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Hundreds of ‘lost’ Royal Mail and Hermes parcels are being auctioned off on eBay, according to reports.
Adverts on the auction website show parcels containing everything from jewellery to electrical goods.
Ads show parcels laid out on the floor, with bids flooding in, raising potentially hundreds of pounds for the sellers.
Earlier this year, customers reacted angrily after it emerged that it auctions off the contents of at least 75,000 undelivered packages that become “lost in the post” each year.
In 2019-2020, Royal Mail received some 250,000 complaints from customers about lost post. In a survey, a third of Britons said they’d had items go missing.
A Royal Mail spokesperson told Metro : “Where we have been made aware of items being sold in this way, in line with our terms and conditions, we also ask these companies to remove any customer details on the sites as well as make no reference to Royal Mail and to black out our branding.
“These are not items that are in course of transmission by post and would not have reached eBay via Royal Mail. When Royal Mail attempts to deliver items to customers and the items are undeliverable, we return these items to the Delivery Office.
“In some cases, the customers do not want to collect these items which can often be of low value. When items are undeliverable, our policy is to return such items to the sender or retailer.
“Certain retailers, sometimes based overseas, may not want to deal with the administrative burden of managing the returns and associated shipping costs.
“As a result certain overseas retailers sometimes arrange for third-party service providers based in the UK to manage their returns for them.”
