Postie has binned my parcel!

Got one of the cards through yesterday saying the parcel was too big to get through the letter box, and it has been left in ‘my safe place’. Postie has decided that my safe place is the blue wheelie bin which lives on the drive next to the pavement. The bins were collected at some point between idiot postie popping the parcel in, and me getting home from work.

Parcel was worth about £40 but wasn’t sent recorded – Royal Mail says they can’t offer any compensation if the parcel wasn’t tracked/recorded. Is there anything I can do other than accost the postie tomorrow and educate him on what constitutes a safe place?!

Surely this is all the responsibility of whoever posted it to you?

[harryhill]What are the chances of that happenin eh?[/harryhill]

Seriously though – don’t you have to designate somewhere as your safe place? If they put it somewhere else then it’s the postie’s fault if it goes missing, surely.

Surely this is all the responsibility of whoever posted it to you?

How? I don’t think they would have said ‘if recipient is not in, just chuck it in the bin’. How can the postman not see the potential problem with putting something in the bin. What is the primary purpose of a wheelie bin?

Personally I’d be taking the card to the local delivery office and asking to speak directly to the DOM. you have proof that it has beven placed in a safe place that wasn’t safe. May get some satisfactionthat way. It is a piss poor performance that the postie didn’t know what day bin collection was. I only ever use recycling bins if people have actually asked me to do so and only on non collection days.

It was my understanding that if you order goods offline for instance, its the sellers responsibility to get them to you, and refund you if they don’t arrive. They buy the postage, therefore they need to chase up the refund.

maybe i’m wrong.

How?

Because, assuming the item is from a shop or EBay, it’s up to he vendor to get the item to you. They haven’t, ergo their problem to fix

Did you use paypal ?

That’s correct. They took on RM to deliver it to you in the right condition. They didn’t do so (though technically, leaving it in a bin could be considered delivered I suppose but it’d be stretching the definition of delivery).

Mowgli – Member
Surely this is all the responsibility of whoever posted it to you?
How? I don’t think they would have said ‘if recipient is not in, just chuck it in the bin’. How can the postman not see the potential problem with putting something in the bin. What is the primary purpose of a wheelie bin?

Dez isn’t having ago. The issue is that the contract is between the sender and RM. It’s their responsibility to chase / sort out. All will be well if it’s something you’ve bought online as the shop will need to sort it. If its a family/friend which has sent it then it may be less easy to sort.

Parcel was worth about £40 but wasn’t sent recorded

Doesn’t matter if it’s recorded or not there is compensation available – around £30 iirc

OK I can see that point of view, but the problem seems to be solely because the postman has been a bit stupid. The shop hasn’t done anything wrong by shipping via RM so I don’t blame them. It’ll either be the shop or me who has to hassle RM; sounds like going in person might be the way to go.

I had this exact thing happen with a Yodel delivery. I made the shop who set it aware, they apologised and sent a new parcel, I’m guessing they also went after Yodel but that is their concern and not mine.

The shop hasn’t done anything wrong by shipping via RM so I don’t blame them.

It’s not about blame, it’s about responsibility.

The shop has paid RM to deliver something and they’ve failed to do so. Ergo, RM is breach of their contract with the shop. Your relationship with RM in this transaction is non-existent, the people you have a contract with is the shop.

It may well be easier for you to chase it up with RM directly, but your course of action should be to complain to the shop that you’ve not received your goods and they in turn should be seeking their redress from RM. The whys and wherefores of wheelie bins are irrelevant; you haven’t received your goods and that’s the shop’s problem.

Depending on the shop you might find that they give zero shits about an item worth £40, and they’ll just send another out instead. So tell the shop what’s happened first

tell the shop what happened – they chose RM and they committed to deliver you the goods
If I were a small business and my supplier (RM) did that I’d put a rocket up the rear of their MD for utter incompetence and make loud noises about breach of contract and finding someone else…

Sounds like it’ll be the shop who ends up losing out unfortunately. Will see what they say.

well you’d assume the shop will be asking RM for a refund…

Various post persons have considered the following as safe place at our house

Under a bush in the garden 3 time
On the front doorstep in the rain twice
Thrown over the back gate even though the package is marked fragile.
Left under the car on the drive.

