Today a delivery of contact lenses arrived at my house and it had clearly been bashed about – the packages inside were OK (they are made of stuff intended to withstand such treatment), but you would have thought the staff would have realised what was in the package…
Unfortunately there is no real guarantee of delivery on “normal” post, its “best endeavours” which depends as much on the individual staffs goodwill and them having pride in their work
I’ve worked for Royal Mail before and so have lots of my friends (was a good job for ravers due to strange hours, plus other advantages of knowing the postal system well :groucho:)
It was once a “national pride” thing to be a good postie (irrespective of your ethnic origin) and when the Royal Mail works well it was one of the things that truly unites Britain – but when they go through bad times of industrial relations or feel they are being overworked and can’t call a strike loads of letters/packages get lost or stomped (I’ve seen people Christmas presents get stomped on before :yakk:)
you also get rogue posties who nick or destroy mail, anything from junkies to BNP posties – when I lived in SE London in some streets if you had a “foreign” name you’d get post often torn up (and anything of value stolen)
I’ve noticed a lot of public sector organisations which would normally always use Royal Mail are switching to competitors now – can see why they are doing this but its ultimately not good for the country as the competitors often cherry pick urban areas and don’t want the rural business.
Speak to the college though, their admin staff send out thousands of items of mail so you may even find they are well aware of this problem.
