Royal Mail have lost my dads watch

[BertBert]

carinaman said:

Unless you record the call there's no proof of what was said and who took the call.

A letter provides better traceability.

I'd have sent it signed for.

I think there may be fewer opportunities for it to turn into an emotional or defensive slanging match if it's done in writing and not on the phone.

I disagree. You can easily take detailed contemporaneous notes of a call.

Letters take forever and can be ignored for weeks. Surely the op needs to get on this quickly?

[ZOLLAR]

BertBert said:

carinaman said:

Unless you record the call there's no proof of what was said and who took the call.

A letter provides better traceability.

I'd have sent it signed for.

I think there may be fewer opportunities for it to turn into an emotional or defensive slanging match if it's done in writing and not on the phone.

I disagree. You can easily take detailed contemporaneous notes of a call.

Letters take forever and can be ignored for weeks. Surely the op needs to get on this quickly?

Indeed, email is probably better alternative unless they really want to cover it up and mess with the metadata you can confirm it's been sent, received and opened.
Far quicker.

[Nickyboy]

matchmaker said:

I've written to the watchmaker to ask for this information.

Why?

You've only asked for a tracking number, an email would suffice.

[matchmaker]

Nickyboy said:

matchmaker said:

I've written to the watchmaker to ask for this information.

Why?

You've only asked for a tracking number, an email would suffice.

That relies on them providing an e-mail address!

[matchmaker]

An update. The watchmaker phoned me this morning and has supplied me with the tracking numbers - RM have for some reason allocated a second number to the parcel. Not that either will help - the packet containing my watch and four other items arrived at the watchmakers damaged and empty!

Royal Mail are continuing to investigate...carelessness or dishonesty it would seem.

[ali_kat]

matchmaker said:

An update. The watchmaker phoned me this morning and has supplied me with the tracking numbers - RM have for some reason allocated a second number to the parcel. Not that either will help - the packet containing my watch and four other items arrived at the watchmakers damaged and empty!

Royal Mail are continuing to investigate...carelessness or dishonesty it would seem.

[Mr2Mike]

ZOLLAR said:

Indeed, email is probably better alternative unless they really want to cover it up and mess with the metadata you can confirm it's been sent, received and opened.
Far quicker.

How the hell do you prove it's been opened? A read receipt, even if supported by the remote client, is worthless since you can still read the email without return a the receipt.

[ZOLLAR]

Mr2Mike said:

ZOLLAR said:

Indeed, email is probably better alternative unless they really want to cover it up and mess with the metadata you can confirm it's been sent, received and opened.
Far quicker.

How the hell do you prove it's been opened? A read receipt, even if supported by the remote client, is worthless since you can still read the email without return a the receipt.

Same for a letter though no?
Email is just quicker.

Edit

Op sorry to hear that it seems to have been taken rather than lost, was hoping it would turn up.

[Muzzer79]

Frustrating as this is, it's hard to get recompense for a sentimental item.

The watchmaker returned the item to you in good faith, using a reputable company with a recorded delivery service. Short of having the item hand-delivered back to you, he couldn't do much more.

Royal Mail move hundreds of thousands of items per week. Inevitably things go missing, for whatever reason.

These facts don't help you. I'm sure there is some kind of monetary compensation but, as you've already stated, this is about the sentimentality of the item, not the financial value.

Best you can hope for is that it turns up somewhere and is flagged in RM's system. Massively annoying, but there's little else that can be done to recover it.

[CAPP0]

I've only read the start & end of the thread but I think I have the gist.

I've often thought, unscrupulous employees of places such as RM could very easily and quickly come to know that a certain address deals in potentially high-value items (i.e. watches in this case) and thus keep an eye out and raid anything they think may be lucrative. Not sure how that stacks up against the SD "person to person" handling, and of course it doesn't help the OP in any way.

[egor110]

CAPP0 said:

I've only read the start & end of the thread but I think I have the gist.

I've often thought, unscrupulous employees of places such as RM could very easily and quickly come to know that a certain address deals in potentially high-value items (i.e. watches in this case) and thus keep an eye out and raid anything they think may be lucrative. Not sure how that stacks up against the SD "person to person" handling, and of course it doesn't help the OP in any way.

Then the company would contact royal mail and they would look for patterns such as is the same postie on when the parcels go missing.

