Royal Mail Fraud

[Jweare]

I posted my sons birth certificates and our marriage certificate by Royal Mail international tracked delivery in Nov last year. Tracking didn’t work and only said post office had received the parcel. (which I knew as I had taken it in)

6 weeks later and no delivery or tracking update and they are saying it’s been lost. I asked what that means as things in their system can’t magically disappear. They couldn’t really answer that.

There are undoubtedly fraudsters working for Royal Mail who regularly steal original documents. They must know the signs to look for. Governments departments addresses etc. I can’t think of any other plausible explanations to what happens.

Shocking service and now I worry my sons will be exposed to fraud. They need to weed out these people from the service.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

A combination of the strikes and current cyber attack on royal mails international systems, has meant a lot of stuff has gone awol and not been tracked properly over last few months, it’s more likely that than dodgy staff.
I’m an online retailer and overseas stuff is a nightmare at the moment because of it.

No.

Things do get lost in the post with some regularity at the moment OP, think of the number of pieces of post handled and the room for human error that leaves. Things obviously disappear the same as anything else that gets lost in one's life does. That is obviously what's happened and Nov was a very fraught time for Royal Mail so I'm not surprised.

I'd be cautious with the (rather ludicrous) accusation that your local post office vendors are actually seasoned criminals running a scam in using secret unspecified marks on letters. You're obliged to tell them what's in a parcel (category wise) for safety reasons and they don't have to accept it to post if you won't so I hardly think there's much to this. Post offices are regularly audited and owners/employees vetted thoroughly before employment.

You do know that literally anyone can order a copy of anyone's birth or marriage certificate if they know the basic details of the birth or marriage anyway? They are considered public record. You only need to know very basic information to order a copy of this online - eg, full names, DOB, place of birth.

Royal Mail will happily give you a refund for what you've lost if you kept a proper record, however I doubt they'll be in the least bit interested in your opinions about 'weeding out' 'these people' based on absolutely nothing of note.

You think a full address including department name is a "secret unspecified mark"?

You think a full address including department name is a "secret unspecified mark"?

Theres all kinds of places you post stuff too that make it clear you are sending something of value. One that springs to mind is a recent advert I heard asking you to post unwanted gold for a valuation.
I imagine their workplaces are heavily cctv monitored and tracked post will be traceable to the worker that is tasked with delivering it. Lots of missing items for a particular worker wouldn’t go unnoticed.

I had a letter from Royal Mail last week confirming my mail redirection!

I never asked for my mail to be redirected!
Called the number in the letter and they said they had realised it had been a fraudulent application and it would now not go ahead but wouldn't give me any details.
I reported to FraudAction and got a crime reference number. About a week later I got another letter from RM confirming that it had been a fraudulent action and there would not be any redirection.
I also had a word with my regular postman and asked him to keep an eye out for any redirections for my address and to let me know as it would have been a fraudulent one. He agreed.

I’m sorry but I just don’t understand how so many letters and parcels get lost within a secure tracked network. This is particularly so when the parcel has senders name and address on back and recipients details on front. It’s not the same as losing a ring or keys out on walk in the countryside. I’m trying to think of ways letters and parcels can be lost within such a secure network. Falling behind a table or cabinet perhaps? Sure.. a handful could be lost like that but not thousands of items every month. It just doesn’t make sense unless shenanigans are afoot. Funny how so many original documents addressed to government departments are ‘lost’ by Royal Mail.

I'm still waiting on a book which was posted in December to replace the one I ordered in October that didn't turn up! If I knew Royal Mail had gone to shite I wouldn't have ordered from England.

My friend works in the post office and she says that she regularly sees colleagues check envelopes that look like they might be birthday cards / slit them open and remove money.

Personally I’ve had bank envelopes containing credit cards cut open with scissors and then retaped shut. I assume they wrote down the card numbers and my address etc so I had to cancel the cards 🤬

A lot of criminals get jobs there.

@Jweare i bought a pair of boots. They were sent tracked, I checked for an update and they had been delivered. The photo evidence was the back of a red van with multiple cages filled with loads of parcels. They were tracked to Manchester which is a 3 hrs car journey to my home, so no way were they remotely close.

Is Special Delivery "secure"? I mean, is that the claim? It's just that the item of mail is scanned at different points in its journey from sender to recipient. There's nothing secure about it; anybody can put their hand in the mailbag or wherever and take an item. Knowing the last place the item of mail was scanned and having the contents insured are the good things about Special Delivery.

But now I see you're talking about Royal Mail's Tracked service, which is really nothing special. At least use Special Delivery if something is so important to you. A courier is probably even better.

I mean OP is talking about Tracked.

I think things do just get lost and in an organisation that size there will be some criminals at work.

The only thing I've ever experienced getting lost, which I know for sure was posted (I do think in the post is used as an excuse a lot!) was a birthday card for DS sent recorded delivery. It contained cash and I'd imagine, being a card sent recorded, that was fairly obvious. I received a card saying they'd missed us and to collect from sorting office, but it was no where to be found when I went. It's possible it was mis-sorted, but it seems quite a coincidence.

