Any respect I had for Royal Mail’s management has now disappeared.

I use their SmartStamp system for printing postage onto my letters whch saves them the inconvenience of having to send me rolls of first and second class stamps and also frees up their counter staff to serve other customers. For saving them this time and cost, I have to pay an annual fee…

So you can imagine my joy upon returning from my holidays to find a card saying that there was an envelope waiting for me to collect from the sorting office which had insufficient postage on it (to the tune of 6p) and for which I would have to pay a fee of £1 in addition to the additional postage charge.

I suppose that £1 fine would in some way compensate them for the cost of the sticker to say that there was 6p too little postage and the cost of the postcard they put through the letterbox and the time taken for them to write the card out in the first place. I did think about posting it back to them without a stamp to see how they would feel about having to pay a fine because the sender had got it wrong, but decided that was too petty…

So I did my bit for global warming and got in my car at my expense to drive to the sorting office to collect the letter and to pay the £1.06 that I know apparently owed them. There was the envelope, properly addressed with a first class stamp on it. It contains a couple of screws a friend had sent me. I asked why there was insufficient postage on it and was told:

“A lot of people ask that [pause there to see if there’s a lesson to be learned by Royal Mail]. It’s because it’s thicker than 5mm…”

I kid you not…

So Royal Mail? I won’t be renewing my SmartStamp service this year. And I will also be considering whether to continue paying you for a PO Box too. All because of 6p.

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