A strange one – for years we’ve been receiving our post with some bits opened.

It’s always greetings cards, which leads me to think that somewhere along the route cards are being subjected to a little ‘extra scrutiny’ in case there’s money or gift vouchers inside. There’s definitely been occasions when money inside has been taken too – my folks sent a fiver to my son which never made it.

Its been going on for ages, so certain it’s not the actual delivery staff as they’ve changed on a number of occasions – and who are lovely, our current postie in particular is brill – but at some point before it gets out for delivery.

A case in point is a Christmas card from my inlaws, which arrived today completely opened – not just a sneak peek or torn corner, but the whole thing sliced open (as if with a letter opener) across the flap and the card shoved back in. I didn’t manage to catch the postie to ask him what I should do about it.

I’ve raised it via the RM complaints team in the past but they say there’s simply nothing they can do without clear evidence of theft; when I raised the one known occasion of missing contents they said it could have just been accidental.

We’ve asked family not to put stuff in envelopes but that’s difficult when we haven’t seen many of the family for ages, and particularly for grandparents etc who may not remember not to do it.

So – is there anything else I can do? Is there a separate reporting point for these issues?

Escalate, it’s a serious crime and people do time for it

Very common since I moved to Sheffield. I’ve had loads of greetings cards go missing or arrive sliced open. It took me 3 attempts to receive my last credit card. I’ve even had completely empty envelopes delivered with no clue where they were from.

Escalate, it’s a serious crime and people do time for it

But to whom? How? As I said, I raised it with RM a while back, when four of my wife’s 40th cards were opened, but they said it’s not something they can deal with and referred me to the ‘compensation and claims’ webpage which is for claims by senders of mail, not recipients. Obviously going down that route would need everyone that has sent us something to put in a separate complaint, which isn’t really feasible.

It took me 3 attempts to receive my last credit card

Cards don’t seem to be as bad – though I am a touch concerned, as we are still waiting for replacement cards for our joint account which expires at the end of the month. My personal account card has arrived though.

I would never send a card with money in it using a simple envelope via Royal Mail. I have’t for years at around Christmas.

Its a police issue surely

Had this with payslips when they were delivered through the post. Kept evidence of every single one and reported to the PO, who went into flat denial. At my 2nd attempt I sent them a folio of evidence times & dates etc. The problem went away but they never got back to me. I guess someone’s had a quiet word.

Is be reporting this ASAP.

But to whom? How?

Report again, and everyone it happens

try a letter to your MP, they do standard letters to companies to ask what is going on and in regulated industries they cause a mild panic to get a substantive response together

tagnut69

Its a police issue surely

Well, if we can prove something’s been taken – we only had the one clear occasion a few years back and RM just weren’t interested. I can’t imagine the police would be that bothered for a fiver either.

Is be reporting this ASAP.

But again, to whom? There’s nothing on the RM webpage that works, and when we did it before it got rebuffed – does anyone know of an escalation process?

I can’t imagine the police would be that bothered for a fiver either.

I think it’s more down the principal of “interfering with the Royal Mail”. It’s a serious offence. More so than stealing a fiver.

But to whom? How?

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/postal-services/advice

Send yourself an Xmas card with a tenner in it, and some anthrax spores. You’ll sharp know who is doing it then.

Send yourself an Xmas card with a tenner in it, and some anthrax spores. You’ll sharp know who is doing it then.

Could be an issue if it is delivered successfully though. Better address it to your wife, just to be on the safe side.

Years back, there was a letter or item in the “Top Tips” section of Viz alluding to stuff begin opened and nicked at a/the main Glasgow sorting office.

I think about a year later there was a news story about some Glasgow sorting office staff being collared for thieving from the site.

So, in summary, seeing as RM has a bit of a history with denying wrongdoing (Horizon IT), send a letter to Viz and hope for the best.

Chap I know was a relief postie, covering rounds for holidays sickness etc. First few days on 1 round he was getting round in double the time, even ran and took no breaks. So kept going on so he raised the issue with his boss. Turns out the regular posties had been hoarding mail in lockups on the route, he had filled about 3 garages over the years.

I m pretty sure there’s a dedicated team at po to investigate, ask your neighbours if similar things are happening.

Send a few cards to yourself with the envelope stuffed with glitter…

Can be anywhere in the chain.

Remember working in retail as a youngun and seeing the most unlikely people steal things…

Only solution is don’t send cash in the post.