Obviously MIL shouldn't have sent cash in the post and f she'd just sent it in an ordinary envelope without making it look obvious it would probably have been fine, but there we are.

All mail is supposed to be secure. Tracking just means you can prove it was posted and arrived if there's any dispute.

Okay. Work in a Royal Mail facility for a day and you'll see "secure" will probably not be the first adjective you'd reach for, not when it comes to the actual individual items of mail, which is what we're talking about.

Okay. Work in a Royal Mail facility for a day and you'll see "secure" will probably not be the first adjective you'd reach for, not when it comes to the actual individual items of mail, which is what we're talking about.

Which will only get worse if increasing amounts of agency staff and self employed workers are brought to keep Royal Mail ‘competitive’ These workers will have nothing to lose if they get caught.
I use Royal Mail a lot in my business and have a very high delivery rate, the last few months (strikes and now cyber attack) have been a pain, but on the whole my experience of them is largely positive

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Royal Mail. The service is good and, based on my experience of working there, I doubt it's many items at all that go missing. I know there have been cases of people getting caught having stolen thousands of pounds in cash from cards, but I can't imagine anybody. I don't think any of us are interested in a £10 note in an envelope.

But my point is simply that the mail – the mail – isn't "secure". It's not as though every item of mail is all chaied together. There's nothing at all to stop something being picked up and walked out of the building. Tracked, Special Delivery, it's all handled by a human who could, if they wanted to, stick it in their pocket.

Things can also just go missing, missed at the bottom of a bag, disappeared down the side of a cage, left somewhere for someone else to deal with and then forgotten about. People talking about "secure tracked network" as though it's G4S transporting boxes of cash.

Royal Mail prosecutes every time, so a person stealing doesn't have "nothing to lose if they get caught".

Didn't you see the pics on social media about what it's been like at the sorting offices ?

www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2022-12-12/huge-piles-of-undelivered-post-stack-up-outside-mail-centre-amid-strikes

Can't you imagine that mail stored outdoors in a wet and windy country might not "survive"?

The marriage and birth certificate can be ordered by anyone knowing the name and date of birth/wedding date. Stealing would save money but a fraudster would just use the ordering service.

There's plenty more shocking images of the Royal Mail chaos. You won't be surprised that lots of mail didn't reach the recipient.

No one has posted anything to convince me how so many items can get lost within the tracked Royal Mail system. Sure things can be overlooked for a while but must then be seen/found at next shift. Items can’t just disappear into thin air. The way some people are talking you’d expect every sorting office up and down the land to be stuffed with thousands of items behind radiators or between floor boards. These are items with addresses on them for heaven sake and it’s not like losing a ring or £1 coin at a picnic in the countryside.
The only logical explanation is that the vast majority of ‘lost’ items have in fact been stolen.

Yes it does happen, but it is rare. RM come down on it hard and prosecute.

It's far more likely to be the current issues of strikes and cyber attacks. Also look at the select committee online. Posties are being instructed to prioritise parcels over letters. RM have denied this despite the evidence to the contrary from the CWU and its members.

Unfortunately RM is being ran into the ground for profit and good service is the hit they're prepared to take.

"So many"? How many? It would be a miniscule number if items that get lost, bearing in mind how many million they actually carry each year.

As for the Tracked 24/48 services Royal Mail offers, bear in mind it doesn't mean "tracked" as if the item of mail had a GPS tracker attached to it so that Royal Mail knows its exact location at all times. If it were like that, yeah, you wouldn't expect anything to go missing or be stolen.

But it's not like that. "Tracked" just means that you, the customer, are updated on which part of the journey the item is at – the delivery office in your town, the mail centre it then travelled to to be sorted along with all the other parcels and letters, or the delivery office in the recipient's town. Mail gets moved from vessel to vessel a few times on that journey. It's not inconceivable that an item can get stuck at the bottom of one, or hidden in a crease at the side. I've seen it many times.

If you are concerned that what you send might not reach its destination, you are best to take your own precautions to ensure it has the best chance of doing so, rather than insisting that post should be secure, or struggling to understand how something could possibly go missing in a such a large network that handles a massive volume of mail destined for every town on Great Britain.

Royal Mail were prioritising parcels during November and December due to the strikes and backlogs. They were using storage units to dump overflow. Some bags were left out in the rain and eaten by foxes/rats (google search photos) My guess is Christmas cards and letters that survived the above will still be turning up weeks later. Parcels usually mean more compensation so they don't care about letters and paperwork.

Royal mail has gone to hell thanks to the greedy corrupt CEO, the fish rots from the head down, the sooner they get rid of him the better 🤬

With the way things are at the moment you were lucky to even get the letter in time to do something about it, as far as I can see they save up the letters until they got about 20 for any given address and then they deliver them or maybe leave them under the hedge
I was listening to a phone in on LBC yesterday and there were lots of reports of people missing medical appointments, even operations, one woman had an appointment to meet the king in Buckingham palace but didn't get the letter until after the event so she missed it.
Also parking fines etc going unpaid and escalating because the letters didn't reach the intended recipient in time.
It's a complete clusterfuck🤬the royal mail is no longer fit for purpose🤬