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John Gray, from Worthing, had been waiting 15 weeks for the appointment – but did not receive the letter confirming the date due to the delays, which Royal Mail has apologised for.
The former mechanical engineer and factory manager, 74, said: “The postal service is absolutely abysmal.
“I’ve tried to complain with little success and often after a great deal of effort getting through to their customer services, they’ve just told me that they would contact the sorting office in Worthing to see if something could be done.”
Mr Gray, a bowel cancer survivor, only found out about the appointment for an unrelated issue when he received a last-minute email reminder.
He said: “On the 12th of January, the NHS sent me a letter informing me that I had an appointment on the 29th of January.
“Fortunately, they emailed me two days prior to the appointment, but I still haven’t got that letter.
“To miss an appointment because the Royal Mail are not delivering letters is not good; I would have been back to the beginning of the 15 week list.”
The delays have also affected his family.
Mr Gray said his daughter recently purchased a car and the DVLA issued a new logbook on January 24, but this did not arrive until 17 days later.
He said: “When we tried to use the document, it was no longer valid and the DVLA had already reissued another one, so we still can’t tax the vehicle.
“We have not been able to use the car for 17 days, which is purely the Royal Mail’s fault.”
Mr Gray said a postman told him staff had been instructed not to work overtime to complete delivery rounds: “The postman said they’ve been told there are no additional hours available, and if they are not able to complete their rounds, they should just return the post to the depot and it will be dealt with in due course.”
The postman told him that the post office is prioritising parcels.
Mr Gray’s daughter finally received the DVLA logbook when it arrived in the post on February 10, which was taped to a small parcel that Mr Gray had ordered.
He said: “It makes me wonder, would we have received it if the small parcel hadn’t been there?”
In response, a Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We are sorry to hear about this customer’s experience and understand how worrying it can be when important post, particularly medical letters, do not arrive as expected.
“The vast majority of mail is delivered on time, but we know delays can occur in some local areas from time to time. When this happens, it is usually due to short-term operational pressures such as sickness absence affecting individual delivery routes. When this happens, we monitor performance closely each day and put additional support in place to restore regular deliveries as quickly as possible.
“We are continuing to work hard to improve service reliability in the Worthing area and would encourage any customer experiencing ongoing issues to contact us directly so we can investigate and provide support.”
