Can a company do this?

[LushBlitzer]

Is a company allowed to open mail addressed to a specific employee? And take the said items inside and give it away?

My SIL send DH and me a giftcard in the mail just before xmas. She sent it to his work address. It was beautifully wrapped with xmas decorations on, so was more like a small package that may not have quite fit through the letterbox of our flat. She sent it to work thinking someone would be available to receive it whereas nobody would have been at our flat and we'd then have to wait till the weekend to collect it.
Unfortunately she forgot that DH's work place doesn't like employees to receive personal mail at work.

The gift never made it to us. DH wasn't told that it had arrived. DH asked post-room at work and they said that before 31st Dec someone came into the post-room, took all the un-opened mail, opened them and anything of value was put in a work raffle to raise money for charity. They can't say for certain if the SIL's package was amongst them, but they don't have it in their current pile.

DH doesn't want to kick up a fuss as he's fairly new at work and on probation still. SIL is trying to cancel but there's a good chance it'll have been spent already.

Realistically is there anything we can do to try and get the gift back? It was £50 so it's not a trivial amount to us.

First class? Sorry, but what idiot posts a £50 gift card in the normal post?

Personally, I would think the best way forward for you to make any headway would be for your SIL to contact the company and complain.
She could easily become very assertive with them and there could be no retribution on your DH.

SIL could explain honestly why she sent the gift to work. How would she know about their company policy?

I don’t understand why she hasn’t done this already. 🙄. I certainly would if I had sent someone £50 and it had mysteriously disappeared.

First class? Sorry, but what idiot posts a £50 gift card in the normal post?

Loads of people. Why shouldn't they? Because posties and work might steal it?

Well I suppose because it would make OPs husband look a bit stupid, having his sister call up to chew them out.

At Christmas we get so many bottles of moet and none have company names on. They’re either delivered by hand or someone pops over a card or email to the recipient.

Someone has been careless or working in a somewhat spiteful ‘rules is rules’ interpretation of the companies own response to protect themselves against the bribery legislation.

I doubt bribery legislation entered the head of the person who stole it. The intention has been to permanently deprive the owner of the item, ergo it is theft. We could debate who has ownership but a gift card sent in the post to a named individual is going to be hard to prove as company property. Even more so if there is a card with “Dear Op’s husand, op and family. Happy Christmas, Love sil’s name”. That moves to vanishingly unlikely if the op’s dh is not in the habit of receiving corporate gifts, the corporate gifts policy is for the receipient to declare it or the op’s dh is not in a role where bribery is a realistic possibility.

What to do? Well I would mention it to my manager. If someone is stealing from the post room they will want to know about it. If it’s some crappy thing they do at work to teach people a lesson (which it sounds like) I would look for another job and probably not complain unless or until I got a new job. That complaint should follow the grievance policy. It might not be worth the £50 to do it though.

A company related gift wouldn’t normally have anything like love from your sister as one would expect a card of some type to

I would look for a new job. Regardless of whether or not it's technically legal, I wouldn't want to work for a company that takes what was supposed to be mine.

Royal Mail advise posting anything with a value of more than £20 by special delivery. They specifically mention gift cards.

Why would it make OP’s DH look stupid Cherry? SIL is theoretically the person who is £50 light!

If you bought a tangible gift for someone that was faulty then surely you would need to return/complain as the buyer!

How is it related to complaining about faulty goods?

Put it this way. Say I’m the Post room
Manager at company

My company has a policy that personal mail must not be sent to work

My staff open and distribute all post

My staff have received direction to raffle off unclaimed post

A new employee has asked for his gift voucher and we don’t know what’s happened it it- no one even noticed it. Mind you, we did collect the unclaimed stuff for company raffle. Anyway he’s gone now

Now his sister is phoning me up demanding (what exactly?) or more likely just having a go at me for losing her gift voucher.

What do you think that’s going to achieve? Plus I’m going to think new employee has a crazy family and probably tell people about it, because it’s so weird

I don't believe for a second that they have no idea what prizes were in the raffle or who won them. Under the Gambling Act 2005 a raffle at work is considered to be a private lottery and is subject to certain laws. It seems very dodgy to me if the employer is unable to provide a list of prizes and who won them, especially if it's likely that the raffle contained stolen goods. Personally I'd make a complaint to the Gambling Commission.

Bloody hell belle do you want to read the thread or make it up? The gambling commission? That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in ages

Don't those rules only apply to raffles where tickets are sold in advance (which has to be registered) rather than one where tickets are sold on the day of the draw at something like a Christmas party.

Its absolutely exempt from the gambling act. MN does love a post quoting a legal act!

And in fact work lotteries are a separate category which don't require a licence either. There are very few requirements for a work lottery.

(I decided to read the act to check rather than just quoting the name of it)

I open all our post and parcels at work but generally you can tell which are personal. On the odd occasion I've opened a personal parcel/letter I seal it back up and take it to the person concerned and apologise for opening it! We are only a small company though so not loads of post/parcels but some staff do have a LOT of parcels delivered here instead of home.

THE thing is there is no proof that this letter was actually received. The post is notoriously bad over Christmas. Anyone sending a £50 gift card via normal 1st class really is not very clever.

Did she for example put the correct postage on?

Thinking further if she'd taken it to the post office to be properly weighed/sized they would have asked her the value & advised her to send it at least recorded.

A gift card doesn't need to be weighed or sized, you can just pop it in an normal envelope with a standard stamp on it.

Personally I would probably pay a little extra for it to be tracked but that would only show that it had reached the workplace at best

The OP said

"It was beautifully wrapped with xmas decorations on, so was more like a small package that may not have quite fit through the letterbox of our flat"

As someone who opens all the mail for the office, this is SUCH a dick move. Just give the recipient the mail and ask them to ensure it doesnt happen again