Furious Royal Mail customers have revealed their nightmare experiences at the hands of the once-trusted postal service, from dead ladybirds to ‘vanishing’ wedding suits.
Britain’s national courier was taken over by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky in a £3.6million deal earlier this year.
But the acquisition has had no tangible effect on the company’s woeful delivery statistics with figures this month revealing that just 75.9 per cent of first-class letters and 89.3 per cent of second-class post arrived on time between the end of March and June.
Ofcom requires Royal Mail to deliver 90 per cent of first-class post the next working day and 98.5 per cent of second-class post within three working days, but the firm is falling well short of these targets.
Behind each delayed parcel and every tardy letter lies a story, ranging from the frustrating to the horrifying.
Indeed, the decline of the courier, once a shining light of Britain’s public services, can be tracked on an array of public social media pages inviting people to share their weirdest and most egregious experiences at the hands of the company.
And several have come forward to tell the Daily Mail about their ordeals and the poor customer service they faced in response.
Julia Stephenson, 59, opened up about a remarkable feud with the courier which started with an incident on her doorstep and escalated into a flat-out ban on her receiving post, culminating in dozens of perished ladybirds in a sorting office.
Julia Stephenson, pictured, suffered an ordeal at the hands of Royal Mail whose delivery rates have been declining rapidly
Her shipment of live ladybirds, pictured, and worms were left to die in the Putney sorting office, a place where Ms Stephenson has also received personal abuse
The resident of Putney, southwest London explained she had always had a warm relationship with her local Royal Mail staff, including her current postwoman to whom she gifted £20 as a thank you last Christmas.
But this all changed in May after her small Bichon cross dog, named Bibi, allegedly bit the delivery woman as she attempted to deliver post.
Nothing came of it for three weeks, according to Ms Stephenson, at which point union representatives arrived at her door and demanded she install a postbox outside the property.
‘I wasn’t aware that anything had happened, because she slid off around the corner pretty quickly,’ she said.
‘I didn’t hear about anything until three weeks later, when two rather aggressive, enormous men suddenly appeared at my door when I was alone in the house.’
She followed the officials’ orders and even apologised to the local sorting office with two hand-written letters.
Royal Mail’s head office later sent over an apology of their own, Ms Stephenson claimed, accepting that the representatives should have visisted her much sooner.
She added: ‘I know it is serious and a lot of postmen are being bitten by dogs. But it’s not like I refused [to accept responsibility], I admitted full culpability and it won’t happen again.
The mishap was a result of her postal service being restricted after her dog Bibi, pictured, bit a postwoman, although Ms Stephenson insists she ordered the animals before this incident
‘But I don’t really know what more all these people can want from me.’
The dog owner then went through an excruciating spell of two months without receiving any post, while letters, including some regarding doctors’ appointments for her partner and passport applications, were even flung onto the pavement near her home.
She was told to upgrade the postbox she had fitted to a larger one worth an eye-watering £200.
Her ordeal reached a ghastly lowpoint when the Putney sorting office apparently failed to deliver three batches of live ladybirds and a packet of live worms, ordered from an online site before her initial feud with local staff.
The animals were instead left to die, a grim fate which only revealed itself to Ms Stephenson when she paid a visit to the sorting office, which had not informed her the bugs were waiting there.
‘It is a terrible thing to go there and get all these packets of dead ladybirds,’ she said.
‘It was very cruel. You go in there and you pick up a great box of dead animals and they don’t even apologise.’
The Putney resident added that Royal Mail later apologised for the traumatic incident.
The disgruntled Royal Mail user was forced to erect a postbox, pictured, outside her house to stop her dog coming into contact with the postwoman in future. She also wrote apology letters
She said: ‘It is all down to the sorting offices. They are a law unto themselves. It’s absolutely hopeless.
‘Royal Mail are unaccountable.’
Things did not get better during further trips to her local sorting office.
Ms Stephenson claimed staff working at the normally friendly establishment had taken on a different attitude towards her and were now ‘aggressive and bullying’.
She said: ‘They should be customer friendly and I went there to go to get my mail after months of no mail.
‘I don’t dare go in there to pick up any mail, because they’re so rude. I have been just trying to get stuff delivered to other people’s addresses.
‘[The manageress] was confrontational and aggressive.’
Ms Stephenson said that on one visit she was laughed out of the office by employees, bringing her to tears.
‘You just feel quite intimidated,’ she added. ‘It is bullying and harassment.
‘I’m not an aggressive person, I just wanted to get this sorted out. I am not interested in getting into a fight with any of these people.’
The disgruntled customer reported this behaviour to Royal Mail head offices too.
‘I didn’t say what they should do,’ Ms Stephenson said. ‘I just reported the behaviour and hoped they could be more restrained and speak to the customers with a bit more respect.’
Things took an even more concerning turn this month when she was paid a visit by police officers in relation to her dog’s actions back in May.
She was invited to attend the local police station, voluntarily, the following week, which she agreed to.
‘It was a first time offence,’ Ms Stephenson said. ‘This punishment has just been absolutely draconian.