I hate ordering online because of all the ongoing delivery problems

Grrrrr

Do you KNOW that it was put in the bin (i.e. can you show that it was) ? – I’m sure you/the shop could easily argue the case that this is not a safe place for unattended items (unless you’d actually designated it yourself at some point)

brooess – Member
well you’d assume the shop will be asking RM for a refund…
POSTED 4 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

Not really, even half an hour spent chasing RM is your margin pissed up the wall for the sake of £1 or whatever postage

If the shop/person sending the item can’t afford to lose £40 then they should have insured it adequately. They may accept losing 1 out of 100 parcels is not worth the cost of insuring them all but thats their call.

However, if I was the shop I’d certainly be having a word with RM.

Alas, whilst you’re probably in a better position to wander up to the RM depot, as said above, it’s actually not your fight.

Thats one I’d speak to the RM manager about rather than the postie himself. Who knows, if those 50 people who have told that postie not to leave their parcels in bins (especially on binday) actually told his/her manager instead then the ‘message’ might have got though.

I’ve had a parcel left in the big wheelie bin outside my front door before as well, by DPD, not RM and fortunately not on collection day, but the card through the door did amuse and enrage me slightly

like anyone can consider that a sensible place to leave a parcel!

chase up with shop, and let them pursue RM.

we as posties are being increasingly pressurised to leave parcels in “safe” places, like the competition do. Nots saying it’s right, just what we are being told to do. Still bloody stupid leaving something in a bin on bin day.

We’ve had that before. Luckily not bin day. What sort of complete muppet would think that a bin is a good place to hide a parcel?

The other one that annoys me is when something should be signed for and the delivery bloke doesn’t get the signature. I’m sure it might be more convenient for the recipient, but if the sender has paid for a signature, then it should be got.

I’m a muppet.
Our bins are our designated safe place and this has worked a treat for 16 years. The bins are located behind our garage and the postie puts them in their and leaves us a card to that effect. If one of the bins is out front on the pavement for empytying they just use one of the two behind the garage. Works brilliantly.

I normally begrudging understand the insurance thing on the whole. Otherwise, if they had to treat everything like is was the crowd jewels it would be prohibitively expensive to ever post anything. It always sound like a comedy sketch to me though.

Me – can I post this please?
Them – sure, that’ll be £5.15. Do you want to insure it?
Me – Why do I need to insure it?
Them – Well, I might drop it….or loose it.
Me – you’re not going to are you?
Them – I might. I’m ever so clumsy me. Whoops, nearly dropped it already!
Me – But your going to take care of it for me aren’t you?
Them – I guess it depends how much you pay me.
Me – But if you damage my parcel, isn’t that your fault?
Them – No, it’ll be your fault for not paying me extra to be careful.

Even so, this is effectively like leaving you a card that says “Yeah, we took your parcel and money; pocketed the money and shoved the parcel in the bin. What you going to do about it? The next thing you post is going up my arse you ****”

Surely they have to take responsibility for provable deliberate incompetence, irrespective of the level of insurance you take out?

I’m afraid we cannot do anything at this end. If we put in a claim against Royal Mail we do not receive any compensation for first class orders. It is likely you will not either.

As a goodwill gesture I have arranged for a replacement to be sent out today with a tracking number.

As expected. I doubt the shop can be bothered to chase RM over one order, but I suppose if it happened more often they’d use someone else.

i think you are being too nice, if it was me i wopuld be posting that pic onto the royal mail facebook site and tagging them on twitter and really kicking off. that is blatant stupidity and they should pay, any argument that ‘how do they know you are not trying it on’ is irrelevent, the idiot left a parcel in a bin. thats the issue.

The parcel has not been delivered to you – in fact RM have contrived to make sure it was lost before it entered your possession. It’s no different to them losing it at the sorting office.

