Royal Mail sells 75 000 “lost” items

I came across this story on the Daily Mail website. It is a UK-based newspaper and this story is about UK-based Royal Mail. It is not particularly related to WebCards but I thought it was an interesting story none-the-less.

Apparently Royal Mail finds “about 500,000 undeliverable parcels are sent to Royal Mail’s return letter centre every year.”They are kept for up to six months, after which a proportion – about 15 per cent – are sent to auction, with the proceeds making a contribution to the centre’s annual £10million running costs.”

The system was exposed by a retired school teacher who sold a set of bagpipes for £1500. He sent them to Belgium using Royal Mail’s premium Airsure service. He claimed the package was labelled correctly but it never reached its destination. He was only able to claim £500 compensation.

It turns out the pipes were sold by Surrey auctioneers Wellers for just £60 and ended up on eBay. The police are currently in posession of the pipes until they can determine who owns them.

It just goes to show that you never know what is happening with your mail. I don’t know why Royal Mail would ever start selling lost packages. Surely they never own them in the first place?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *