Pricewatch is a big fan of An Post and, in particular, of our postman, who is always full of hellos for everyone on his route and who has to deliver a fierce number of increasingly large parcels all over our little pocket of Dublin, on top of the more traditional mail he posts through doors.
But we heard two stories within a couple of days that made us realise how lucky we are and that others may not be so fortunate.
First up, Paul got in touch to tell us his tale of woe.
On Friday, February 13th, he registered a package at a post office in Mullingar that he wanted sent to his daughter’s friend in Bray. And what was so important that it needed to be sent by registered post, we can almost hear you ask?
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“It contained a replacement passport for my daughter who is studying in eastern Europe and the friend was flying out to visit her the following Wednesday and was to take the passport with her.”
Paul said he was under the impression that, as a registered package, it would be given a certain degree of priority and he expected it would arrive in the hands of his daughter’s friend in Bray on the following working day, which would have been the Monday.
But that is not what happened.
“On the Monday evening my daughter messaged me to say that her friend had not received the package,” he writes. “I checked the tracking and read that the package had been sent to the wrong delivery office. The notice on the tracking stated that the package would be delivered the following day.”
So that was annoying but not a big problem as the friend wasn’t leaving Ireland until the Wednesday, so a Tuesday delivery was grand.
“On Tuesday morning I checked the tracking again to make sure that the package had been delivered. To my dismay I discovered that the package had been sent to another wrong delivery office,” he writes, adding that “the address on the package was absolutely correct”.
So Paul immediately phoned An Post and spoke to a very helpful woman who located the package for him. For reasons that were beyond him, the registered letter had gone to Drogheda, quite some distance from both Mullingar where it started out and Bray where it needed to be.
“I asked for the package to be sent straight away to its destination in Bray and was told that regrettably the post wouldn’t be going until the next day, Wednesday. This would be too late. I was told the only thing that could be done to get the package to Bray that day was for me to collect it from Drogheda and take it to Bray myself.”
Paul says “As luck would have it, I happened to have the day off work so I abandoned my plans for the morning and instead drove for almost three hours to deliver the package. Had I known that An Post’s registered postal service couldn’t be relied on, I would have driven to Bray myself on the Saturday, without the added time and expense wasted in going via Drogheda.”
Anyway, he came home having hand-delivered the package himself and called An Post to find out how he might get his money back.
“I spoke to two different customer service representatives and asked how to claim back the money I paid for postage of my package that got lost, and reimbursement for the diesel I used and the tolls. Each told me to fill out ‘form M58’ on their website. I tried to locate the form but couldn’t find it. I also couldn’t find where to submit a complaint or request a refund. So I filled in one of the standard forms on the site and also submitted the email, dated February 17th,” he continues.
“As if to add insult to injury, later that afternoon I opened an automated email from An Post saying that my package had been delivered,” he adds.
So, two weeks passed and he had not heard anything, so on his lunch break – at about 1.30pm – he tried to call their customer care team.
“The person I spoke to said that the customer care team were on their lunch break and would be back at 2pm. I wasn’t able to call after 2pm on that, or any other work day afternoon. So again I filled in another of the forms on the An Post website and followed it up with the email dated March 3rd.”
Like his first email, that too was ignored...
“Now, well over a month after I phoned An Post and told them of the hassle and expense I’d been caused by their mix-up, I still haven’t heard anything back from them. Could Pricewatch figure out how to get through to An Post with this? Certainly my efforts using the information I was able to find on their website have proved futile so far. I’m keen to raise this with An Post not only to get my money back, but also so that they can learn from the extremely poor experience I had of their service and try to improve their systems so it doesn’t happen again.”
Although Paul’s experience is bad by any measure, another reader also called Paul had an experience that’s, arguably, worse.
The second Paul sent a parcel via registered post to a recipient in France from a post office in Dún Laoghaire on March 20th.
“The ‘to’ address in France and my ‘from’ address were clearly identified and a ‘senders’ address label was attached,” he writes. “The ‘to’ address was also in bold type. I paid €18 to send this to France.”
Some three days later, Paul was surprised to come home to find the letter he paid €18 to send to France at his front door.
“I went to the post office to find out how this had happened and to have it posted to the correct address,” he writes. “I was assured by two members of staff that this mistake would not happen again.
“Tonight when I went to put my green bin out for collection, I discovered that the parcel had been placed inside it. It has now been sent to my house twice. I was incredibly lucky to find it as no note had been put in my letterbox,” he continues.
He would like to know what is going on and “why this parcel with a clear ‘to’ address in France has been sent to my house twice? What is required to have this parcel delivered to the correct address? It is a return to an online retailer and it has to be with them within a defined time.”
We contacted An Post and a spokeswoman said: “What can we say but a huge big ‘Sorry’? There’s been major investigations, tough meetings and big red faces on the back of these highly embarrassing service failures.
“We could point to the millions of items we process and deliver flawlessly every week, or to the fact that our January–March parcel volumes were 48 per cent higher than in the same period last year, but none of that is of any comfort to our two customers whose mail service we made a total hames of in recent weeks due to human errors.
“We’ve apologised directly to both the affected customers and refunded their postage and other expenses. An Post people take real pride in our service to customers and we will do better.”
She said that during February and March – “supposedly the ‘quieter’ time of year – we made operational changes to help us better handle record parcel volumes. Unfortunately, some manual sorting quality was impacted in the process. We have major plans to invest in new sorting infrastructure to serve Irish customers for decades to come and antiquated forms are being replaced with easier-to-use digital options for accessing information or raising issues in real-time. We’re also increasing our workforce by 300 full-time front-line delivery roles.”
