This is more or less what I came onto this thread to post.
I should be able to put anything I want (as long as its legal) in the post confident that it should get to its intended destination.

If supermarket delivery drivers started lifting high value items from their deliveries would the acceptable stance from the supermarkets be don't order them? Of course it wouldn't they would weed out the offenders and at minimum get rid and hopefully involve the law. Why shoud RM be any different?
(Not suggesting that they do btw!)

I think you're right too - hence the establishment of postal orders! But they're just as easy to lose as cash and easy to spend too!
OP - don't take the first initial comments about your relatives being silly to have sent cash via birthday to heart. It was the first thing I thought of too but not meant in nasty way. I used to do when first paying for goods purchased via Ebay (I was very mistrusting of Paypal at first) and luckily I hadn't had a loss from it but someone else in my family was sending cards abroad with money and it was 50/50 if it would reach its recipient.

To answer the question on how the thief knows it is in there, you could tell a normal letter to a birthday card from just looking from the outside; or normal paper envelopes that feel a little thicker could indicate a lengthy letter or a letter/card with some cash enclosed.

get a claim form from the post office and put a claim in for the missing items!

its will be long winded but i would do this as well as sending the letters as advised by other poster!!!!
i have claimed for a few items not received..
worth a try..

Just had a phone call from said sister-in-law to thank me (they just got the email). Card and money arrived ok (phew!), but they've been away hence the delay

This has happend to us before when my my cousin sent my daughter a £10 note for her birthday. The envelope's been opened, reasealed minus the money and put in a Royal Mail plastic bag saying "damaged in transit"

This has happened to me with cards. I do not get cash through the post any more, but still receive cards that have been sliced open and re-sealed or the corner is cut.

I cornered the sorting office manager last year about this and he told me that 'senders should not post cash'

I asked him "why" and he said because it can get "lost or stolen"

I ask - "So you are admitting money is stolen from cards" he refuses to answer saying I am being awkward and walks away.

That was the end of that.

A photo of you, with the same expression, with a tear-streaked son and three 'damaged' envelopes would look good in the local paper too. Give them a call.

Apparently they do stings to catch them occasionally but it's probably supposed to deter others from trying the same.

http://menmedia.co.uk/news/s/204/204...alks_free.html

This guy got away with it so why shouldn't the rest of them get a piece of the action?

Very good idea. It may also flush out if others have also had problems.

Since having a lot of birthday cards sent to me go "missing" in the post I have stopped using Royal Mail and post everything from work who use a private postal services company - I know the "last mile" goes to RM but I feel safer knowing my post isn't being handled by their thieving mitts until the last possible point.

Very interesting that this thread has been started, 2 weeks ago my mum posted my kids £5 each with a couple of other things as a small package. She posted cash (totalling £10) rather then cheque as it was for their holiday just over a week ago and the whole package has never showed up. Additionally a mobile phone case I ordered also went AWOL en-route a week before (luckily the sender replaced it as it was via Amazon), am now going to use the post office complaint link and see if they can stop it happening.

Maybe a Facebook group would make the news and help, surely if enough of us said this is appalling and we want something done, they would have a clampdown.
Or am I being horribly naive?

Guess what?

It was Chiswick where I was living when I experienced my worst problems with post and led to me making my *first* complaint to the Royal Mail and receiving compensation -- approx 2004.

Since then I have moved a few times (different areas of London) and had similar (but not quite as bad) problems in other areas.

Now I am much, much quicker to act the minute one single item of post goes missing.

Earlier this year I didn't receive my electoral voting form, and was quite worried whether someone had stolen it and might be able to take it to the Polling booth on election date and "steal" my vote.

Fortunately that did not happen, but I marched down to the Peckham delivery office (my new local area) spoke in person to the Delivery Office Manager and he put a "watch" on my post for the next month, monitoring all items that come through their office, and checking with me at the end of the month that I have received the same list of items.

If you make it very clear to YOUR local Delivery Office manager that you are already suspicious, and have had a few items go missing, he can put a "watch" on all your post -- this then makes all the other sorting office and delivery office staff aware that there is a "watch" on your post and they won't interfere with it one iota whilst that watch is taking place.


But goodness knows why we should have to go through this amount of hassle to ensure that *all* our post arrives properly, when it should happen automatically !!!