When I was a postie I had a lot of cards arrive for me to sort that had been ‘opened’. I felt worried that my customers would think it was me who had opened them, I had one or two accuse me. I’d make sure I put them in the special plastic envelope, but this took time. I’d like to say that every postie in my office would never dream of opening letters and nicking stuff, it was all pretty well self policed, we all pointed out open cards/letters to each other, if you were found to be stealing there’d be no chance of it being kept quiet, and you’d probably end up with a broken nose
When you’re out on your rounds the last thing you want to do is stop and open any card that may have cash inside, it takes too long and you just want to get finished and get home.
What I found was the cards that had been ‘opened’ generally had a raised surface (you know the sort with stuck on bits and pieces) this would get caught in the sorting machinery and tear open.
I’m not saying stealing doesn’t happen, but there are other reasons why a letter can appear to opened

Can be anywhere in the chain.

You should have a think about why thats clearly not true.

Has it happened to any of your neighbours?

I’m not saying stealing doesn’t happen, but there are other reasons why a letter can appear to opened

Both are true. I worked for a company that had started as a commercial print place, and became a specialist in servicing the charity industry, basically a one-stop shop. If you had one of those charity envelopes through the door with a bunch of raffle tickets in to raise money, from any one of thirty or forty major charities, chances are I had been involved at some point in the process, from film-planning through platemaking, folding the letters, working on the enclosing machine that stuffed the envelopes and then sorting the mail as it came back in and opening and processing the donations. People were only supposed to send back the ticket stubs and unsold tickets with a cheque or credit card details, but we often got postal orders and cash in the envelopes, and coins sliding around in an envelope during transit will just rip holes in the paper; the mail came to us in grey plastic tubs with approximately 100 or so envelopes in each tub, and it wasn’t unusual to find loose change in the boxes.
We did have a spate of envelopes coming in that had been carefully slit open and then stuck together with clear tape; fair enough, envelopes do get torn, and posties will seal them up so that contents don’t get lost, but there were significant numbers, far more than one might expect, so things got escalated and a team came in and examined all suspicious envelopes, and eventually several post staff were interviewed by police and sacked, I think they went to court. A bit different to the occasional card being tampered with, these were/are charities turning over millions every year, so it couldn’t be ignored.
Staff working in the mail rooms, like me, had to leave all outdoor jackets and coats in a cloakroom, no electronic devices of any description were allowed in, and we were under camera surveillance at all times; didn’t stop one agency person from trying to pilfer from envelopes as she was opening them though – someone nearby got suspicious and had a quiet word with our supervisor, who went and watched via the cameras what was going on.
The girl in question was escorted from the room, and was found to have over £50 in her pockets.

As above, criminal matter, go to Police.

Disappointing that complaints team did not suggest this.

Royal mail have a security department for this kind of thing. Go to your local delivery office and ask to speak to the Delivery Office Manager or section manager responsible for your postcode area and explain the problem.
If you don’t get any joy keep complaining to customer services who then email the office manager and he is obliged to investigate further and report back with his findings.
Your delivery postman will often get open / damaged / empty envelopes come through from the regional mail centre but during sorting he should be placing it in a “sorry we’ve damaged your letter bag with customer support number on it ” before delivering it to you.

Well, if we can prove something’s been taken – we only had the one clear occasion a few years back and RM just weren’t interested. I can’t imagine the police would be that bothered for a fiver either.

Tampering with mail is an offence. However the right cop will find a fiver theft from mail interesting – because it’s almost certainly not a one off, which means there is a bigger more interesting crime involved. BUT uncorroborated evidence of £5 going missing on one occasion is not going to get to court, and I suspect they’ll tell you to report to RM first, who have their own criminal investigations team. Part of the problem for your standard beat cop is they’d want a statement from the poster as well as recipient and by their nature they are rarely close.

If you really believe there’s frequent systematic theft going on, I’d send some test mail to myself, taking pictures of it being packed and posted (if you believe it will get to court an independent witness of each step would be good). I’d think it would help to post them on different days in different post boxes using different style of cards. I wonder if something like Amazon/iTunes cards are more traceable than cash?

If I was packing envelopes to reduce the chance of the contents falling out if the flap opens Id put the contents in the card and the card in with the fold outwards so you have to remove the card to get the cash – but that may be harder to Nick from as well as harder to loose by accident.

You’d want to record the arrival/opening again with a witness.

Around 1990 mail being delivered to my parents house was sometimes interfered with, and contents could go missing. The above exercise is exactly what RM investigations did – but on a bigger scale – there were many houses where stuff went awol. They did catch someone, and although my mother was warned she might need to give evidence in court it didn’t get there – he pled guilty and did time in the jail for it.

The thing is that was 30 yrs ago – sending cash in the post was unusual but more common then. I’m guessing if you opened every birthday card that came to our house and nicked all the cash (so increasing risk of report/detection) you’d have go <£100. If you did that now (same size family) it would be ~£30… that is a lot of hassle and risk for little gain.

I highly doubt you’ll get very far with the Police! I’m still waiting for them to come and take my statement from when my neighbor got punched by the drug dealer that lived by us…..it happened in 2017.