Is it just us or do you struggle too, with the lack of customer service provided by Royal Mail?

We have a business account with them, and use them for posting 1,000’s of A4 small packages on behalf of our customers. And it seems every time we use Royal Mail there is a problem, something has changed, we don’t provide that service anymore, you’ve used the wrong bags or you now need to use crates etc.

And we never receive any prior notice of these changes, it’s only when we come to use them that we find out, and it costs much valuable time changing our process again to suit Royal Mail.

This last time was even worse…

We had an urgent request to create a number of A4 small packages and post them out to multiple locations in the Republic of Ireland. So we worked out a plan and drafted in some extra hands to meet the deadline.

Jodie (our general manager) contacted Royal Mail to request a price, detailed the requirement (Republic of Ireland) and received an email confirming the prices. Which we then agreed directly with our customer. Prior to starting.

We toiled away for days, printing, envelope stuffing, labeling and bagging. With moments to spare the task was complete and was whisked away to our local post office for Royal Mail to collect.

But imagine our surprise when we received an email saying we had been undercharged for the postage, and we could either pay the difference or they would just deliver all the packages back to us.

And when challenged, there was no apology, there was no admitting they had got it wrong, there was no commitment to stick by their original emailed quote. They made it very clear, you either accept the extra charges or your going to get your stuff back. They just didn’t care and knew we couldn’t do a thing about it.

We had a deadline to hit and had no choice but to take the extra charges on the chin. But what an impact it had…

They haven’t got a clue. We can’t treat our customers like Royal Mail treat us. We had already agreed a price with our customer and had no alternative but to stick to it. Luckily, we do a lot of business with this customer and know this short-term loss will be watered down over time. When I say loss, we probably just broke even on it, once taking into account the people costs involved.

This leads me to think though about the impact a business like Royal Mail has on small organisations like us. They clearly have a monopoly in bulk post and because of this, offer little or non-existent customer service.

Like us, our customers are small organisations too. And we see ourselves as their guide to help them identify & solve their office technology problems. Things like print and telephone technology. For us our number 1 aim to be provide our customers with total peace of mind that their office solutions are in great hands, so they can solely concentrate on growing their own organisation.

Our solutions provide certainty of the total price and certainty of a guaranteed service. But our experience tell us that Royal Mail provide little or no certainty and don’t seem to care.

What are your experiences when dealing with Royal Mail? And do you think their monopoly causes them to behave in this way?