If a pattern was established then a fake parcel would be sent and if it wasn't delivered the postie would have some tricky questions to answer.

I have no idea how people claim sd parcels have finished, its impossible as there tracked at every stage of there journey .

[btcc123]

matchmaker said:

An update. The watchmaker phoned me this morning and has supplied me with the tracking numbers - RM have for some reason allocated a second number to the parcel. Not that either will help - the packet containing my watch and four other items arrived at the watchmakers damaged and empty!

Royal Mail are continuing to investigate...carelessness or dishonesty it would seem.

It seams to me there is something not quite right with this thread or we are not being told the full story.Would the Royal Mail really deliver a special or recorded parcel to the destination if the parcel was damaged,probably open and empty.I thought these parcels are handled very carefully and signed when passed on up the chain and would be an investigation to sort out what has happened rather than just delivering the damaged and empty parcel.

[egor110]

btcc123 said:

matchmaker said:

An update. The watchmaker phoned me this morning and has supplied me with the tracking numbers - RM have for some reason allocated a second number to the parcel. Not that either will help - the packet containing my watch and four other items arrived at the watchmakers damaged and empty!

Royal Mail are continuing to investigate...carelessness or dishonesty it would seem.

It seams to me there is something not quite right with this thread or we are not being told the full story.Would the Royal Mail really deliver a special or recorded parcel to the destination if the parcel was damaged,probably open and empty.I thought these parcels are handled very carefully and signed when passed on up the chain and would be an investigation to sort out what has happened rather than just delivering the damaged and empty parcel.

If sd was damaged/empty why exactly did the watch people sign and accept them?

If you go on royalmail.com put the tracking numbers in what does it come up with?

Something fishy about this , I'm a postie and if I was given a sd which was opened id refuse to sign for it until it was officially sealed before I signed to take responsability for the parcel.

[Mr2Mike]

ZOLLAR said:

Same for a letter though no?
Email is just quicker.

Because they have signed for it, and therefore you have proof that they have seen and accepted the item. If they choose not to read it, that would ultimately be their problem if it came to court.

For all you know you could be emailing an active but unused email account, or the recipient could be away on holiday for weeks, or could be one of the many people that check emails very irregularly so they could have no idea that they even have email from you.

Email for important correspondence is a bad idea, stick to recorded snail mail.

[BertBert]

But unless I have got this wrong, this is all the info coming back from the watchmender to the OP, not direct from royalmail to the OP.

OP can you clarify for us?

Bert

[elanfan]

Was it SD or just Recorded?

[anonymous-user]

elanfan said:

Was it SD or just Recorded?

Its in the first frickin post man.

[JagerT]

Muzzer79 said:

Frustrating as this is, it's hard to get recompense for a sentimental item.

The watchmaker returned the item to you in good faith, using a reputable company with a recorded delivery service. Short of having the item hand-delivered back to you, he couldn't do much more.

Royal Mail move hundreds of thousands of items per week. Inevitably things go missing, for whatever reason.

These facts don't help you. I'm sure there is some kind of monetary compensation but, as you've already stated, this is about the sentimentality of the item, not the financial value.

Best you can hope for is that it turns up somewhere and is flagged in RM's system. Massively annoying, but there's little else that can be done to recover it.

The watchmaker wasn't returning the watch,read the post again.

[carinaman]

egor110 said:

If sd was damaged/empty why exactly did the watch people sign and accept them?

If you go on royalmail.com put the tracking numbers in what does it come up with?

Something fishy about this , I'm a postie and if I was given a sd which was opened id refuse to sign for it until it was officially sealed before I signed to take responsability for the parcel.

I think you've a point.

It was a parcel containing several watches.

You'd think that both businesses have had enough experience of transporting watches to use a decent form of packaging that was resilient and tamperproof.

Were the watches in a Jiffy padded envelope or a cardboard box?

Years ago I got sent something incorrectly packaged and it came with several red on white Royal Mail stickers saying that it had been incorrectly packaged.

[Spangles]

egor110 said:

If sd was damaged/empty why exactly did the watch people sign and accept them?

If you go on royalmail.com put the tracking numbers in what does it come up with?

Something fishy about this , I'm a postie and if I was given a sd which was opened id refuse to sign for it until it was officially sealed before I signed to take responsability for the parcel.

As an ex postman I agree. I wouldn't be delivering a damaged SD parcel.