A BUSINESS owner has claimed that Royal Mail attempted to compensate him for £140 worth of damages with six stamp books and a delivery refund.
Gavin Gardner, who runs an ornament business, had sent out a host of packages during the lead up to Christmas when he says he suddenly began to receive negative feedback from customers.
The 28-year old claims to have then discovered that each item had in fact arrived at the customer’s house broken and in pieces.
Airing his grievances to Royal Mail, he claimed that the disruption to his business had cost £138.82 – but says he was met with a weak response from the firm.
Gavin from Colchester, Essex alleges that Royal Mail apologised but compensated him with a refund of just £14.25 and six booklets of eight stamps each.
He added that stamps have no use to him as he sends all his packages using the online Royal Mail portal service, meaning stamps are not required.
Gavin has also said that he was advised by Royal Mail to make claims on his losses – a process which can take up to a month per claim.
Images show the £45 worth of purple first class stamps lined up next to each other, with the 48 stamps spread across six opened booklets.
A further image shows the correspondence from Royal Mail, informing Gavin of the delivery fee refund and of the criteria which should be met in order to achieve compensation for losses.
Gavin took to social media last Thursday, writing: Royal Mail’s Damage claims are so broken. £138.80 worth of damages to my business.
“This is their ‘fair’ compensation. They are now crippling my business.”
He added: “All my stuff comes properly packaged. With laser printed label stickers, fragile tape, everything packed right.
“The claim department is a back office, so no way to get them on phone.
“They are always great with me on the phone, just does my head in that the claims team don’t use their brain – I wish they had a way to make sure I don’t get stamps anymore.”
“Over the last 1,000 orders only around 5% turned into claims. I don’t expect this treatment when the service is paid for and I uphold my side.”
The post received dozens of likes and comments as many expressed their sympathies for the small business.
One person wrote: “You now have a great insight into how they treat their staff.”
Another said: “Who uses stamps anymore?”
A third commented: “That’s absolutely rubbish, of course sending stamps costs them a lot less. They hope you will never use them as well.”
A fourth added: “It’s ridiculous the way they dish out any compensation. The amount of badly packed stuff or stuff with labels missing, wrong address and stuff with no return address – we see daily.
“It must cost a fortune giving compensation out where they shouldn’t. Probably why [they] can’t afford a pay rise for staff.”
Speaking today, Gavin said: “Since the beginning of December, we had a fair few [damages], then normal customers reaching out to us about orders arriving damaged or not at all.
“I’m assuming this is due to over-stacked cages, rushing and misuse of packages in the warehouses – our packages range from between 2kg and 20kg. As normal, we put our claims into Royal Mail.
“But a couple days ago we received our replies from Royal Mail and for £138.82 worth of damages they sent us six booklets of eight first class stamps. £7.60 each so around £45 in stamps.
“Alongside this, our missing parcels claims had been refused due to the parcel being delivered.
“We send everything 48hr Tracked and won’t submit a claim until 10-15 days after posting and checking with Royal Mail first on the phone.
“Their reasoning was that they delivered it around one month after being sent. I had already sent replacements to our customers by then.
“We pay for our insurances through Royal Mail and feel they are scamming us by just sending stamps. Since the CEO wants to stop delivering letters in the near future it makes me feel like they don’t care and won’t care.”
Gavin continued, adding: “Their misuse is killing my business’s reputation. My customers won’t come back because of the experience and in turn, it’s making an already-tough time, even tougher.
“We emailed on Friday 6th January about two claims that came back with stamps, and again, on 12th January, disagreeing with a resolution of £45 in stamps to cover my £140 in damaged orders.
“We are still waiting on a couple more claims too. When I had lost packages I spoke to Royal Mail on the phone to check 10-15 days after I had sent them, for them to tell me to claim as they classed it as a lost package.
“All our packages are more than two kilograms and we do all our postage online to avoid stocking up a post office with all our packages. So, stamps are useless to us.
“We have explained this to them and still get stamps sent to us. This lot of claims have taken a month to get back to me, meaning I’m out of pocket for the replacement orders.
“So we have no idea how long it will take for them to reply this time. Being a small business, we are pushing all our funds back into our business to grow our catalogue.
“Having Royal Mail do this to us is horrible, especially when we pay their prices for the protection of our customers’ orders.
“I haven’t got any hate for Royal Mail. I just don’t agree with the bosses as they are making us suffer for their own problem.”
Royal Mail have been approached for comment.
