RANDOM POST

We have a regular postal delivery operative. His name is Barry and he's been delivering in these here parts for years. Unfortunately, on occasions, Barry the Postie is unavailable and his delivery duties are fobbed off onto one of his lesser colleagues, at least one of whom, it seems, has a very random approach to house numbers.

There is a rather massive house number on italian tiles cemented to the post at the side of our back door, but that doesn't seem to be enough of a clue. When it got really bad one time I stuck a "Post-It" note to the letterbox with "THIS IS NUMBER XX" written upon it which may have got the point across but I doubt it.

I know that Barry is off because I regularly get large quantities of mail addressed to the house next door pushed through my letterbox on an almost daily basis, and then find my neighbours posting my mail through at some time long after they've finished work for the day and finally got home.

Meanwhile, I know that a comfortably letterbox-sized parcel is long overdue (I hope whoever got it is enjoying my film...) and I got an "undeliverable item" message from Amazon over the weekend for yet another parcel that wasn't even due to be delivered for another four days.

Perhaps the Royal Mail simply couldn't be bothered finding out where to send it...?

Anyway, after festering and fuming over these various inconveniences for a while, I decided that it might be worth putting in a complaint. After all, I reasoned, having someone looking into the situation couldn't do any harm could it...?

Of course, they DO know where I live... Or rather, they claim to.

When it comes to my actual mail, I'm not quite convinced about that.

So, after a swift search, I negotiated my way around their fiendishly clever website and, after finding the most relevant looking link, I sent them this:

I really feel that I ought to inform you about how our mail delivery service becomes far worse whenever our "regular" delivery operative is on holiday. 

It's almost as if the stand-ins cannot be bothered in some way, or take a rather random approach to house numbering. I regularly get mail posted through for the wrong house and have to pass it on, and mine seems to get posted through a neighbour's house and they usually pass it on to me.

Not only that but our usually reliable service from companies like Amazon seem to get delayed significantly or fail to turn up at all, and letters which are due on a particular date - like the MOT reminders or credit card bills - also fail to appear on schedule.

I even got notification of "undeliverable mail" for an item ordered over the internet this week, something which has never occurred before in over a decade of dealing with that company from my current address, and during a period when I happened to be working from home.

All-in-all the service declines in quality for a while and then appears to recover and I feel that it might be something that is worth further investigation. 

Many thanks!

To which I very swiftly received an auto-reply from the Post Office and, later on, an actual email telling me that the Post Office didn't actually deal with mail deliveries and I should forward any complaints I had to the Royal Mail via a link which took me back to the very same website which I'd first gone through.

I don't know. Anyone would think that they didn't want to encourage people to complain...

Anyway, I examined the website in more detail and zapped off my email again, having luckily hung on to the text from the first version just in case I needed it again. The standard reply came through the next day, a lengthy piece that burbled on about the millions of items they handle each day, and that if I had specific items which had gone missing, how I could fill in a claim form, but nothing, really, which addressed any of the specific issues which I had been hoping to flag up to them.

I sighed deeply to myself, realised that I was probably wasting my time, and gave up, resigning myself to occasional periods of shoddy service ironically on the very day that Barry returned from wherever he'd been and some of my long overdue items actually turned up...

The thing is that I really don't like complaining about the postal service. After all, they are doing a pretty good job under very difficult circumstances and, most of the time, things tick along just swimmingly... (All they need now is for some idiot to come along and try to privatise the whole lot and we might as well send it to hell in a handcart... Oh... Wait...)

It's just that every so often around here, it all just seems to fall apart around here for a few weeks and if you don't let anyone know about this, presumably it'll just keep on happening.

Meanwhile, I realise that I've got to that sort of age where complaining about things seems perfectly acceptable behaviour.

Oh my...!

Post Office!?! Look at what you've brought me to!!! I'm even using multiple exclamation marks now because of you and your irritating ways...!

Swines.