Friends

01 February 2012

Postal Horror

Do you ever wonder where we’re going in the world today when a passport or similar is required to collect an undelivered package, or in this case a simple POSTCARD that was obviously posted by the sender without a stamp. On top of the missing postage there is a £1 handling fee to pay. Big deal! I would willingly have paid the postman but apparently this isn’t allowed. I actually saw the guy bring the mail and literally fumed when he omitted to knock the door and ask for cash.

On closer inspection of the card he left I realised that postie hadn’t got the POSTCARD, he was merely used to deliver the demand note. So not only did I not have what was rightly mine but I had to pay for the privilege of reading it.

The next hour was spent wondering who would send me a POSTCARD. I only knew one person who was on holiday and she was in Australia. In any case my stepdaughter would have addressed it to her dad or possibly her dad and me, but not personally to me.

This is part of the card that was pushed through my door along with other mail.

If you enlarge the picture you’ll see that to collect the POSTCARD in person I would have to take proof of identify: eg passport, driving licence, credit/debit card or recent utility bill. Of course, the matter could have been dealt with on line … all for £1.36 … the POSTCARD would then be delivered in anything up to five days.

Jumping on an hour.

It turned out that the POSTCARD was from Robins and Day, Car Sales. In 2006 I bought a Peugeot car from a company that was eventually taken over by these people. This year, although I have never nor will I ever do business with the new car sales people I started getting voice mail messages on the cell phone to say the car was due for MOT. Unknown numbers are never answered on the cell but I did a check on the number and decided not to return the call. Then they started leaving messages on the landline, where is a similar bar. Whoever was responsible must have been at the end of his or her tether so that’s why the POSTCARD was sent.

Why wait until this year? Why didn’t they start harassing me sooner?

Under the circumstances the kind chappy at the Postal Sorting Office decided not to charge. At last, a ray of sunshine! But the guy who answered the phone at Robins and Day is probably wishing he’d stayed in bed this morning when he got the full blast in his shell-like. I explained that we had never used the company and would not be using them in the future. Rather timidly he said he would pass on my message but he did remove name and address from their records - while I waited. That’s the end of the saga, I just wish I’d thought to charge for the phone call and the petrol used to collect the unstamped POSTCARD.

15 comments:

  1. A fine stream of indignation and one I can share having equally been forced to queue for hours and then pay to read mail that shouldn't have been sent in the first place.

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  2. Seriously. A photo ID to pick up a postage due post card?

    Please don't let your postal service talk to my postal service. ;-)

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  3. UNbelievable, Valerie!

    And yet, I'm reading this post and thinking how similar our postal service is becoming. Our postal service is becoming more and more of hassle each year. Not to mention that our stamp prices have once again inflated. What's really frustrating about our postal service is that it seems to be taking FOREVER for a letter or card to arrive. Sometimes I'll send my mother a card in the mail and it takes 10 days just to get to Florida!

    But what I think is really ironic is that our BILLS always seem to arrive on time - HA!

    Have a great day, dear lady!

    X

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  4. Pearl, it sure is. Two more calls from the car dealer yesterday, and there was me thinking I'd been taken off the database. Both calls missed, praying they don't send another postcard.

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  5. Ron, your mail system sounds worse than ours. At least ours reaches it's destination in reasonable time. It ought to be good considering
    the price we pay for stamps. Oooh I didn't think Florida was in the outer reaches!

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  6. Unbelievable! I'm glad you gave them a piece of your mind AND demanded to have your name and address taken off their list!

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  7. just scratching my head at this...doent make a whole lot of sense now does it a lot of wasted time and resources...customer service is a thing of the past...

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  8. That's all very frustrating! Hopefully you be able to get off that company's list very soon!

    As for the postal service, it's getting bad here too. The prices have gone up but they are still losing money and many offices might close eventually.
    I am always a little concerned when someone buys a greeting card from me because even though I tell them that postage will be extra because of the weight, there are some clerks who charge the full parcel fee which is outrageous! I can understand that they want to collect as much as possible, especially if their jobs might be on the line, but it's still only a greeting card.

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  9. There's just no end to the things that surprise us! lol

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  10. So, you essentially had to pay for junk mail? Argh! That would send me straight off the edge, too. Hope you gave them an earful!

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  11. It's so infuriating that they don't let you know who has sent it before you have to pay. So you may be going to all that trouble for a useless bit of advertising blurb. Sometimes I wonder why companies spend so much on advertising but don't bother with customer service!

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  12. Jenny, in this case I was wrongly on a database. But you're right, we have had cards from all sorts of businesses, most we've never heard of before. They came ready stamped. I wonder how they make a profit.

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  13. Good for you, Val. I hope that fella's ear is still ringing.

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  14. I believe it is, Mr V. I punch hard, even verbally.

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