A survey of postal services has been carried out by the Wakefield Express – revealing that the Royal Mail is providing a second class service.

The survey showed that only 80 per cent of letters with a first class stamp arrived the following day, compared with the 92.5 per cent pledged by the Royal Mail.

One of the letters even went AWOL and still hasn’t turned up – three weeks later.

It was only supposed to be travelling down the road to nearby Leeds.Editor Ed Asquith said: “We could have sent it by snail to arrive earlier.”

Polly Rippon had the task of sending out the letters to friends in Kent, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Warwickshire, Sunderland, Sheffield, Devon and London, as well as Wakefield.

The survey also found 20 per cent of first class letters arrived at the same time as the second class letters we posted – despite costing an extra 8p.

And the Wakefield Express also discovered that the Royal Mail pledges to deliver 98.5 per cent of second class letters within three working days – not two days as most people think.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Obviously we are very disappointed we only managed to hit 80 per cent first class delivery in your survey. We can only apologise.

“We have a huge mail bag everyday and 60m items of post are incorrectly addressed every year. It costs £6million to return them.”

Do you have a story for us?
Ring the HoldTheFrontPage newsdesk on
01332 291111 x6022, or to e-mail us now – click here