URGENT claims for benefits and crisis loans from city residents are being shunted between Inverness, Aberdeen and Clydebank before they are responded to.
Post arriving at a benefit delivery office and a JobCentre Plus office in Inverness is being re-routed 105 miles away to be opened in Aberdeen.
And once it is returned to the Highland capital after a 210-mile round trip, it is sometimes then sent on a further 188-mile journey before it is dealt with in Clydebank.
Once processed there, the responses then have to sent back to claimants in the Highland capital.
And it has been claimed staff are being told to blame Royal Mail and cover up the practice when perplexed clients ask if their mail is being processed.
This is nothing new. In the mid-80s, my dad had cancer and had to give up work. One week his invalidity money didn't turn up and he phoned me (I was working in the locker at the time) and asked if it was there. It wasn't and neither was anyone elses. I phoned the local benefit office to be told they were at the Delivery Office and staff hadn't sorted them, so it was Royal Mail at fault, not the DHSS.Imagine her shock when I told her where I was phoning from. Imagine how many other people she had given this yarn to.
Last Christmas I phoned my credit card company (Halifax) to ask where my bill was to be told how awful the postal system was and how it was probably stuck in the backlog at my delivery office. She didn't know what to say when I told her there was no backlog and I had just arrived home from the delivery office.
It's an easy excuse for the useleness of others.
The Industrial Workers of the World. The union whose members never scab!
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common."
Standard procedure for most business's - delay payment to customers and delay credit card statements to deliver maximum interest charges and blame the post - I've had downstream access mail complaints from people who got their statement the day it was due and I know damn well that they were delivered the day royal mail received them - double whammy for the money men - save on postage and bleed the customer - whatever happened to SERVICE ????
I've had 2 separate letters from Littlewoods Home Direct taking over 10 DAYS!!!!!! to reach me - both with the TNT mark on the front and NO date stamp on the envelope. The first letter was to tell me that my order would not be delivered on the day planned, as there was a problem with the manufacturer of the goods I had ordered. This letter arrived 3days after the expected delivery date of my goods- not in time to save me waiting in for the whole day for goods that were not going to turn up - a day's leave lost!!! The second letter, an apology, took 11 days. Littlewoods had records of the posting date of both letters and I made a strong complaint. Who was saying the "competion is 40% more efficient than Royal Mail"?
