As reported in today's "Courier" (click on headline above to view), yesterday I met with two senior representatives of Royal Mail, including their Dundee West Sorting Office Manager, to discuss the deluge of complaints I have received over the past two months regarding the quality of mail deliveries across the West End of the City and the wider Dundee West area. The talks were positive and I hope that residents will see improvements to mail deliveries.This meeting gave me the opportunity to raise the many concerns I have received from residents about detrimental aspects of mail deliveries in the past few months and to specifically go over the problem areas with Royal Mail. The complaints have ranged over a number of aspects of Royal Mail service – late deliveries, lack of prompt deliveries, particular problems with packets and parcels, longer delivery rounds resulting in some mail not being delivered on time and difficulties in getting through to the sorting office on the phone.
I do have to say that the Royal Mail staff did recognise that there have been difficulties but assured me that they are working to ensure improvements. They have assured me that where there are problems with amalgamated delivery rounds and complaints continuing to come in, they will be willing to revise them and we set up direct lines of contact should I continue to receive complaints or concerns from constituents.
With regard to the difficulties of contacting the Sorting Office by phone, I was assured that steps were being taken to ensure that staff were available to answer calls and when this was not possible, an answering machine would be available where residents can leave the details of their enquiry. I hope this will resolve the complaint of people just getting the dialling tone when trying to get through to the Sorting Office.
During the meeting, I went through a list of particular issues in specific streets that have been raised by West End constituents to enable Royal Mail to look into these. Royal Mail is anxious that customers report complaints via their customer service local rate number 08457 740 740 as all complaints are logged and passed on to local staff for attention.
I continue to welcome feedback from constituents as I am keeping a close eye on this matter, given the extent of concerns in recent weeks.