Royal Mail has delivered a ‘Signed for’ letter with RH10 postcode to Newcastle

I just don’t understand. Please help me understand.

As I live in neither Newcastle nor RH10, and my postcode game isn’t that strong, I’ve no idea if that’s a problem or not 😉

I used to live in RH10, its a bloody long way from Newcastle! Crawley Down in West Sussex. If it needs passing along and I can be of assistance then PM me.

NE is Newcastle and about 50 miles north too if that helps.

Handwritten address? Font troubles?

“RH” squished together a bit could potentially look like an “N”, especially if read by machine. Just ask Scott 😜

Sometimes things get into the wrong bag or stuck to another package, no idea how it would end up actually getting delivered though.

As I live in neither Newcastle nor RH10, and my postcode game isn’t that strong, I’ve no idea if that’s a problem or not

Do you work for Royal Mail?

Should have been delivered in Crawley in West Sussex, near Gatwick Airport.

Not Newcastle.

Around 8 million deliveries per year, fair to say they may make the odd mistake.

Handwritten address? Font troubles?

“RH” squished together a bit could potentially look like an “N”, especially if read by machine.

It was handwritten so yeah maybe? But I’d have thought the ‘Signed for’ barcode would help with that as my certificate of posting clearly has the correct building number and postcode on it.

Anyway 35 minutes on hold later apparently it’s been handed back and is in the system again so let’s see where it ends up next time!

Do you work for Royal Mail?

Ha! Touche.

Could the postcode have been input incorrectly by the Post Office person?

But I’d have thought the ‘Signed for’ barcode would help with that as my certificate of posting clearly has the correct building number and postcode on it.

With Special Delivery maybe, but Signed For is simply postage and delivery confirmation, ie a timestamp at either end and it’s otherwise normal post. There is no tracking at all.

Obviously mistakes happen. I guess what I’m really wondering about now is how many times something went wrong to end up with it so far away from being in the right place.

Even allowing for poor handwriting (and I don’t think it’s that bad) the address is completely different, it’s not like it got delivered to 12 New Road instead of 12 New Street. Plus the certificate of posting has the correct details on, which is presumably linked to the barcode right there on the front of the envelope. This is obviously coming from a place of total cluelessness but I must admit I assumed that trying to scanning something out for delivery in somewhere that is obviously the wrong place would raise some sort of red flag but I guess not. Maybe it does if you pay for Special Delivery or something.

I assumed that trying to scanning something out for delivery in somewhere that is obviously the wrong place would raise some sort of red flag

You would think it’s easy… some of their delivery confirmation (I think for Tracked 24/48) includes a GPS location stamp, so theoretically it should be able to flag up a warning if it’s scanned when not at the location. I guess it’s simply not worth the investment for their small failure rate.

You would think it’s easy…

The thing is, having given this a bit more thought I’m not sure I do think it’s easy. They just make it look easy (compared to a company like Evri who seemingly do their best to make it look really really hard). As Drac mentioned though they obviously deliver incomprehensible amounts of mail successfully which is why it just blew my mind a bit that geographically speaking it was so far off.

Around 8 million deliveries per year

That’s just the letters….

Loads of things that could go wrong,

postcode code have been entered into the system incorrectly,

Address can be misread

could have got stuck in a sorting bag (this happens a fair bit) and delivered through to the wrong sorting office,

tracking label could detach from parcel / envelope and reattach to another in the bag going somewhere else. – this happens more often with waxed paper/card boxed or packages/letters with eco tape.

Although you’d expect the postman to be able to read that it’s in the wrong postal town before delivery – however RM have lost large swathes of experienced postal workers in the last 18months (remember those strikes?).

For comparison evri have delivered a parcel to the wrong business address, 6miles away from me,  four times in a row over the last week – each time the driver has turned up at my house (next to my business) an hour or so later to deliver a domestic package and ive told him he’s delivered to the wrong address, he shrugs and says claim from the company 🤷‍♂️ – which I would do but he delivered to the wrong address again!!!

Ex-postie here – has it been ‘delivered’ or the tracking showing as where it was last scanned?  Things do on occasion get sent to the wrong place, but often do get re-diverted to the correct address.

Get it opened, could be a cheque with the proceeds of the sale of some country pile down there.*

*Don’t do this.

Ex-postie here – has it been ‘delivered’ or the tracking showing as where it was last scanned?

It was actually delivered to a student accommodation block(!) yesterday morning, had a signature and everything. Apparently the concierge or whoever takes their mail handed it back this morning though.

I had a package delivered recently with a proof of delivery photo, that proved it was delivered and you could zoom and see my address printed clearly on it, the house clearly wasn’t mine but that was irrelevant obviously. Royal mail of course.

We’ve had Royal Mail packages for Austria go to Australia, these are barcoded, qr coded and tracked. They never seem to be in a rush to fix when it’s clearly gone wrong however we have some understanding customers.