‘It wastes police time.
Ofcom requires Royal Mail to deliver 90 per cent of first-class post the next working day and 98.5 per cent of second-class post within three working days (Stock Photo)
‘There were two of us in this enormous station.’
The case is now closed but the infuriated Royal Mail user insisted the feud has not.
She claimed the delivery staff’s van continues to block her drive when it visits her road, and the local postwoman still makes rude remarks about her.
‘She throws letters on the ground and we’ve been told she has been saying horrible things to neighbours,’ Ms Stephenson said. ‘It gets you down.’
For the Putney local, the saga has confirmed what she had already suspected about Royal Mail – that it is a national institution in decline.
‘We’ve been buying from Amazon for many years and they have never once had a problem with delivering anything and they get everything to you the next day,’ she said.
‘I find all these other companies incredibly reliable. People get sent the tracking thing and they always seem to get the thing delivered to you.
‘And I’m afraid Royal Mail has got a real problem because people are going to all these other delivery companies that actually get the stuff delivered.
‘There’s none of this, “we left a card because you weren’t in” and all that nonsense.
‘They are resting on their laurels. We all loved our posties back in the day and gave them £20 and a postbox on Boxing Day. The next thing is you are being treated like a wicked, evil criminal.
‘There’s no competition. If you want to post a letter, you have to use Royal Mail.
‘I think they are just living in the dark ages, really.’
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: ‘Deliveries were suspended after a postie was bitten by a dog for a second time, requiring hospital treatment.
‘Our first priority is the safety of our people, who provide a vital service to customers. The vast majority of dog owners act responsibly and keep their pets under control.
‘We are sorry the suspension was not explained to Julia in a timely manner. Deliveries have since resumed in full following assurances that the dog will be securely contained whenever our posties attend the address.’
The Met Police declined to comment.
Alex Kozlowski, 26, experienced a slightly less morbid but equally stressful nightmare at the hands of Royal Mail in the run-up to his wedding.
In March, just weeks before the big day, he took a trip to a London tailor to collect his father’s suit for the occasion, chosen meticulously online.
Given Mr Kozlowski lives in the capital but his father Sylwester’s home is in Tewkesbury, he was required to send the garments by post.
The groom-to-be opted for Royal Mail over various alternatives – a move he soon regretted.
‘I just thought that this will be the time that the parcel gets lost, or gets left in the bin somewhere and no one ever finds it again,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘So I went for Royal Mail, just for safety and that didn’t pay off.’
He then headed to his local Post Office with the three-piece suit and accompanying shirt, as well as another parcel, a USB-C cable being returned to Amazon in a small Amazon-branded box.
But the Post Office worker stuck the Amazon QR code on the suit and vice versa, labelling the clothing package as 20g in weight and the small cable as 2kg.
To his father’s utter surprise, the wedding outfit he had expected to drop through his door the following day had turned into a charger wire.
‘The suit just went missing,’ Mr Kozlowki said. ‘I spoke to Amazon pretty much straight after and I showed the tracking page.’
This showed no updates because it had been accepted at the company’s return centre – but Amazon reassured him it had been flagged in their system and would be sent back.
He added: ‘But I’ve had nothing since. The suit just vanished. There are no updates on Royal Mail. Nothing – it’s just gone.
‘I’ve tried to call them many times. They kept telling me to wait 14 days to fill out a claim, which was a bit frustrating.
‘It was for a wedding so we were already stuck for time, but we weren’t sure if we were going to have to buy another one or not.’
They soon made their mind up when Royal Mail showed no signs of responding to his claim form, eventually replying more than 30 days after the issue was brought to their attention.
‘This was more than the maximum time, which is already absolutely unbelievable in the first place,’ Mr Kozlowski said. ‘But they finally replied to the claim after about 40 to 50 days just saying I have to contact the seller because the tracking number was for the Amazon parcel.
‘They said it is not for them to deal with. And then the website had no option to add any further details. You can’t really say what actually happened [on the website].
‘I didn’t actually hear back from them until about two or three weeks after the wedding.
‘So we had to buy a new suit anyway. We literally got it and kept the tag on it for as long as we could just in case [the original suit] did show up.
‘But it got to about a week before the wedding and we just accepted it was gone.’
To this day, Mr Kozlowski’s case remains unresolved, far exceeding the 30-day limit.
Confusingly, the Royal Mail webpage says the complaint process has been completed, meaning he would have to trigger a new claim and start the process all over again.
‘I would definitely never use them again for an expensive parce,’ he said. ‘I would much rather pay a bit extra now and go for DHL or a bigger courier company who are more reliable.
The firm has just been taken over by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, pictured, via his EP Group for £3.6billion
‘My parents are on holiday now and my dad is still asking me if we’ve heard anything, and it’s been months now.
‘They are both from a working class background so £350 is quite a lot for them.’
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: ‘While the tracking status shows as “We’ve got it,” it is very likely the package has already been delivered back to Amazon. Because of the high volume of returns we handle, not every single item is scanned at each stage.
