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A DUNFERMLINE woman undergoing cancer treatment has hit out at Royal Mail’s “awful” delivery service after receiving important letters days after scheduled appointments.
Claire Monaghan, of Townhill Road, reached out to the Press after Dunfermline councillor Garry Haldane called on the delivery service to honour its requirement to deliver mail six days a week.
Many readers expressed their concerns over delayed deliveries following the article, including Claire, whose late post could affect her health seriously.
Claire, who has been undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer for the last four months, said: “We noticed we weren’t getting our post regularly about two months ago.
“Every 10 days, it seems to come in a big batch.
“Recently, I had a call from the clinic I go to regarding my upcoming appointment the following day and I had no idea what they were going on about.
“Luckily, it just so happens the NHS needed to ring me, otherwise I wouldn’t have known anything about it and would have missed my appointment.
“When you’re going through cancer there is a specific scheduled plan of your treatment so you don’t want to be missing anything.
“It appears to be that Royal Mail are not delivering letters every day when they are needed.
“It’s important for me to get these letters and anyone else going through medical treatment.
“Once you’ve missed an appointment it’s hard to get them again and it changes all of your treatment.
“They are scheduled for a reason!”
As previously reported in the Press, postal workers have been dealing with ‘Christmas levels’ of parcels during the pandemic as the public try to reduce the amount of face-to-face time with the outside world.
To deal with the increasing demand, Royal Mail decided to scrap Saturday letter deliveries back in April.
Cllr Haldane has said the postal service was currently “failing to deliver” to every address six days a week required by law when managers were instructing workers to leave mail in the depot.
Claire added: “A lady also going through chemo told me she had missed an appointment because she hadn’t received her post on time.
“The NHS staff were quite shocked to hear that we were getting post so irregularly.
“It’s awful not being able to rely on your mail at such a time!
“We have also been selling a property down south and we weren’t receiving post in time to deal with that either.
“I want to know what’s going on? And when I have went to try and find out, there is nowhere to ask or complain.
“I should think if the public and organisations are paying for postage they have a contractual obligation to deliver it within a certain time or otherwise what’s the point of paying for first class?”
Royal Mail said that customers who had concerns about their post should contact their customer service team.
In a previous statement a Royal Mail spokesperson said: “Royal Mail is proud to deliver the universal service. From the start of this crisis, we always said that despite our best endeavours, it is possible that some areas of the country may experience a reduction in service levels due to coronavirus-related absences at their local mail centre or delivery office.
“We have been working hard to deliver the most comprehensive service we can to all our customers in challenging circumstances throughout this period.
“Every decision we make puts the health of our people and customers first.
“We have put in place a range of preventive measures to protect both our customers and our colleagues.
“All staff have been briefed about the social distancing measures jointly agreed by local management and the CWU.”
