Adding to their embarrassment, customers who were earmarked to receive the company's Delivery Performance Survey last Thursday were asked to shell out £1.06 in handling fees and unpaid postage to receive it.
After keeping the botched operation under wraps, Royal Mail yesterday admitted the underpaid letters failed to reach their destinations only after the News Letter quizzed the company over a complaint received from an angry Co Down customer.
The 57-year-old, who did not want to be named, revealed that while she was at work last Thursday, Royal Mail put a card through her door saying she had a piece of underpaid mail being held at her town's post office. After travelling to pick up the letter, she handed over an extra 6p for unpaid postage and a £1 handling fee imposed on items without the correct stamps – only to get home and find it was a Royal Mail Delivery Performance Survey.
"There was a man in front of me paying exactly the same amount for the same envelope," she said.
"Needless to say I was extremely annoyed when I found out what it was. Ironically, the point of the survey was to check when the letter had been delivered. Because the note I got through my door didn't tell me what the letter was, I spent money on petrol and wasted time driving to the post office because I thought it might be important – plus the £1.06 in stamps and a handling fee. It even crossed my mind this underpayment was some kind of cynical ploy to extort money from unsuspecting customers – but it could also have just been a stupid mistake."
Royal Mail was unable to confirm how many of the 100 customers had paid to receive the survey at post offices, or how many had phoned or written to complain. The one-page performance questionnaire asks customers to mark the day on which it was delivered, then return their answer to a Newcastle-based Royal Mail administration department. A note at the top of the survey says it has been sent to "help improve the quality of delivery service". The large A4-sized envelope containing the survey was left blank of any Royal Mail insignia or indications that it was a test survey, so postal workers couldn't give it preference and fast-track it. Under Royal Mail's new proportional pricing system – based on size as well as weight – large envelopes containing light letters such as the survey need 48p in stamps to send them first class, or 40p second class. But the Royal Mail department that sent the questionnaire only put one 34p first-class stamp on each letter – leaving an extra 6p to be paid by customers to lift it to second-class status.
"People at Royal Mail don't even seem to know what stamps they should be putting on letters under their new weight system," said the customer.
To demand a refund on the extra fees, she had to make a long phone call to the Royal Mail customer service hotline – charged at local rates. A senior Royal Mail spokeswoman yesterday revealed they had sent out apology letters alerting customers to the mistake, asking them to ignore instructions to collect an incorrectly stamped letter.
"Out of around 730,000 addresses in Northern Ireland, the 100 that got the survey is bad, but it's not a complete disaster," said the spokeswoman.
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