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A Surrey woman who says her town has been suffering from an unreliable Royal Mail post service for more than four months has said that the situation has left her “fuming”.
Every day Emma Hensby waits to hear the sound of the postman but is often disappointed. Her flat in Banstead has had unreliable postal service for more than four months and it is driving her round the bend.
Speaking to SurreyLive, Emma, 53, said: “ It’s been going on since May and I know it sounds petty in the grand scheme of things, but it’s just really frustrating.” In fact, she says the lack of reliable deliveries has been so annoying that she escalated her concerns to the Postal Review Panel in June.
In response, she was assured the problems would be over soon. Emma told SurreyLive she received an email which informed her that the local branch had ” acknowledged that there has been disruption to deliveries in your area as a result of exceptional staffing problems which has meant that he has been unable to deliver all of the addresses every day.”
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Emma said: “This is dated the 15th of June of this year and at the time of replying to me, the customer operations manager did state that these issues have eased with additional staff recruited, and the frequency of your deliveries will improve.”
However, from Emma’s perspective, nothing has changed. She said: “I was thinking about it, we actually got better service during covid and the lockdown. I don’t necessarily expect deliveries every day, but the layout of the land here is that I live in a cul-de-sac. I’m on the ground floor, I’m not a curtain twitcher, but I can always hear the van. I can tell even if I’m in my bedroom. I’m not expecting post everyday, but I am aware if the postman has been or not.”
She detailed a number of occasions that she has been left waiting for deliveries including “a book that I need for work. Other people who are also working on this book got theirs last Friday. I’m just fuming.”
While Emma hasn’t missed anything vitally important, she says their community Facebook page is often full of people missing letters. She said: “There are really disgruntled people who haven’t had posts for three weeks. I mean, it’s not just like birthday cards and books, it’s important stuff: bank cards, hospital appointments, sometimes bills.”
On Monday, October 7, Banstead was listed as an area that wasn’t receiving full service, by the Royal Mail. The site says they are providing regular updates and are rotating deliveries to minimise the delay to individual customers.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We are committed to delivering mail consistently and on time. On occasion, the delivery of mail can be disrupted due to local issues such as staffing or a period of high sick absence at the delivery office. In these instances, we work hard to minimise delays and return the service to normal as soon as possible. We will investigate this customer’s route to help ensure any issues that impact her deliveries are resolved.”
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