Royal Mail confesses to postage blunders

BRITISH PAPER MOVING BUSINESS the Royal Mail has apologised for problems its online users have experienced with its services.

The organisation, along with its technology provider Capgemini, have posted an apology on its web site and the Royal Mail has offered to reimburse users after it did things like overcharge them.

We reported earlier about a problem with one area of the online services, but it seems that the situation was worse than thought.

"We would like to apologise for the difficulties some Royal Mail customers are experiencing with a number of the applications on the website. We very much appreciate that this is the busiest trading period of the year for many of our customers," says a joint message signed by Moya Greene, chief executive of the Royal Mail Group, and Paul Hermelin, CEO of the Capgemini Group.

"The Parcelforce Worldwide and Post Office's websites are largely unaffected by these difficulties although there have been issues with a small number of services. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused."

There are problems with some areas though, and Capgemini confirmed that there are ongoing problems with its Smartstamp and Online Postage applications. Here the firms said that a minority of customers are affected, and said that since most people were just fine they had decided to keep both services operating.

Where there are problems, they sound annoying. Royal Mail said that around 600 customers had had their payment cards billed twice for transactions, but added that the average amount here is around £50, It has promised to refund that and add in a £25 "we are sorry" bonus.

Other problems, such as incidents where online postage documents have failed to print, will be looked at on an individual basis, they added. µ