A slug came to my funeral. He was called Barry. He was a good slug; he liked dancing.

Dear Mail services,

I’m only writing one letter to cover you both, to save me wasting more of my valuable time corresponding with people clearly unwilling to admit there’s been a screw up and in the spirit of Britishness, no-one is willing to take even an iota of responsibility.

I have provided all the documentation I was given from the post office where I sent my parcel on December 21^st 2010, and I’ve tried to be as clear as possible as to the series of events that occurred.  I’m sure in the modern era, as people are no longer robbing mail trains for stamps and gold, that postal fraud and “honestly guv, I did sent my best mate Barry a PlayStation in the post not a couple house bricks” is increasingly commonplace.

Let me lay it out for you one more time:  I went to the Post Office, Westbury on Trym with two parcels on that cold, snowy afternoon. One parcel was a FREEPOST Brother laser printer cartridge with their FREEPOST return envelope clearly stuck to the front of it, in a Brother laser printer cartridge box with little pictures of a laser printer cartridge on it.

The other parcel was larger, heavier (because it had a couple hou… no wait – a Nintendo Wii (black, Sports Island, two wireless controllers)) inside it and was clearly addressed to my good friend Sophie, who’s lovely and middle-class and lives in a little middle-class house in Hampshire and hasn’t even ever smoked marijuana, let alone committed a crime like defrauding the postal service.  Moreoever, I am a man (not a lady, my dear Royal Mail, as you keep addressing me) of relatively upstanding character, a director of a small company, and a generally nice all-round good egg.

I sent both parcels together after standing in a very long line of people for about 10 minutes or so and stamping my poor feet to get the warmth going through them. I put both parcels on the counter and the man behind the counter (who we can all agree at this stage is clearly a moron) advised me to send my House Bricks (Nintendo Wii) by Parcel Force 48 as it was 10 pounds and could arrive Thursday.  Inititally, it seems I thought this charming idiot was being helpful, but it would seem either he was too stupid to do his job, or, as I suspect, needed a couple House Bricks to put under the Christmas tree for his kids much like in the fable ‘A Christmas Carol’ (in this instance, I was clearly playing the role of Scrooge).

It wasn’t until the 14 days had elapsed (I was told I couldn’t claim until my parcel was REALLY lost) and being passed from pillar to post on the telephone, that I looked closely at my receipts and realised to my horror, that I had been clearly duped by a moron in an ill-fitting shirt – and worse – this made ME the bigger moron! For shame! – It would seem that the little monkey had mischievously put the BROTHER Postcode onto my 10 pound ParcelForce48Express label (thus costing me an additional 10 pounds to send a FREEPOST item) and in all likelihood, pushed my House Bricks under the counter without a label and had a very rewarding Christmas at my personal expense.

Now then: What a quandary. I cannot prove that there’s a thieving little scut of a man working in the Post Office in Westbury in Bristol. I can only assume their hiring policy is lackadaisical enough that they don’t screen for petty criminals or perform a basic IQ test that would filter out such fabulous idiots.

I really don’t mind which of you provides me with a suitable refund for mislaying my parcel, and charging me 10 pounds for sending mail I’d already paid the privilege for, but perhaps you can get together as an established and reputable group of companies (please don’t patronise me with separate legal entities, privatisation, not-my-problem-John excuses) and agree something fair, reasonable and decent.

And for the record, ParcelForce – I did send my claim to you in the required time (as you can see, Royal Mail are at least taking the time out to send me letters asking me to prove a negative – and I suspect that as this was posted in a post-office, it was mislaid, delayed, or used as toilet paper for a couple days, thus falling outside the rules of your already clearly heavily overly-complicated and unnecessary procedures), so perhaps you might just want to review your stance on ‘we didn’t get in time, John’.

Hope the day finds you happy and well,

Yours sincerely,

tAJ