Got a Royal Mail card through the door a couple of days ago basically saying sender hadn’t paid the correct postage and I had to pay £2:50 to have it delivered. I’m expecting some tech stuff from abroad so I thought it might be that. Paid the fee and got home today to find an envelope on the mat in the hallway- so definitely not the tech stuff.
Turns out it’s a birthday card, which according to the postmark was posted two days before my birthday – 4 months ago. Charge is for using an out of date stamp. Thanks Pat.
by r1Rqc1vPeF
21 comments
“Happy birthday, pay up” – Royal Mail
Are you blaming Pat for a mistake on the part of the sender?
Happy (belated) birthday! 🎉
Or it’s 8 months early
Its wild that a stamp, that has been paid for, presumably to the post office, can be out of date.
Presumably “Pat” is the name of the person who tried to send you a card without a valid stamp, and that who you’re annoyed with. Obviously you aren’t blaming Royal Mail for your friend/relative’s cockup.
I got a card from RM saying there was a letter with insufficient postage, I went and paid thinking it was Nan had forgotten again as my birthday was close by.
Turns out it was the local hairdressers, they’d sent out a flyers without postage. Thought I’d go and have a word and see if they’d reimburse me, when I arrived there was a queue outside all wanting a reimbursement. They’d sent out 1000 flyers.
Fair play to the lady that owned it, she was there with bags of £1 and 50p’s and being very apologetic. She said she’d paid a local printers to knock them out and they’d forgotten to frank them, they reimbursed her for the print job, and for the £2500 potential refunds she’d have to hand out.
As time went on and word of mouth via FB and the like, it turns out people had heard and didn’t bother going to collect it from the PO, sh she was quids in.
And this is all despite Pat ploughing millions into his “Special Delivery Service” that has a helicopter, multiple specialist road vehicles, fancy control centre (with self-styled logistics coordinator) that has 24/7 live tracking of Pat and Jess
Non-barcoded stamps haven’t been valid since July 2023, extended from the original Jan 2023 deadline. They did a lot of publicity prior to that about getting old stamps replaced.
I had a similar situation with a Christmas card. Family member took it to the post office where the person put it through the test slot and told them the amount to pay. It got to me and I had to pay £2.50 or whatever it was for it not having the right postage. Royal Mail can be a bit of a joke sometimes
A relative of my wife sent us some Lidl chocolate in the post. She used the wrong stamp. We paid more to release the parcel than it would cost to go and buy the same chocolate from Lidl. My wife side of the family is odd
I received a birthday card earlier this year that came in a bag saying “apologies for the damage”. The card and envelope had literally been ripped in to about 8 separate pieces
I dropped off a parcel for DPD but at our local Post Office, it was bound for New Zealand. After about two weeks I realised it hadn’t arrived in New Zealand so I started a claim with DPD. About 2 more weeks and I got a card through the door from the Royal Mail saying there’s a parcel at a different post office with excess postage of £9 to pay. I went to pick it up, and of course it was the undelivered New Zealand package, that had travelled via Wales, to another post office slightly further away me. Also, DPD didn’t refund the entire cost; they subtracted the cost of the insurance. The Royal Mail are inept, but DPD are pricks.
Reminds me of when I had to pay £1.70 to get letter informing me I’d been unsuccessful at a job interview.
Similar thing happened to me, card from my mum for my 40th, was too wide for the letterbox, charged £1.50 even though it was stamped. Happy Fucking Birthday.
Seems to be a flat £2.50 charge for using a non-barcoded stamp https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
I believe all commemorative stamps however, are still perfectly valid.
I had the same for a wedding invitation. Finally got the invite the week after the wedding. Had to call and apologise for not RSVPing.
I got a Christmas card from my elderly Aunt a few weeks ago, which she posted in early December. At least I didn’t have to pay to collect it.
She’s already told half the family how rude my kids are because they didn’t even thank her for the £10 she put in it for them. She doesn’t usually send them money so I had no idea, I would have let her know we’d not got her card if she’d mentioned it. Apparently she isn’t going to bother sending them anything again. So I suppose the delay did cost us in the end.
Was it moonpig?
My local collection office is pretty good and if you go down they will show you what it is and you can decide if you want to pay the charge or not
Had something similar.
Got a card through the door saying Royal Mail couldn’t deliver something because not enough postage had been paid and I needed to pay £5.
I was expecting a few parcels at the time so assumed it was one of those, paid the fiver online and didn’t think any more of it.
A few days later the item in question turned up… it was a tiny slip of paper (which definitely should not have cost £5 to send in the first place) from the hospital letting me know my daughter was due her vaccinations… which she’d already had the week before…