Royal Mail has failed to forward post from a PO Box (a service we paid for). This is despite being made aware of a problem several months ago. I want to know what recourse we have against them, if any.
Firstly, this is a business-business transaction. We have a small company and have a PO Box mailing address which we pay for. This was setup in September 2014. We paid an additional fee to have all mail sent to this PO Box forwarded on to a physical address.
In November 2014 we became aware of an issue whereby our clients (other businesses) would attempt to return signed contracts for work to our PO Box address. These never arrived with us despite repeated attempts. We made an enquiry with Royal Mail; there was apparently an issue with the PO Box and this was supposedly resolved in December 2014. We got a couple of letters through shortly after, with the forwarding address handwritten on the envelope.
We haven't received any mail from our PO Box address since. We recently had an email from one of our suppliers to say their invoice had been returned to them by Royal Mail with a sticker on it saying "Addressee gone away". Until then we had no solid proof the mail wasn't just going missing in the post.
We contacted royal mail again. They have since sent a letter informing us that they had failed to pass on instructions to the delivery office that all mail should be forwarded on. Any mail we have been sent has just been sitting at the delivery office, where presumably after a certain amount of time it is returned or disposed of. No-one even thought to try contacting us. Royal mail merely issued an apology, trusting that's enough to settle the issue. After phoning this morning, I was told they would "put a note on the account" and "someone will be in touch".
These mistakes have damaged our company's reputation with our suppliers and probably our clients too. As one of our primary contact methods, we may have missed out on business from prospective clients too (we spent quite a lot of money on a postal marketing campaign).
The problem I can forsee is that in the terms and conditions, Royal Mail limit their liability with the following paragraph:
Quote:
If we do not provide the service because of our negligence, we will credit you on a pro rata daily basis for each working day when we did not provide the service and this will be our only liability to you except for liability that cannot by law be excluded or limited, such as liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
Thoughts on this gladly welcomed.