The latest Royal Mail Quality of Service Report reveals that they paid out a record amount of compensation in the fourth quarter of their 2018-2019 financial year. For the first time, Royal Mail compensation payouts exceeded £2 million in a three month period.
In the last quarter Royal Mail compensation payouts totalled £2,065,709 and for the full year £6,595,379. This is up £1.4 million for the 2017-2018 financial year when the payout was £5,141,061 and for 2016-2017 Royal Mail compensation payouts were down at £4,869,614 for the full year.
The number of complaints also jumped sharply to 202,418 for the quarter and 747,657 for the full year, up from 703,802 and 686,520 in the previous two years respectively.
Of the £2,065,709 paid out in Royal Mail Compensation Payouts over the last quarter, £1,045,658 was for losses with another £122,328 for damage and £144,690 for delays. £317,974 was paid out for International loss and the balance came from other causes.
These numbers include complaints about a USO or regulated product made by a customer who does not have a contract for the product concerned. The compensation figures include goodwill payments as well as those laid down in Royal Mail’s Ts and Cs.
Royal Mail is required to record any expression of dissatisfaction as a complaint, including phone calls, letters, emails and online forms. Some matters are recorded as complaints even when Royal Mail is not at fault so, on top of the 202,418 completed in the last quarter, there were 26,426 ‘complaints’ not completed.
“We compensate in line with our policies and put things right for our customers. We deliver more than a billion parcels every year to a high level of customer satisfaction.”
– A Royal Mail spokesperson
8 Responses
How much of that paid to business account holders?
Considering we aren’t eligible for compensation for loss, damage, lateness etc on the standard, everyday mail tariffs then the £ figures must be to non business mail senders ?
So business users received compensation ?
Yeah, right ?
Believe the part you quote Chris being solely regarding complaints only. Besides, that’s how it comes across.
RM accept our complaints but won’t pay out. That’s 15 years of having a RM business account experience ?
As a business seller and have moved to Tracked 24/48 we now routinely claim for lost parcels for eBay and Amazon orders where tracking does not show delivered.
For INR orders from eBay customers where tracking shows delivered, ebay deny the claim.
For INR orders from Amazon customers where tracking shows delivered, Amazon refund customer and we claim off Amazon via their Safe-T claim process.
Royal Mail and Compensation ???? that does not add up.
This is the only company I know in the world that can take your MONEY and then proceed to destroy or lose the item you have paid them to send to provide the service, and YET do not have to actually pay out…it is criminal really.
Even if you can get a claim with one of their overpriced services the hoops you have to jump through it is pretty awful really…
We know fraud claims from the likes of eBay used to be on a epidemic scale and if you are using certain services probably still is.
However when there is NO SCAN and you have proof of post, FAIL MAIL should be getting their hands in their pockets…it grinds my bones how they treat the biz customers.
As a postman myself, the amount of times I have been asked into the managers office for denial of receipt items, when I know I have delivered it, x that by 100,000 posties, even our PDA’s show the location of delivery thanks to the scan. Fraud is an epidemic in our society!