Punitive

A few days ago we received a card from the Royal Mail saying someone had sent us something and failed to attach postage - if we wanted it, there was a charge to pay. Of course, there was no indication of what the thing actually was, so...

Anyway, I ended up paying the fee and arranging for a redelivery for yesterday. The item therefore arrived this morning.

Anyway, it turns out to be a Christmas card, and it looks like a straightforward mistake. At a guess, they wrote a whole bunch, stuck stamps on them, checked them, managed to miss one, and then posted them. (I hope that's it, and not that they completely forgot to stamp all of them!) No big deal; it happens.

Except for one thing: the charge to receive this item was £5. The item in question was just a card, which would be £1.70 for first class delivery or 87p for second class (both of which are already outrageous, but that's another rant). That's a mark-up of between 3 and 6 times the regular cost, which frankly seems punitive - especially since this was not, in fact, our mistake.

Given that the postal worker in question had to visit twice (once for the original card and another for the revised delivery), I would have thought a fee of double the original might be reasonable, but surely no more than that?

All of which amounts to nothing, of course. Royal Mail are now a private company responsible for their own charging patterns, and if we don't like it we get to go to the (non-existent) competition. That's the joys of privatization for you. Oh well.

Just one thing though: please do remember to stamp your cards before sending!