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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to want to scream at the postman / Royal Mail?

13 replies

gingercat12 · 28/04/2011 20:40

Just got back from abroad. Literally. Happily noticed that the neighbours put our bins out and they were emptied. Entered house. Postman left a notice that he left a parcel in the "blue bin". Argh!!!!!!!

The neighbours may have looked into our bin and rescued it, wouldn't you think so? Am I clutching at straws? They seem to be away by now, too.

I have resigned to the fact that e.g. 10% of my letters containing photos and nearly all birthday cards to abroad "get lost". (I never out money or vouchers in them, just photos of DS.) Now they even lose my parcels.

OP posts:
MikeOxstiff · 28/04/2011 20:41

Calm down dear

stoatie · 28/04/2011 20:43

I hate them doing this - our postman did this with our garden refuse bin day before it was due to be emptied, thankfully I found it. Turned out it was my Christmas present that DD1 had saved up for for weeks - thankfully it was well wrapped so not damaged,

Complain to Royal Mail - don't think a bin counts as a secure place

floweryblue · 28/04/2011 20:49

Do you have a regular postman or are you out when the post normally arrives so you don't really know if it's the same person most of the time? My postman is as helpful as can be, have you asked your postman to leave things with an actual neighbour if he needs to?

I agree a bin doesn't count as secure!

takethisonehereforastart · 28/04/2011 21:21

If you want to complain you will need to call customer services but don't expect them to call you back. Write everything down, including names of the people you spoke to, dates and times and what was said by you and them.

I had a two year battle with Royal Mail because of one truly terrible employee of theirs and finally had to go to the ombudsman to get anything done.

Long story a little bit shorter, the postwoman suddenly decided to start leaving our post with DH's relatives, who lived at the other end of our street but who we saw almost nothing of. Not just parcels but letters etc. She didn't leave a card to tell us where our post was either so we would get things weeks after they were 'delivered'.

Asking her to stop and either post them through our door or take things back to the post office if we were out didn't work. We tried three times before we decided to complain officially.

She then left a parcel of electrical items on our front path because we were out. We were away for five days and it rained the entire time. The parcel was ruined. This was six months into the issue.

We complained again. She then counter complained that our dog bit her through the front door. Dog was inside, she was outside, and she insisted she didn't put her hand inside the letter box even a tiny bit. Dog is tiny and I will never know how she managed to scale to door and get her mouth through the letter box to bite someone who was completely outside. She also didn't notice she had been bitten until she was in a neighbours garden and she didn't need any kind of medical treatment. Neighbour spoke to us afterwards and said she found blood on her own path and thinks Postwoman hurt herself in her garden but blamed us to get back at us for complaining.

We put up an external box for the post, at which point she stopped all parcel deliveries to our house and forced us to go and collect them. We said we would take the box down and she said she wouldn't deliver anything in that case.

A year of fighting that went by before we finally exhausted all efforts of customer services and complained to the ombudsman. They ruled in our favour on submission of the evidence (which included a picture of the dog in a pink hoodie my neice bought her for Christmas, proping up newborn LO in blue hoodie that matched - expecting SS and RSPCA tomorrow for that but it was only for one photo lol) and pictures of the letter box etc. They agreed that a dog could not possibly get to her through the front door and that either she put her hand in or she lied.

It turned out that she had raised a complaint against every house on the street that had a dog so that she didn't have to knock on the door or go in the garden. She wasn't scared of them either, she kept dogs herself.

Parcel deliveries were supposed to be resumed but she dragged the problem out a few more weeks.

And that long story has the point that during all of this fight, every single customer services employee I spoke to during that time told me that they cannot just leave parcels outside your property even if you ask them to. You have to designate a safe place and have the person sending you the parcel put a sticker on it to tell the postman that they and not you give permission to leave it somewhere else. Even if you have paid for the item and the postage the royal mail don't accept that you are their customer because you didn't physically go and buy the stamp, so it's not your permission that matters.

Your postman probably thought he was doing you a favour. Ours puts things in or behind our green box but I asked him not to because our neighbour often puts our box out when he does his own, so now he hides things elsewhere or leaves them next door.

Northeastgirl · 28/04/2011 21:35

I think postman was trying to be helpful but it's daft putting a parcel in a rubbish / recycling bin. Definitely worth a polite complaint. No need to go off on a big rant at this stage. Do you know what was in the parcel?

Northeastgirl · 28/04/2011 21:35

I think postman was trying to be helpful but it's daft putting a parcel in a rubbish / recycling bin. Definitely worth a polite complaint. No need to go off on a big rant at this stage. Do you know what was in the parcel?

SquigglePigs · 28/04/2011 21:35

Interesting point about them not being allowed to leave things outside. I was incredibly grateful to our postman at Chrismas when a bunch of parcels arrived on the 23rd when I was at work. He piled them outside the front door, then re-arranged the wheely bins so you couldn't see them from the pavement (main road, but long drive!).

But anyway OP, YANBU about the bin thing. I'd much rather go to the depot to collect than have stuff left in our bins!

Honeybee79 · 28/04/2011 21:43

Yanbu.

A bin is not a logical place to leave a parcel. But think he/she was probably trying to be helpful.

Our postie keeps putting a slip through the door saying he can't fit a parcel through and I have to go to the sorting office. The parcel is inevitably my contact lenses by post, perfectly designed to fit through the letter box. He clearly doesn't even try to put them through because, if he did, he'd realise they fit easily. Drives me mental.

floweryblue · 28/04/2011 21:45

OP, do you have a local post office (ie nearer than the sorting office)? We have been told by our postman that we can have our local post office as a nominated delivery point, but strangely, I am pretty sure that it can only be for non RM deliveries. I might be wrong about that though.

takethisonehereforastart · 28/04/2011 21:52

honeybee we had that a lot too.

Turned out she wasn't even bringing the parcels/big packets/large letters with her to try and fit in the box, she was leaving them in the office and just bringing the cards.

Her excuse was that there was no point bringing something that may or may not fit because if it didn't she would have to take it away again and that she was doing us a favour anyway because we could take the card straight to the office instead of waiting for four hours for her to get back.

gingercat perhaps a better solution is to get another blue bin just for parcels and tell the neighbours not to put it out, perhaps even fasten it to something so they can't, and tell the postman to only use that one if he has to leave a parcel outside.

gingercat12 · 29/04/2011 10:17

I have calmed down. I am sorry. Takethisone's postwoman definitely takes the crown.

Our postman is quite nice, and he was trying to be helpful. You are all right.

Sorting office is 5 minutes from us, post office is maybe 3 minutes. I think as you suggested I'll make a polite comment.

We think (but don't know) they were my husband's contact lenses. They are on direct debit and sent automatically.

OP posts:
Eglu · 29/04/2011 10:29

I have heard of this happening so many times, it is totally ridiculous. My friends had two nintendo DSes go in the bin lorry because postie put them in the bin.

Thistledew · 29/04/2011 10:36

Why would anyone think it sensible to put a parcel in a bin? A courier left £900 worth of wall paper (don't ask) that my FIL ordered in the recycling bin. If it had been delivered the next day the bin would have been collected before he had got home from work.

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