Newent businessman loses postcode court battle with Royal Mail

“I am Graham Wright - "The business man".

I have been delivering to the address in question for the last ten years around five times a year. The address has always been the same i.e. incorrect in that the post code carried a single letter error. The packages have always been delivered. The remainder of the address i.e. the company name, the premises number, the street name, the local area, the town and the county were always correct.

I agree that a delivery cannot be made to a post code alone. This is used in the sorting office to select the correct round.

The sequence of correspondence with the various levels of complaint within Royal Mail was increasingly frustrating as they continued to claim they had delivered the package correctly. Any advice above to try to trace the recipient is thwarted by that claim. The final insult from The Postal Review Panel stated ………"I have spoken to the postman who made the delivery and he clearly remembers the lady signing for it". The signature on the tracking document was Nathan Poyser-day (this is public domain information and thus not defamatory). I doubt many ladies have the christian name Nathan!

Why Mr Poyser-day did not return the package to the sorting office I do not understand. The contents would have been useless to him although fairly valuable to me and my customer. The package contained full standard commercial documents including all proper contact details.

The package when presented at the local post office was checked in with the address "not validated". According to a Postmaster of my acquaintance, this should have debarred acceptance. That it did not arguably leaves Post Office Counters culpable.

In response to involving the police;- as Royal Mail obviously have no idea where the package was delivered, the possibility of tracing it and commencing recovery is slight. It seems rather unlikely that the police would be excited by this affair anyway;- they would probably claim it was a civil matter. The amount of £300 is probably trivial to them. In reality, it would be the responsibility of Royal Mail to initiate any such action.

Furthermore, that amount is probably trivial to Royal Mail.. It would be interesting to discover what their costs were. Fortunately, the judge was as frustrated as I with the nonsense of the case which is why presumably she did not award costs against me. She was very apologetic in her summing-up.

I have lodged my complaint with the Chief Executive of Royal Mail, Moya Greene, who responded by return apologising and promising a full investigation.”

“Royal Mail seem to be hammering nails in to their own coffin. Hiding behind this pathetic excuse does not make good business sense. How is this going to do anything other than damage their reputation? You cannot deliver to the correct address just on the strength of a post code because post codes normally apply to several addresses. Post codes are just an assistance for the sorting office and are of no help to the postman who needs to know the number or name of the building. That would be contained within the address so as long as the address is correct I think they have no real excuse even if their is a legal get out clause. The judge obviously thinks so too otherwise he would have given the Post Office their costs and he didn't!”

“Yes, the post code should have been correct, but I agree with the last 2 comments - had it have ended up on the wrong round then the postman should have picked up on the wrong address, so I would actually put the postman at fault.

I had a card this very week where the last letter of the post code was wrong, but it got to me. A relative of ours even had the wrong street name at one stage, but the Postie obviously saw the name of the person it was addressed to and delivered it.”

“Seems very odd - the last character of a postcode in urban areas is usually a street at most so should have been close enough to the real destiantion for the postman to have gone to the correct address - postmen don't deliver to postcodes but to addresses, there are about 100 properties share my postcode on a compact development and the mail is delivered to the property not the postcode else we would have to collect our individual items from a central postcode location. It would also be interesting to know if the legislation was enacted pre-postcode introduction and if any enabling amendment was introduced to make the legislation include the post code as part of the address - to this day there is still lack of clarity over whether the postcode is part of the address or an additional item.

But ultimately why has the businessman not pointed police at the address the postman delivered to??”

“The post code is used by sorting offices to decide which postal round the parcel/letter is sent on. While possible, it is unlikely that a single last character will mean the item will be sent on a round where the postman does not recognise the address. The postman reads the address NOT the postcode. Ultimately the item should either be returned to sender or signed for at the ADDRESS on the item NOT the postcode.”

“If an item is correctly adressed but without a post code it can be correctly delivered

eg Mr J Smith
123 Any Road,
Cheltenham
Glos

If an item is addressed with just a post code it usually cannot be delivered.

eg GL52 6GT

The post code usually identifies multiple properties in an area so the significance of the post code in this situation is low. Is just Royal Mail hiding behind their insurers fine print to avoid paying out compensation.”

“"...he postcode was wrong by just a single character..."

Given that a postcode is only six characters long, a single character is quite significant - the same as getting one digit wrong when dialling a phone number.

What I don't understand is why he's - apparently - not involved the police. The Post Office have confirmed that the parcel was delivered to a particular address and signed for by someone with "an unusual name". Why not just report it as stolen or obtained under false pretences - seems like an open and shut case?”

“Maybe Mr. Wright needs to establish - with help from Royal Mail - where exactly the parcel was actually delivered to, and then contact the relevant police constabulary to report the theft of the package. Whoever signed for it wasn't entitled to it, and hasn't paid for it, so surely they've stolen it? Tampering with post not addressed to you is an offence.”

“how is this the royal mails fault he sent it too the wrong address”