Royal Mail pays out £2m in compensation

The Royal Mail has forked out more than £2 million on compensation claims to people in the West Midlands over the last five years, new figures revealed.

Payments were made to residents whose mail or parcels were either lost, delivered to the wrong address or damaged during transit.

Since 2005, the Royal Mail has paid £2,022,644 in response to 134,829 complaints from people in the region.

The organisation said on average, there was one complaint for every 19,000 items posted throughout the area.

Paul Jobling, Regional Operations Director, said: "Across the B, DY, WS and WV postcode areas around 480 million items of mail are posted each year."

Since 2005, the Royal Mail has paid £245,264 to people throughout Walsall in response to 134,829 complaints.

The company paid out £198,796 to people across Wolverhampton after receiving 16,749 complaints while in Dudley, £161,395 had to be paid following 13,687 complaints.

A staggering £1,417,189 was handed to people in areas including Tamworth and West Bromwich, although this figure also covers residents throughout Birmingham.

Mr Jobling said: "Where we are alerted to problems, we take decisive action to rectify any issues," he said.

"We constantly review our operation to ensure it's as robust as possible and customer's mail is handled to the highest standards.

"If a customer is unhappy with any of our services we urge them to contact us. Compensation is available depending on the service used and the nature of the claim."

Figures for the calendar year 2010-11 were not yet available from the Royal Mail.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Royal Mail had started charging VAT on some of its services. The move is expected to add 20 per cent to delivery costs for companies not big enough to be VAT registered.