With the festive season upon us, a timely reminder may be appropriate regarding the risk of sending money, or other items of value, by the normal postal system.

This came home to me recently, on the occasion of my son’s birthday (he lives in a different part of the city) when five cards, posted by relatives in different parts of the country, failed to arrive. Two of these contained cheques and two cash.

One turned up about a week after posting, the money having been removed and the envelope resealed with Sellotape. It is fair to assume that, after the passage of more than three weeks now, the other four cards will not appear, and that clearly an act of theft has taken place.

The Post Office will not act on reports of undelivered mail until the elapse of 15 working days from posting, although after I reported the arrival of the opened envelope details were taken which, I was told, would be passed to their security section for investigation.

What this involves I am not sure, but it was implied that there would be little or no chance of identifying the culprit and the Post Office is not responsible for the lost money.

Cheques can be cancelled but, as cheque books are rapidly disappearing from usage there is now a greater temptation to send cash through the post. In the society in which we live this is clearly not a sound option.

Richard Carr, Station Road, Upper Poppleton, York.