I do this and have been able to avoid situations like this for years now (link is a bit NSFW).
posted by permafrost at 7:43 AM on April 23

Thanks guys, this was more for the purpose of cathartic release for my friend than actually expecting to get anything out of them. I just wanted to avoid a bloodbath :)
posted by fearnothing at 7:54 AM on April 23

I've had this happen on a couple of occasions - sometimes they have the parcel and just don't bother to knock, one time it was a postie with a bike who had no chance of carrying the parcel with him, and 'just wanted to let me know that it was ready to pick up'.

In my case, the royal mail parcel depot is about 3 minutes walk away from my house, and I'm normally at work during deliveries anyway, so it's not much of an effort to pop over the next morning and pick it up. They're also open Saturdays for missed friday deliveries.

It's a hell of a lot worse with citylink; their depot is almost an hour's drive away, and they don't open weekends, and I've had them never even arrive or leave a card, yet still blatantly lie there was no-one there to take delivery, with no idea when they might come back.

Without knowing what type of parcel service was used for the delivery, it's difficult to say what their service guarantee is. For normal mail it's 'good luck, we'll give it a go'. for special delivery it's guaranteed next day; unless they can't find it, or there's 'nobody home'.

However, the service for postage is actually for the sender, not the recipient; assuming it was an ordered good of some sort, the only person with legal grounds to complain under their procedures is the company you bought it from - and you can imagine how much they're going to care as a rule.

A written complaint to customer services may get something done about future deliveries, but I wouldn't hold your breath. The Royal Mail is heavily unionised and desperately short of money due to private businesses creaming off all their profitable routes while leaving them with the long expensive ones, so poor service is unfortunately par for the course.

Trust me - it's worse in France.
posted by ArkhanJG at 7:56 AM on April 23

I live in the US but work for a UK company -- the Royal Mail is so incredibly awful I can't even begin to tell you. Every month when our magazine comes out, it's a total crapshoot whose subscriptions will actually arrive on time, even if they're all mailed at once. Just be happy they didn't lose it, they seem to lose more mail than they deliver!
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:50 AM on April 23

Echoing everyone else with Royal Mail's record.

Part of the problem is that the actual on-foot delivery guys have to try and stick to set times and quotas, which apparently now require them to walk at an average of 4mph over the course of their round. This average obviously has to include them stopping to put stuff through the doors, writing these notes etc.

The situation you've described has happened to me on more than one occasion. Complaining does nothing - they simply apologize and quote some statistics, they don't care one bit if you're in the 1%.

One possible course of action for the future is to befriend your postie. Where I last lived, we had the same guy for a few years and we made the effort to get to know him, which worked really well as he was much more likely to be courteous himself, and deliver packages etc to a known and trusted neighbour or in a safe place on our property.

Of course, then, RM moved his round. Now we seem to have a different chap each week!
posted by gkhewitt at 9:44 AM on April 23

I'm in the US, not the UK, but FWIW this happens a lot here, too. One afternoon I was sitting on my living room sofa in front of the picture window. I saw the mailman walk across our lawn (which they are not supposed to do, by the way) so I went to my mailbox to collect the mail. Found an "Oops! I knocked but no one answered"-style note which also said that I had to go down to the post office in person to sign for whatever. (He didn't even check the "will attempt to re-deliver" box.) I know he didn't knock or ring the bell, but all they did was shrug when I complained at the post office.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:50 AM on April 23

I'll share an experience I've had, in the interest of cathartic release and sympathy:

A few years back, I moved to Los Angeles from Boston, MA, and sent a lot of stuff to myself by USPS. As it turned out, I had a few days off, and so I camped out the mailboxes at the university apartments, in hopes of helping the postal worker with my packages. To my surprise, I found the delivery person placing a "we tried to deliver your package" slip in my mailbox as I watched. I intercepted her, explaining that I was right there, and I could take the box (which definitely could not fit into my mailbox.) I figured she just hadn't carried the large box from the truck to the mailboxes.

As it turned out, it wasn't even on the truck at all, but had been left at the Post Office. The failure to deliver was planned in advance! It turned out this was merely a harbinger of what was to come in my two-year stint of living in that wretched hole of a city called Los Angeles, but suffice to say, I've never seen worse mail service than in L.A.

So as to make this an "answer" instead of "anecdote," I will suggest that in the future, you leave a note for your postal worker. Even a simple note of, "Dear Postal Worker, I am expecting a package, and I am home. Please ring the doorbell" should suffice. Teresci was right that they won't wait a few minutes for each doorbell when the odds are most people aren't home.
posted by explosion at 12:07 PM on April 23