Royal Mail complaints rise by 32% in York and North Yorkshire (From York Press)

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Royal Mail complaints rise by 32% in York and North Yorkshire

11:00am Monday 3rd November 2008 in News Photograph of the Author By Gavin Aitchison, gavin.aitchison@thepress.co.uk

Royal Mail complaints rise by 32% in York and North Yorkshire

COMPLAINTS about York and North Yorkshire’s postal service have rocketed by a third in 12 months, with thousands more letters being lost, damaged or delivered late.

Royal Mail received 9,386 complaints from the YO postcode region in 2007/8 – an average of more than 25 a day. In 2006/7, the figure was 7,072 –19 a day.

The YO rise of 32.7 per cent compared with a nationwide figure of only 1.5 per cent.

Royal Mail today blamed industrial action for the dramatic rise and said things were now getting better, but local politicians reacted to the figures with dismay.

York MP Hugh Bayley said plans to move second-class mail sorting from York to Leeds should now be scrapped. He said: “It cannot possibly improve delivery times in York.”

City council leader Andrew Waller said: “This is a publicly-owned service, therefore there needs to be full accountability.

“It does question some of the changes being proposed.”

But Royal Mail denied moving second-class sorting would make things worse.

A spokeswoman said: “The move of some sorting work from York to Leeds would have no adverse impact on customer service.”

She said: “The complaints during 2007/8 – about one for every 15,000 letters and packets posted – came in a year when there was a prolonged period of industrial action. A quality of service has since improved with the vast majority of mail now being delivered at target levels or above.”

Of the 9,386 complaints received, 3,810 were about lost mail, meaning more than 19,000 letters and parcels have now been reported missing in the region in the past five years. A further 815 were about mis-delivered items, while there were 811 about delays; 683 about delivery procedures in general; and 475 about damage.

Other sources of frustration included staff being rude, PO Box failures, and inadequate business collections.

In total, Royal Mail ruled that more than 4,000 customers in the YO area were entitled to compensation, leaving it with a bill for £82,800. In 2006/7, that figure was £56,600.

Mr Bayley, who is due to meet Royal Mail’s area manager, Alison Wright, next Monday to discuss the relocation plans, said: “Royal Mail needs to take action to reduce the number of complaints.”

His Selby counterpart, John Grogan, said: “The worrying thing in the figures is that the main reasons for this dramatic increase are increases in lost, damaged, mis-delivered or delayed mail, which is at the very core of what the post office is about – getting mail to the right person in a reasonable amount of time. I hope postal management in the YO area will consider this seriously and give explanations to what has gone wrong in the business in York to lead to this decline in service levels.”

Comments(18)

Capt. Dobie says...
12:28pm Mon 3 Nov 08

Here's another complaint; why do posties insist of leaving a trail of red-rubber bands behind them?

Littering is a fineable offence for one, and at the 'risk' of being green, can't they stuff them in a pocket and drop them back off at the sorting office? I would like to see what the post-office spends on laggy-bands in a year... ;-)

By the way, a reminder for posties; when an envelope says 'Do Not Bend' it isn't a grammatically incorrect challenge, it means 'please don't bend this letter'...