Bring back stagecoaches!

[Thomasin]

On 1st March a friend of mine had a nasty op - a knee replacement. On Friday 2nd March I posted a rather special card - not your common or garden get well card, it was a tawny owl card with a built-in recording of it hooting. (You may gather she likes owls.) On Monday 5th March she was sent home and started to receive card, flowers etc. Not a sign of a tawny owl. I later tentatively asked whether she had received anything from me, and of course she hadn't. Eventually I described the card to her, and she was as annoyed as I was.

I wondered if the mechanism inside had shown up on an X-ray and perhaps the card had been destroyed in case it was a bomb. I also wondered if the slight-more-bulky-than-normal appearance had led someone to think there might be money inside.

Last week my friend received a Royal Mail notification saying that she needed to pay £1.12 for something that had too little postage on it. Could it be the owl? She phoned the sorting office and explained that she was getting over an operation and couldn't get to the office. The woman was most unhelpful and just told her to send the money in stamps. 'I'm out of stamps' wailed my friend. Eventually her neighbour got some stamps and posted them off for her.

I have just had a phone call to report that the owl has arrived. Evidently the first class stamp I put on it was not enough.

So the card which was supposed to cheer up someone who was (and still is) in a lot of pain took 18 days to reach her.

[Guy Etchells]

Since the introduction of the "large letter", measured by its thickness as well as size, a great many people have discovered that the Royal Mail have refused to deliver greetings cards until the extra payment plus an administration charge is paid by the recipient.

I'm quite sure that Royal mail have greatly benefited from these so called administration charges.

They certainly are!
A while ago I sent about 100 identical mailshots to family history societies by franked mail.

As it was franked mail the post Office demanded a surcharge fee from me the sender.
Three of the identical letters were large letters rather than letters.

I refused to pay as I explained that the three letters were part of a 100 batch of identical letters and I had checked them through the Post Office size gauge to ensure compliance.
After a number of calls they accepted they were in error and cancelled the charge.
Cheers
Guy

[Jan1954]

Gone are the days when you could send a postcard to a friend, confirming that you would be coming for afternoon tea that day, and knowing that the recipient would be able to read it before they had even put the kettle on! ~sigh~

[Ladkyis]

I have a theory that The Royal Mail Managers would like things so much more if they could get rid of those pesky customers! We live just around the corner from the sorting office - which isn't really a sorting office now, and is called a distribution centre, because all mail for Newport and from Newport is sorted in Cardiff before being transported to Newport and .... distributed. The "Once across the ground" policy for the walks means that there are weeks when we don't get our mail until 5pm
Every time our society sends out its journal there are a few which get held because of "insufficient postage" and every time the member has paid and then complains to us.
Actually, this has reminded me to put a little bit into the JOurnal telling members to dispute it because our journal is designed specifically to fit the large letter specifications so if the post office leaves a card telling them it has insufficient postage they should dispute it.