Royal Mail Fee to pay

[Acey]

Trivial I know but received a Royal Mail Fee to pay ( just £2 ) apparently, because the sender didn't pay the full postage,thing is as far as I'm aware I have no outstanding deliveries due ,should I pay or not ?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Up to you if you want to know what it is!

Good chance it could just be junk.

 

[SargeNpton]

How did you get this message? If it's a text or e-mail then it's a scam.

If it was a card through your door then it may be real (but could also be a scam).

 

[Bletchleyite]

How did you get this message? If it's a text or e-mail then it's a scam.

If it was a card through your door then it may be real (but could also be a scam).

Yep, the only way these are ever done (unless you were receiving tracking by e-mail for that item already, in which case you'd get that AND a card) is a card through the door. If said card appeared at the same time as your normal post it's probably genuine, but that doesn't mean you're not going to be paying £2 to be given a piece of junk mail that somehow missed being franked.

 

[Acey]

Was a grey Royal Mail card,I suppose its only a couple of quid to satisfy my curiosity but of course it could be a way for junk sellers to avoid postage costs !

 

[ainsworth74]

Was a grey Royal Mail card,I suppose its only a couple of quid to satisfy my curiosity but of course it could be a way for junk sellers to avoid postage costs !

Take it to your local sorting office, they'll be able to work out if it's legit or not.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Take it to your local sorting office, they'll be able to work out if it's legit or not.

They might even let you look at the outside of the envelope to decide whether to pay or not, if they're in a good mood.

 

[Snow1964]

Was it a fee to pay, or marked as insufficient prepaid postage.
Either way there is admin / handling fee included

The insufficient is more common, where someone forgets a large stamp on larger letter or one with so much paper it was overweight.

Last time I had one, Royal Mail had the letter for about 10 days before dropping off the postage to be paid card, so working out who sent it isn’t easy, especially if a relative sent it as a surprise.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

They might even let you look at the outside of the envelope to decide whether to pay or not, if they're in a good mood.

They should do this anyway - you have the right to choose on sight of the item whether or not to pay the fee and collect it or have the RM return it to the sender.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

How did you get this message? If it's a text or e-mail then it's a scam.

If it was a card through your door then it may be real (but could also be a scam).

Probably real if you are expected to schlep down to your local delivery office to go collect.

Had one of these underpayment cards a year ago when the local delivery office thought that the stamp on an Easter greetings card sent to me was a forgery.

Armed with a Stanley Gibbons catalogue, I was able to show the staff that the (first class) stamp on the card was an old 2006 design which was still perfectly valid (or at least will be until early next year when any similar not yet used stamps will need to be swapped out for the new ones with barcodes).

Apparently part of a big batch bought by the sender when first class stamps were still 32p each.

 

[CharlieSpotted]

I had one of these a few weeks back. Similarly mystified I popped off to the sorting office to collect a letter with no postage applied. The letter was from a kind person who wanted to inform me of the the glory of their chosen deity...

... apparently, it is not uncommon for less-scrupulous Churches (ought to be an oxymoron, surely?) to do this.

 

[WesternLancer]

They should do this anyway - you have the right to choose on sight of the item whether or not to pay the fee and collect it or have the RM return it to the sender.

Yes, I agree with this in my experience (and hopefully charge the sender the £2 fee instead...).

It was a long time ago but I recall a postie once asking me if I wanted to pay for an item that was unstamped and he also told me I could refuse to do so if I did not want to receive it. That was probably 20 years ago.

Would not surprise me these days if they have removed posties from handling such small cash sums and rely 100% on the card system as a more reliable system.

 

[Acey]

Thanks for all the advice,think I'll pop down and clap my eyes on the thing before I shell out the dosh !

 

[High Dyke]

Thanks for all the advice,think I'll pop down and clap my eyes on the thing before I shell out the dosh !

Had one of these a few years ago. I went down the sorting office, where I was given the option to pay/keep the item or return to sender. The envelope was from my employer, so I accepted it and then claimed the money back, for their error. As above, take a neb at what the item is and make a choice from there.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

A frequently occurring reason for postage being underpaid will be an A4 size item with just an ordinary 1st class or 2nd class stamp on it. (Should at least be 1st class large / 2nd class large).

Particularly annoying if it's an item bought online where you've had to pay more than enough for the postage and packing, in addition to the item's purchase price (say something bought off Ebay) and the sender still hasn't paid the right postage amount when dispatching same.

 

[Trog]

Had a card through the door a while ago from the Post Office wanting a £1 for an under stamped parcel. So I put a £1 worth of stamps on the card and sent it back to the sorting office which is about four or five miles away. A week later the parcel was delivered I can only assume that the postman made the delivery crawling on his hands and knees to take so long. The trouble was that the parcel contained flower bulbs and the combination of the parcel taking three weeks to get from sender to sorting office, and a week to get from sorting office to me resulted in the parcels content being completely rotten on delivery. Handed it back to the postman complaining about the delay, never heard anything more about it. I think next time I will just write return to sender on the card.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Would not surprise me these days if they have removed posties from handling such small cash sums and rely 100% on the card system as a more reliable system.

You are correct; it is only possible to pay the demanded fee by means of stamps on the card or at the sorting office counter by debit or credit card. Not sure if they offer an online payment option as well, although they certainly do allow "while you were out" re-deliveries to be booked online.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Apr 2022 ==

I had one of these a few weeks back. Similarly mystified I popped off to the sorting office to collect a letter with no postage applied. The letter was from a kind person who wanted to inform me of the the glory of their chosen deity...

... apparently, it is not uncommon for less-scrupulous Churches (ought to be an oxymoron, surely?) to do this.

Send them an invoice for the cost of the postage fee plus your time for sorting it out ( rounded up to one hour )...

 

[DelayRepay]

A company I used to work for once made an error and dispatched a batch of mail to customers using incorrect envelopes. We sent most of our mail using pre-paid envelopes (the postage is printed on the envelope), but for some reason the third party company that manage our mailroom used plain envelopes for this batch of post.

Lots of angry customers complaining they'd been charged £2 to receive their mail from us.

We refunded them all, and had to re-send the letters to make sure those who had chosen not to pay still received it.

I mention this because something similar could have happened here.

 

[island]

You are correct; it is only possible to pay the demanded fee by means of stamps on the card or at the sorting office counter by debit or credit card. Not sure if they offer an online payment option as well, although they certainly do allow "while you were out" re-deliveries to be booked online.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Apr 2022 ==


Send them an invoice for the cost of the postage fee plus your time for sorting it out ( rounded up to one hour )...

You can pay in cash at sorting offices (though you may need exact change as not all of them keep floats any more), and you can also pay online and the item will be posted out.

What is phased out is postmen/women taking payment at the doorstep.

 

[Trackman]

What is phased out is postmen/women taking payment at the doorstep.

Yes, that's what used to do. 'To Pay'
It was usually people from abroad who I knew or knew from the radio, but it wasn't big bucks things like 25p, 50p or 75p.