Off Topic *Peckham high five* JBag, I had no idea our local office was that good - BTW I didn't get my polling card either - that's weird.

I knew someone who was a victim of this 25 years ago.

If you must send cash with a birthday card use a brown envelope to disguise it.

A programme I saw about PO thefts said they send on the cards without the money, rather than destroy them as they can claim the money is theirs if it is found on them but they would be pushed to explain what they were doing with a pocketful of cards, (when taking them somewhere to destroy them), if caught with them, as destroying the cards takes time and leaves evidence, unlike removing the money.

Carlisle had a big problem - my aunt used to send money in cards to relatives who never received it. If you send cash in a card, put the envelope into a second plain brown one, as Mike 1948 suggested, and don't write ' Miss. or Master ' on the address,because if they see it's a child that could tempt them to open it.

I've said this before on threads about Post Office vanishing stuff, but think I'll tell it again.

i remember I sent a parcel to my bf of the time in Blackpool. It contained a t-shirt and a DVD. When the parcel arrived it had been ripped to shreds and stuck back togetehr with Post Office tape. Inside was the T-shirt, but the DVD was gone and in it's place his P45 fomr his work that he'd been waiting for. Whoever the theif was had obviously opened a few bits of mail, got confused and shoved them in 1 parcel. Trying to deal with Customer Services in India was hilarious.

Royal Mail are a bunch of lying lowlife thieves...... who have a penchant for accidentally losing your mail.
You try to call them!! - stuck on a phone queue, with an automated response.
Never send job applications or anything valuable through Royal mail - they lose everything!

And their managers are condescending to say the least.

to the OP - one can only hope that what goes around, comes around and Karma is paid back ten-fold. <tut-tut> Royal Mail stealing from a child! <tut-tut>

I think this is all pretty appaling and there's more about making a complaint here: http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/c...diaId=84400738. That is the quick and easy way to do it.

A more time consuming, but more effective, way of doing things would be to put your complaint in writing and send it to:

Mr David Smith
The Managing Director
Post Office Limited
80-86 Old Street
London
EC1V 9NN

I would suggest sending it recorded delivery and say in that letter that if you don't receive satisfaction then you will take your case to BBC1's Watchdog consumer programme/BBC Radio 4's You and Yours consumer programme and below your name type in CC and type in the address of the show you wish to use. Good luck!

However, putting cash in the post is a definite no-no and it is an invitation to theft. It is something I would never do and things like crossed postal orders/cheques are safer.

The above can be applied to any consumer complaint and here's a recap:
Put it in writing addressed to a top dog at the headquarters office;
Send it recorded delivery so they know you're serious and they cannot deny receiving it;
At the end of your letter do a CC and put in the address of either BBC1's Watchdog or BBC Radio 4's You and Yours.

Those three things tend to help getting the matter resolved.

I don't do it because my friend knows someone who is a postman and he has some sort of scanner for that reason!! Thieving bassa!!

It was Channel 4's Dispatches programme.


It's not much better sending cheques by post as cheque fraud is very high. If it's between family members, you're much better sending the money electronically between accounts. If it's for a child who doesn't have an account, transfer the money to the parents who can withdraw the money for them.

Pat, this happened to my (now sadly passed on) great Aunt a few years ago up in the North-East. It was not just money being taken (she ran a small business and yes, people do send cash through the post without it being Special Delivery.

Many people can not afford to pay that and of course they send things through the post in good faith) but other personal letters etc being opened and re-sealed. It got to the point that practically everything she was getting was being tampered with. It was someone in the sorting office and the police were involved. Slightly different because it was in a semi-rural location so they found out pretty quickly who was involved and she was able to claim back something. I hope you get a result. Just keep on at them!

I've never received a tampered and re-stuck envelope.
When I send the nephews and nieces gift money I BACS it, to their accounts, if they're old enough, or to their parents'; much safer.

That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with OP: I do, and hope you get it sorted.

My daughter was 18 in April and was sent large amounts of money through the post from her grandparents and aunts and uncles - having read this thread, I am astonished she got it! I will ensure all future money gifts are sent by electronic transfer, it's awful to think there is so much dishonesty in the postal service, and it seems very little is being done about it.