Holly HY / 30 September 2016 / Categories: Brands, Corporate Brands

Royal Mail

I am a business person so recognise sometimes things can go wrong. I also appreciate companies should be given the chance to put things right and address customers concerns directly before letting lose online as bad reviews can really hurt a business.

That said brands like Royal Mail can get our business by default just because using a competitor is perhaps less convenient which almost makes their unhelpful customer service systems even more aggravating, almost like they are laughing at us saying Ha, tough, you've got to use us anyway so we don't care.

A client of mine sent something to my office special delivery a week ago, RM said it was attempted to be delivered 23rd September, they said a card was left, no card. I called customer service about picking up the item but without a card it had to be scheduled for a redelivery which reluctantly I planned for 29th Sept, the next available date.

I sat waiting for the parcel from 7am to 7pm but it never arrived. When I called customer service again, and bearing in mind you have to go through 5 or 6 prompts and then wait on hold every time for 10-15 minutes to speak to someone (and you can never get back to the same person) they insisted I was wrong and said they could prove a card was left.

Today I have spent the whole day on the phone with Royal Mail, was told by 3 different customer service people they would take ownership of the problem, track down the parcel and ring me back, but no one did.

It was left to me to chase them over and over again, finally getting a customer service representative to contact the local depot, locate the parcel and instruct them to release the parcel to me.

That would have been all well and good except when I got there the staff politely told me they could not release anything without the elusive golden ticket - the missing cards Royal Mail insisted I had. So a sit in and a battle on Twitter ensued.

After refusing to leave the depot without my parcel I managed to finally get some action and now thankfully I have my item.

The upsetting part of all this is not that something went wrong but what happened afterwards and how the systems in place were completely ineffective. My biggest issue was being told I would receive a call back from three separate agents who all failed to follow through.

It turned out the parcel had been delivered twice to the wrong address in the next village over even though it was addressed with a business name and the correct postcode. Looking back if Royal Mail were adamant delivery had been attempted and cards left and I was saying I was there all day and no card, obviously they were taking it to the wrong place.

I got my special delivery package 10 days late, after spending a whole day tracking it down myself and Royal Mail said "Lucky the people we tried to give it to weren't in, or you might never have seen it again." No kidding.

I was not my best self today which shows how when things aren't dealt with properly frustration and anger can build and impact on other people. I do want to say thank you to all the staff at Swan House, Leicester who do see me a lot and have always been professional and helpful in the past and I will apologise to the manager I lost my temper with the next time I have cause to visit. He unfortunately and undeservedly received in one fell swoop all the fear, frustration and complete lack of trust that had built up over 10 days dealing with Royal Mail customer service department.