‘As the return postage was arranged by Amazon, any claim for a missing item must be raised directly through them.’
It comes after a disabled woman in her 60s said she is ‘filled with despair’ after Royal Mail refused to deliver post to her remote hamlet because the route’s windy road is ‘too dangerous’.
Val Bennallick, 62, who has multiple sclerosis, was left without deliveries for a month before being informed that postmen had no intention of returning to the bumpy track which leads to Essworthy, a hamlet in east Devon.
Instead, the retired teacher was told that she and the hamlet’s seven other residents would have to complete a 14-mile round trip to collect their parcels from Okehampton, a neighbouring town.
Ms Bennallick told The Times: ‘I don’t want to be cut off from the mail, but I wasn’t told for over a month. You think to yourself, how on earth can that happen? It’s just ridiculous.’
Eventually, the courier told Ms Bennallick that the route was too unsafe even to inform her of the change.
A disabled woman in her 60s said she is ‘filled with despair’ after Royal Mail refused to deliver post to her remote hamlet of Essworthy, pictured, because the road is ‘too dangerous’
She continued: ‘To me, it’s a vital service. I do a lot of things online but some things have to be sent to me, like labels for my regular blood tests.’
Residents of Essworthy now face either putting up a postbox elsewhere or travelling 14 miles in total to collect their post.
Although she admitted the road ‘wasn’t good’, Ms Bennallick, who drives a Ford Fiesta, said that the other residents, tradesmen and workers delivering oil nonetheless travel on it ‘every day’.
A Royal Mail employee apologised to Ms Bennallick, who is now awaiting a response from the local delivery office manager.
A Royal Mail spokesperson told Daily Mail: ‘Deliveries were suspended due to concerns from the local team about the poor quality of the private road.
‘We are sorry that this was not communicated to Ms Bennallick.
‘We are reassessing these deliveries as a matter of urgency and will work with Ms Bennallick to provide a solution.’
In April, a mother was left mourning the loss of her son’s ashes after Royal Mail lost them in the post and told her she wouldn’t get compensation.
Pictured: The road leading to Essworthy, on the outskirts of Hatherleigh in east Devon
The woman’s son died two years ago from suicide at the age of 27 and she had wanted him to be buried near where he grew up in Sussex.
His urn was posted First Class to a friend from her current home in Somerset but the distressed mother contacted the postal service when it failed to arrive.
Royal Mail admitted the ashes had been mailed to the wrong address but said the maximum payout did not apply as the remains had ‘no intrinsic value’.
They also told the woman her 409g package was 359g more than the postal limit for human ashes and so should be ‘prohibited from being sent’, The Sun reports.
Royal Mail said it could ‘only assume’ a label from a different parcel had managed to get stuck on the box.
Three months after complaining, the mother received a letter from the service stating ‘there is compensation available for the loss, but this is a maximum of £20 for the intrinsic value of the content, but there is no intrinsic value to someone’s ashes’.
She stated she simply wished to know what had happened to the lost urn.
Royal Mail sent a £50 cheque as a gesture of goodwill and added: ‘We are truly sorry for the loss of this important item. We did everything we could to try to locate it but sadly without success on this occasion.’
The postal service has been under scrutiny lately for increasing the cost of a first-class stamp to £1.70 in April, as well as failing to meet the targets imposed by Ofcom.
The postal service has promised to recruit more frontline staff to make the network ‘more reliable and resilient’.
Royal Mail’s current shortfalls come after it was announced that from April next year, Ofcom will lower the target for first-class mail to arrive the next working day from 93 to 90 per cent of deliveries.
The target for second-class mail to arrive within three days would be cut from 98.5 to 95 per cent.
Amanda Fergusson, of the Greeting Cards Association, previously said customers ‘expect more for less from Royal Mail, not even less for significantly more’.
Royal Mail Interim Chief Operating Officer, Jamie Stephenson, said: ‘Timely letter deliveries really matter to our customers, and they matter to us too.
‘We are taking targeted steps to improve reliability, and we remain focused on delivering a better service for all our customers, every day.’
Royal Mail is facing an identity crisis as the number of letters being delivered continues to fall every year amid rising costs – with people now using digital means of communication to send urgent messages.
Twenty years ago, it said it was delivering 20 billion letters a year – equivalent to roughly two letters a day for every address in the UK, six days a week, all year round.
That has now fallen to around 6.6billion as of 2023/24, or around four letters a week per address.
Labour ministers approved the sale of International Distribution Services (IDS) – the Royal Mail’s parent company – to Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group for £3.6billion last year, taking Britain’s postal service into foreign ownership for the first time.
Kretinsky had amassed a 28 per cent stake in IDS over several years – and his takeover prompted a Government review due to the postal service’s vital role in UK national infrastructure.
Through his companies, he also owns more than a quarter of West Ham United FC, 10 per cent of Sainsbury’s and a gas transmission service that pipes Russian gas to Europe – a contentious link that nevertheless did not deter UK ministers.
Upon approval of the sale by shareholders last month, he said he would put ’employees and customers at the heart of everything IDS does’.