As above, it’s the retailer whose has been stuffed up by RM – you have no relationship with RM over this, and it isn’t your reponsibility to chase them around over somebody else’s goods.

The retailer also decided to send a £40 item not fully insured against this kind of stupidity, so why should you have the hassle and cost of reclaiming a lesser sum from RM?

I guess I just expect most people not to be morons, but as this postie and the UK electorate in general have shown: assume everyone’s an idiot and you won’t go far wrong.

RM burned/binned/blew up some chain lube I’d bought, called the shop they said “yeah they do that sometimes, another one on it’s way special delivery”.

Presumably the cheaper costs of bog standard RM are worthwhile for the odd destroyed order.

Mostly stuff gets left with a neighbour, occasionally post office counter at the corner shop (which the staff don’t appreciate – I didn’t tell them to leave it here!). Only real trouble i Had was when some company delivered a frame to neighbours 3 or 4 doors along, told the neighbours the wrong address and didn’t leave me a card. I didn’t know where to look and neighbour didn’t know it was for me 🙄

just to be contrary. My postie leaves stuff in the blue bin. It helps that he does his round long after the binmen have been and gone but it works fine. So long as the bin’s not out on the pavement it’s safe from being emptied anyway.

As a goodwill gesture I have arranged for a replacement to be sent out today with a tracking number.

it’s not a goodwill gesture. since it’s a retailer, it’s their obligation under distance selling regulations etc.
if they choose a non tracked courier, that’s their problem. if they choose a tracked one with little or no insurance, that’s their problem.

edit: but if you have a calling card saying it went in the bin, even if not tracked/insured, I’d be willing to let the store have that as evidence, and if I was the store, I’d be putting a claim in regardless. It’s not loss/damage in transit, but negligence and breach of contract.

Our bin man does this regularly but he lives on the same street so he genraly downt put them in the bin thats due to be collected that day, he also brings the majority of the streeets bins in for them on his round.

I had UPS deliver a new £400 motorbike helmet straight to the local land fill last year.

As I wasn’t in the driver took it upon himself to put it in the black wheelie bin on the street instead of keeping it on his van. even had the cheek to sign for it and mark it as “left with neighbour” when pressed couldn’t remember which one.

The supplying shop supplied another after some chasing of it revealed the truth.

Presumably the cheaper costs of bog standard RM are worthwhile for the odd destroyed order.

This.

Sender if retail should send replacement or chase RM, unless its private parcel. If no satisfaction chargeback or paypal dispute

@cupra – if you’ve got a special arrangement with a regular local postie, then I can see that working. But unless that agreement is in place like you have, you’d have to be an idiot of a delivery person to put something in a bin.

So long as the bin’s not out on the pavement it’s safe from being emptied anyway.

Our binmen are fantastic and will come and get our bin or recycling bin from the front garden so that we don’t all have to block the narrow pavements on bin day.

so…

It helps that he does his round long after the binmen have been and gone but it works fine

fine if you’re not on holiday or away for a day or two and don’t have nice binmen.

A bin is still not really a sensible place to leave something in my eyes unless you’ve specifically told someone to.

I’d be interested in the postie’s views on something.

I wanted non-signed for items left in a safe place but when I went to fill out the red ‘safeplace’ card at the depot they said it had to be lockable so wouldn’t accept it.

So I went out and bought a £30 plastic box from Been&Queued and a padlock, dumped it outside my house, then when I went back the cards had gone and was arrogantly told ‘don’t do that anymore’, then he diverted onto Keepsafe where they hold stuff at the depot, saying thats stopped as well as people don’t come in often enough and miss urgent mail, and it looks bad on the stats as the depot is holding too much mail onsite.

But the postie woman tells me its still available. Is my depot counter person just a grumpy old sod? Should I complain? They are only open 7:40-15:30 so the only time I can collect stuff is Saturday mornings 🙁

Box is still worth having as the couriers sometimes seem happy to leave stuff there.

At least your parcel arrived (in a way), Parcel farce have been not delivering something since last Thursday and insist that the delivery postcode doesn’t exist!(despite delivering to it on numerous occasions before)