Pass The Parcel - Brought To You By The Royal Mail

The Royal Mail get a lot of stick, a lot of it undeserved. And almost all complaints are with the organisation itself rather than the humble posties who trudge our streets bringing us wondrous things. I think as a general rule this is a fair comment, and I have a lot of respect for the bringers of post - personally I could never muster up the energy to rise at ridiculous-o-clock in the morning and lug vast amounts of mail around for hours, especially in the winter when it's freezing cold and treacherous out. So I am careful not to criticise unless it is truly deserved.

The thing that happened last week, and that I can fully blame on the postie, concerned a parcel. Now, since our regular post lady retired a few months back, we have had a cycle of different post people, sometimes it seems to be one for every day of the week so I have no idea how this system works. Anyhow, some of the posties (which ones and why I have no idea) will open the front door and put parcels inside if we do not answer the door, usually because we are upstairs working. Actually sometimes they don't knock at all, I have quite often come face to face with a postie as I'm walking past the front door!  I don't mind this arrangement as it saves the hassle of collecting them later, but when there is erroneous post it does make things a little more complicated.

So, what happened last week one day, was that I came downstairs one lunchtime to find the post had been... and amongst it was a large parcel, with a special delivery signed for sticker on the front, and addressed to somebody else! Now ok, the address was in the village, and in fact on the road adjoining mine, but still - eh? Now, apart from the fact that it was at completely the wrong address, surely the idea of special delivery signed for, is to get a signature on delivery to prove receipt. Right? So who exactly had signed for this parcel? One of the dogs? I find this pretty shocking, when you pay a fiver to make sure something gets to its destination safely and on time, you really do expect to get what you've paid for! Obviously we took the parcel round to its rightful owner as soon as we figured out who that was, but I know for a fact that many people would not have done the same, especially at this time of year. I know because rather worryingly almost everyone I told reacted by saying "I would have kept it". Shocking, no? Especially when you consider that neither the sender nor the intended recipient would have had any comeback given that the parcel had been 'signed for'. I encouraged the owner to lodge a complaint since this kind of thing is a serious breach of... something. Trust? Contract? Well, it's unacceptable anyways.

The second piece of erroneous post I received last week can't be blamed so much on the postie, or even the sorting office I suppose. Really the blame lies with the sender for writing the incorrect postcode, but then surely it should be picked up at the sorting office that the address and postcode don't match, and the correct one figured out? Apparently the Royal Mail employ 'letter detectives' to do this kind of thing, but it must have been their day off. The post in question was clearly a Christmas card, and the return address was in Portugal, so I figured there was no way it would make it to Portugal and back in time and set about figuring out its destination. Not very hard, as it happens! I put the address minus postcode (the code was clearly Cornwall while the address was South Brent!) into a search engine, and voila! Up it comes, with the same postcode save for being TQ rather than TR - problem solved! I popped it into another envelope with a note, and off it went. Twenty minutes of my time and a first class stamp to help someone's Christmas go smoothly. Not a problem. Still, the reaction from others? Well they would have mostly opened it to check there was no money inside before tossing it in the bin. Isn't it nice to know that the Christmas is spirit alive and well in your friends and neighbours?

Anyway, here's hoping that I'm not the only independent post fairy out there, and that there aren't too many stray sentiments this Christmas!