Experience with royal mail?


CurlyGee

Still Fresh
Joined
Sep 14, 2010
Messages
4
Hey all,


Hopefully this is a the right place to bring this up so here it goes :)


I have been dying for a Pandora since I stumbled on the openpandora website roughly a year ago. I was never sure if I'd ever have the chance of owning one and then I saw my chance on ebay. The seller was from the UK and I'm all the way over in Canada. It was the only auction that had the ability to "buy it now" but shipping to Canada was not available. I was fortunate enough to reach out to a colleague of mine in the UK who is also a gadget geek and he was able to snipe the pandora for me and have it initially shipped to him. We worked out the payment details behind the scenes and agreed to have it shipped to me afterwards via Royal mail using international signed for. And that's where everything went wrong.


The package actually arrived in Canada within 3 days but sat with customs for about 2 weeks. I later found out that the adhesive labels with the return address fell off during the shipping process. Canada customs immediately sends back packages if there's no visible return address. So my sweet sweet pandora got sent back to the UK and sat in the national returns center...yet again....for weeks. For the longest time I had no idea what the hold up was and I was obviously getting anxious. So fast forward to about 2 weeks ago when I heard that they established what address to send the item back to and that it could take up to 15 business days before it'd make it back to my colleague. PLUS its being sent back via regular postal service. :angry:


Here's my dilemma, I really dont want to file a claim for the value of the pandora because I want my toy and it will be EXTREMELY difficult to find another opportunity to get one.


Has anyone else had this kind of experience with Royal mail? if so, what was the outcome? Am I screwed and is there a glimmer of hope that I will see my coveted pandora **angels singing**
 
Ugh, how painful! :(


From what you describe though, it sounds like it could be another week before your guy in the UK gets it back (according to their 15 business day estimate)? So it doesn't sound like there's reason to file a claim yet. I'd leave it another week or two before assuming the worst.


To be honest I have heard a lot of horror stories about Royal Mail, but the fact that you know exactly what's happened, and why you're waiting, is a good sign. Recently I had something delivered from the UK, Royal Mail tracked & signed for. It went missing for about 10 weeks with no change in the tracking status, and no explanation. Then one day it just turned up. It might as well have come via surface mail. :rolleyes:


Hang in there, for another fortnight at least!
 
royal mail themselves aren't usually the problem, at least for package deliveries within the uk, they outsource the actual deliveries to multiple other companies, in the past month me/my housemates have had 4 parcels left propped against the front door, in plain sight (in an area with lots of thieves and other scum), and left in the rain at times. we've filed complaints with the outsourced companies and they have done something, not much, but they've disciplined the guy responsible.


in terms of you, feel free to complain, it's your right, just don't hope to get very far, royal mails support/complaints system is crap to say the least
 
Speaking as a former postie, I did my fair share of leaving parcels outside front doors on occasion, usually when something weight a ton and I had to drag it out to someone on my back only to have no one answer the door and being faced with hauling it back to the office and then hauling it back out again the next day (Although once somebody told me off for leaving a 'parcel' outside of their house where it could be stolen, when it was about the size of a washing machine and clearly couldn't have been delivered by me on my bicycle).


Anyway, they're usually pretty good with returns and will even open mail to determine where to send it back to if there is no return address, especially if the item required a signature as this practically makes them royalty and you can really get your ass chewed off by your manager if anything happens to one of those. I find that most delays are caused by customs, who seem to be one man with a limp and one eye for all the time it takes them to process packages. I have had two parcels disappear in the past, once I sent them, but both times those had already been handed over to their respective country's postal services.
 
Royal Mail within the UK are generally pretty good, it's when something has to go through customs and be handed over to another postal service you're likely to have problems.


For shipping something as hard to come by as a Pandora overseas, I'd pay the extra and use Fed-Ex, no question. I used them in a professional capacity for years and it's very, very rare you'll have a problem.
 
If I'm reading the OP right, the Pandora is already back in the UK - it's people there who figured out the return address. It normally doesn't take more than a few days to get most things delivered in the UK, although anything that enters the system via a more unusual route may take a bit longer - depending on how long things get left on people's out-trays I think.


The biggest delay is usually after they've tried to deliver it and taken it back to the depot, given the depots usually only open during office hours or Saturday morning, and it may be any number of miles away. Getting your parcel back from the depot can be a significant undertaking ;)
 
If I'm reading the OP right, the Pandora is already back in the UK - it's people there who figured out the return address. It normally doesn't take more than a few days to get most things delivered in the UK, although anything that enters the system via a more unusual route may take a bit longer - depending on how long things get left on people's out-trays I think.


The biggest delay is usually after they've tried to deliver it and taken it back to the depot, given the depots usually only open during office hours or Saturday morning, and it may be any number of miles away. Getting your parcel back from the depot can be a significant undertaking ;)

Correct, it's in the UK for sure and they know the return address. It's just a matter of it making to it's destination.


I'm not even sure how I can complain to Royal mail as I'm not the sender nor a UK resident.


Thanks everyone for you're replies. I guess I will have to continue to impatiently wait some more. :( Hopefully, it doesn't find me soaking wet from being left out in the rain. ;)
 
Hey everyone!


Finally some happy news. My Pandora is now in the hands of my colleague in the UK. Bad news is that I'll have to wait another 10 days before I see it in my own hands here in Canada. But at this point I'm just happy I know where it is and that it's on its way. :D
 
That's good to hear. Soon enough you can join us. :lol:


Better start preparing your SD Cards. :p
 
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