PJCNET

I live in a small block of flats and various residents aren’t receiving any parcels from The Royal Mail at our premises even when they are in all day, they clearly don’t even attempt to deliver at all. Instead a few days after the so called delivery date, the normal postman delivers a card and one has to travel to the other side of Birmingham to collect this post from the main sorting office (Aston Central Delivery Office). One could ask for a redelivery, but this would be pointless as it would simply happen all over again. I have 2 parcels overdue at the time of writing that have been sent and my friend has 1 parcel which he is desperate for. This happens every single time a parcel is due from The Royal Mail and we need to speak to someone to complain. Unfortunately their phone system is so terrible, actually speaking to a real person is proving totally and utterly impossible no matter what we do.

Firstly one has tried our local sorting office at Aston Central Delivery Office on 08456 112583 which is the only number I could find anywhere. You’re put in a complex automated menu system and no matter what you type, there’s never an option for a customer services operator, instead you are taken through automated systems where you even have to speak words into the system. There’s no option to complain or speak to anyone real. I’ve tried just ignoring the menus, but it just automatically takes you to an automated redelivery system no matter what you do.

Secondly I’ve tried calling the national number for The Royal Mail on 08457 740 740 for “general enquiries” and instead got introduced to Sarah who is another automated system robot. After listening to very long irrelevant recordings and going through numerous automated menus taking ages, all trying to get me to use an automated system when one need to speak to a customer services operator, I finally I managed to get to an option to speak to someone real. I thought I’d actually done it at last, but I then got another recording saying that they couldn’t connect me at this time because all the operators are busy. Okay, so I’d have to wait in a queue surely? WRONG! I then got an abrupt and short message saying, “please try again later” and the system just hung up on me. One has to go through all these long messages and menus just to get hung up on when one need to make a complaint. I’ve wasted ages trying again and again, but it’s impossible to speak to anyone and I keep getting hung up on. Luckily I’ve got a BT line where 0845 numbers are free, but most people wouldn’t only be wasting their time, but they’d also be wasting their money.

Royal Mail desperately needs to improve their phone service as it cannot be much worse than this. It’s virtually impossible to speak to a real person no matter what you do even if one needs to complain. This is utterly abysmal. Because complaining by phone is almost impossible, complaining by post appears to be the best option available! Well, how convenient, The Royal Mail make money from people forced to complain by post.

So does The Royal Mail have the worst phone system in the UK? Well unfortunately the answer is NO as I’ve phoned a few other large companies that are just as bad or even worse than The Royal Mail. At least The Royal Mail’s automated service can deal with most people even if customers would rather speak to a real person, some organisations don’t even offer a reasonable automated service and you still can’t speak to a real person.

More and more organisations are setting up increasingly complex automated phone systems to replace real people. This isn’t what most customers want, but the majority of companies would rather save money on employment costs than provide a good phone service to please customers. If an organisation has no choice but to set-up a large call centre, more and more are being located abroad in countries like India where there’s much cheaper labour, E.g. BT Broadband technical support. This is okay, but often English is the 2nd language for many foreign operators so it’s quite hard to understand them and it isn’t what most customers want. I remember dealing with call centres in the 1980’s before all these automated systems were available. You would either get an engaged signal, or you would speak to a person straight away in the UK, even simple answering services were rare. In my opinion, most people would rather to go back to the old system, but unfortunately this is extremely unlikely to happen. In my opinion it’s okay to have some automated phone systems, but you should also be able to speak to a real person on request at any time, unfortunately some companies have in my opinion taken the automated system much too far.

(Please use coupon code: PJCNET for an exclusive discount>

Disclaimer

This article is without prejudice to The Royal Mail or any other organisation. It’s my own personal opinion. My full legal disclaimer applies to this article and all other articles on this website.

Please click to share this article!