The cheaper way to complain about Royal Mail

Consider this a public service announcement…

As I’ve mentioned before, my other gaff is one of the top Google returns for ‘Royal Mail complaints’. (There are better claims to fame, I’m sure, but I take what I can get.) As a result, I get a few e-mails each month from folk desperate to obtain some satisfaction from Royal Mail.

Some are from Oxford; others from much further afield. How can I tell they’re desperate? Well, I don’t imagine e-mailing a district councillor, with absolutely no powers over the post office even in his own area, is a first resort.

Sometimes there’s a theme to the issues raised. This happened a couple of weeks ago, when a handful of folk e-mailed me, independently of each other, to tell me the number to call they’d been given by Royal Mail to arrange re-delivery of parcels wasn’t working.

I got in touch with Royal Mail to find out why not. A couple of days ago, I received a rather sheepish (and solecistic) e-mail from Royal Mail admitting their centralised phone system is indeed not working:

I have rung the number myself and the option to be put through to the local Delivery Office is slightly misguiding, as it should only infer that the option is for local issues, dealt with centrally. In addition, although we offer these manned lines to prevent communication problems, which a singular local telephone line may cause, my call still proved to problematic.

Their suggestion instead is that residents should phone their customer services phone number, 08457 740 740. Fair enough, you might say.

However, last week I received a very helpful e-mail from another of my residents pointing out that this might hit Royal Mail’s customers in the wallet:

Some companies that use these numbers are actually receiving a cut of the phone call costs. If you have an 'inclusive landline calls' phone package, then it is very rare that 0844, 0845, 0870, or 0871 numbers are are included in your 'free minutes' allocation, unlike normal numbers. Many mobile phone packages also exclude free phone 0800 and 0808 numbers for your bundled minutes. Therefore mobile 'phone users will be billed for calls to this number. Landline users may have to pay up to 8p per minute to call this number.

Which sounded like a bit of a bummer. ‘Til I read his second paragraph:

The website SAYNOTO0870.COM provides alternative non-geographic numbers for 0845 numbers etc. In the case of Royal Mail the alternative number which relates to 08457 740 740 is 01752 387 112. Using this latter number may be free for some mobile 'phone users and no more than national rate for landline users. This will stop Royal Mail getting a 'cut' out of people complaining about their service.

So there you go: if you need to complain to Royal Mail, and don’t want to line their pockets, call them at their Plymouth home: 01752 387 112.

14,185 complaints and £123,927...

... that's the cost of Royal Mail's mistakes in Oxfordshire.

On 20th August, I applied to Royal Mail under the Freedom of Information Act for some information about how they handle complaints made against them:
- how many are made in Oxford,
- what’s the cause,
- how many are upheld, and
- what is the cost?

A mere 31 days later - 11 days longer than by law they are obliged to respond - I’ve got an answer. (Even if the e-mail reply does refer, rather oddly, to my having requested information for Mole Valley.)

Or, to be precise, I’ve been pointed to one of the documents, Number of complaints handled by postcode area 2005-06 (2.7mb), available on the Royal Mail website. I’ve gone through it myself and done the math.

In the OX postcode (which is Oxfordshire, rather than Oxford - let alone the areas within the city), there were:
* 14,185 complaints made against Royal Mail in the last year.
* Of these 14,185 complaints, 5,778 (41%) were upheld.
* The total cost of compensation paid out was £123,927.

(I don’t know how this compares with previous years because that information is not available.)

Which is all very interesting, but tells me nothing about the situation in Oxford. That’s no accident, of course, as my Royal Mail correspondent informed me:

"The information is not broken down to show the areas within Oxford and we would consider this more detailed unpublished performance information to be commercially sensitive and therefore exempt under Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act (prejudice to commercial interests). It is our view that the release of unpublished, local performance data could be presented out of context by business competitors (who are not themselves required to publish such information), and therefore used to prejudice the commercial interests of Royal Mail in a competitive market.

"This provision is subject to the public interest test. Although there is public interest in the level of customer satisfaction with Royal Mail's performance, we believe this interest is satisfied through reporting to Postwatch (our independent consumer watchdog) and the publication of our performance against nationally agreed targets. Further, Royal Mail Group is a publicly owned company and there is a real and direct public interest in its commercial performance and financial well-being. Therefore in our view the public interest clearly lies in maintaining this exemption."

Fair enough? No, not really.

The local sorting office in my Oxford city council ward of Headington was closed last year. This was Royal Mail’s justification:

"It is true to say that some customers will be disadvantaged by the relocation of the Delivery Office to the East Oxford site. However, we believe that the benefits of the new operation including most importantly, far more efficient mail handling outweigh this."

How to test whether this efficiency has been delivered? Well, one way is to find out whether the number of complaints made by the public has increased since the sorting office was closed.

But, of course, any increase (or - let’s be fair and objective - decrease) in complaints caused by the loss of the sorting office will be masked by looking across-the-board at the OX postcode figures.

Which leaves only one route open to me. Yes, an appeal to the Royal Mail’s Head of Information Compliance asking for a review of the non-disclosure.

How empowered do I feel right now?