‘I haven’t been able to buy food since November because of Royal Mail’

Royal Mail’s failure to contain strikes has also hit the court system. A paralegal based in the North West, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said cases were falling through because documents regularly arrived three weeks late.

“It’s been extremely stressful because of the amount of additional work we’ve been having to do,” he said. “I guess we’re lucky – if it’s somebody trying to get custody of their children then that’s much worse for them.”

‘BT shows it can be sorted’

Since strikes began in August, goodwill has ebbed between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union, which accuse each other of “holding Christmas to ransom”.

Russ Mould of AJ Bell, a stockbroker, urged Royal Mail executives to reach a deal by copying BT’s example. The telecoms company recently won round striking workers with a £1,500 pay rise.

“BT has managed to reach a conclusion, albeit probably from a stronger base in terms of cash flow and profitability,” Mr Mould said. “But it shows it can be done.”

If the dispute dragged on in the “brutally competitive” field of parcel delivery, he added, retailers might follow Currys and leave Royal Mail for other couriers.

In the first half of 2022 Royal Mail made an adjusted operating loss of £219m, against a £235m profit a year earlier. Around £5.5m was spent on resolving hundreds of thousands of customer complaints.

This is not the only part of the business in decline. Between June and September, just 73pc of first class post was delivered on time – 20 percentage points below its goal.

Ofcom closed an investigation into the company last Friday but is already mulling another, noting its “concern” at falling customer service levels.

Royal Mail partly attributes its financial problems to the fact that, by law, it must deliver letters six days a week. It claims this service is in “structural decline”, with letter volumes down almost a quarter since 2019.

Its idea to spur sales is for new stamps to feature barcodes, allowing customers to send video messages by post. Non-coded stamps will cease to be valid from August next year.

A number of people who spoke to The Telegraph were sceptical of the move and claimed the scheme for exchanging old stamps was chaotic and badly thought-out.

Ed Clarke, a tutor from Hampshire, sent in £25 of stamps and received 199 first class stamps in return, which would cost almost £200. “They’re incompetent, but at least they’re incompetent in my favour,” he said.

A Royal Mail spokesman said it had made several concessions in its offer to the CWU, which include raising pay by up to 9pc over 18 months and delaying compulsory redundancies until April 2023 at the earliest.

He apologised for the fall in standards and blamed it on the strikes, while insisting that the “vast majority” of stamp exchanges had taken place “effectively and efficiently”.

The spokesman said Royal Mail prioritised delivering Covid tests and medical prescriptions during walkouts, with government and NHS letters immediately afterwards.

He denied that the company prioritised parcels, but said offices might shift larger packages to “address health and safety concerns” following a strike.