Problem sending mail to BX3 2BB

[DJY]

On a few occasions this year I have had to send legal documents to Barclays Bank and the address they provided does not have a post town, only a postcode of BX3 2BB. On two occasions the mail has been returned to me with a red sticker on and “insufficient address” (or similar) ticked. On speaking to Barclays they told me the address is correct and does not require a locality/post town to get to them. This appears to be correct as other letters I have sent have reached them no problem. They have given me an alternative address now, in Leicester with a standard LE postcode, which they said would bypass their central correspondence unit. However, it seems by using this address my letters seems to take longer to get to the correct department. Barclays recommended I spoke to “the post office” about it!

When I rang Royal Mail Customer Services, I was told the same as Barclays told me - that a BX postcode does not need a postal town as it’s a “non geographical” postcode and Royal Mail should direct it to the address “on their system”
for Barclays. I thought perhaps adding the correct address or town may help my letters to get to the right place, but the person at Royal Mail did not have this information, and said she did not recommend doing so as it may cause the mail to be mis-directed, and suggested I speak to Barclays!

So... passed from pillar to post! What is going on? I’m likely to have to send further correspondence to Barclays in the future and wouldn’t like to have to go through this yet again.

[SpacePhoenix]

What service was used? If it was either Special Delivery or Tracked, does the tracking show a "Return to sender" entry, if so which office was it at?

It's possible that there might be someone new on the sorting somewhere along the line who's not been told about postcodes starting with BX

[DJY]

Only one of the items was sent by Special Delivery - in an attempt to ensure it got there. This ended up at South Midlands Mail Centre and the message said “this will now be sent to your local delivery office”. However, after two days it was “returned to sender” via Manchester Mail Centre (my local office). I’ve no idea if it should have gone to South Midlands in the first place!

[Snaggletooth]

A memory from the distant past, so please treat with caution... I think perhaps you can’t send Special Delivery to addresses with non-geographic postcodes. Might be worth asking RM if this is the case.

[Lockardian]

A memory from the distant past, so please treat with caution... I think perhaps you can’t send Special Delivery to addresses with non-geographic postcodes. Might be worth asking RM if this is the case.

I know you can’t send Tracked 24/48 to BX postcodes because they aren’t on the “address finder” that you use to print the label. I suppose you could amend the address manually but I don’t know what would happen. I’ve seen Tracked items redirected which is similar, but not sure if they get scanned all the way. That doesn’t help here though, I admit.

I’ve been researching BX codes myself as I’m planning to upload an updated mail centre list and the codes they deal with. From what I can gather BX3 codes should go to Leicester (which is now served by South Midlands mail centre) but if they have a post town/locality and are manually sorted they do sometimes get directed to the post town on the mail piece. What’s right and wrong I don’t know, but it seems odd that South Mids wouldn’t send it on the relevant DO (or business road) if the address was correct.