Is BVI Postal Service being affected by Royal Mail Debacle??

By Giorgio Migliavacca

 Since August 2004 several pieces of registered mail sent from the British Virgin Islands to Europe and transiting in London have gone missing without anyone being able to obtain one single word of explanation from the postal authorities in the United Kingdom.

Despite correspondence exchanged between the person/s who suffered the loss and the BVI Postal Authorities there has been no response yet from Royal Mail.

Registered mail is supposed to be tracked at every stage of its route but Royal Mail has so far ignored requests of explanations from the BVI Postal Authority about the missing registered letters.

One of the addressees sent the following e-mail message to the BVI sender:

“Dear V.P.

I managed to contact a customer relations supervisor at the Royal Mail International service this afternoon to ask how to track a missing registered letter sent from overseas.

His response, with no hint of apology, was that the Royal Mail receive no money from overseas postal administrations towards processing registered mail, so they don't do anything at all. It is impossible to track a registered item from overseas once it arrives in England. He gave the impression that he couldn't care less what happened to people who had lost items, or had them delayed. As there is no tracking, it is easy to make unjustified guesses about what happens to the contents of registered mail, which may well be valuable.

I will be writing to the head of the Royal Mail for his comments, but doubt if there will be anything useful in his reply, if I ever receive one.

The immediate learning point is not to send registered mail to the U.K. Anything valuable must be sent by UPS or DHL, or a similar company, which does track all items to the point of delivery. It may be more expensive, but is more likely to bring a successful result.

I will let you know if I get any further information

Best regards,

Michael A.”

No wonder then that Royal Mail has recently escaped punitive fines but had to pay £60 million in compensation after its worst delivery performance ever, it has been revealed.

The postal service missed all of its 15 performance-related targets for the year ending last March. However, industry regulator Postcomm said that enforcing a fine was not in the interests of customers.

Foremost in Postcomm's decision not to enforce a fine was the fact that Royal Mail had paid £43 million compensation for its failings to its customers.

In addition, the company had also agreed to charge customers £17 million less between 2004 and 2005.

The chairman of the regulator, Nigel Stapleton, said: "With competition fast approaching and the obligation to pay substantial compensation for these quality failures, it is clear Royal Mail has recognised the need to put its customers first."

Meanwhile the BVI has a new Postmaster General, the young and dynamic Kevin Smith who has reassured the two business persons who have suffered loss of their registered letters transiting in London that the matter is being looked into. It has been learned that now a direct contact with Royal Mail has been established but so far no explanation was given as to why so many pieces of registered mail from the BVI have been lost. To add insult to injury one of the two business persons affected by the mail loss said that he has just received information from a Eastern European correspondent that all of the three registered letters recently sent from BVI to Russia arrived as regular mail without any signature being required as the letters were forwarded (by Royal Mail) as ordinary mail and not as registered letter.

“This raises a lot of questions because we send registered mail from the BVI and then when it reaches the United Kingdom it seems either to get lost or to change its status and becomes ordinary mail. This matter cannot be tolerated any further and members of the BVI Legislative Council will be lobbied to express the utmost concern here in the BVI and also at a higher level in London. It also begs a few questions why the matter has not been investigated by police in the UK. We will undoubtedly contact the Universal Postal Union and sensitize the local and international media about this problem,” one of the businessmen who has suffered loss of his mail told this newspaper.

The businessmen pointed out that the registered mail they send to the United States has so far not experienced any loss in recent months, but registered mail sent to Europe and transiting in the UK has been cause of great grief, annoyance, and loss.

“How can we do business with the world if our mail system is unreliable, and worse yet, our registered mail disappears and nobody seems to give an explanation? This cannot go on indefinitely, it just cannot be tolerated. We have waited for eight months to get explanations. All we got is a letter from the former Postmaster General. We are not seeking refund for the loss we have suffered. We want to be reassured that the BVI Postal Authority can guarantee the sanctity and promptness of delivery of the mail we give to them.”

Meanwhile Royal Mail is preparing to lose its monopoly and face competition. The move brings to an end Royal Mail’s 350-year monopoly 15 months earlier than originally planned. Come January 1 2006 the UK’s postal service market will be liberalised, but some segments of public opinion see trouble ahead.

The Green Party said recently that completely liberalising the postal market would provide “rich pickings” for big companies when all Britain really needed was one mail system that worked properly.

Commenting on Postcomm’s decision, Green Party principal speaker Keith Taylor said: "Why would anyone want a choice of postal providers if the single system we've got now worked properly? Surely the only choice the public is interested in is whether a letter gets there on time or not … we do not need several postal systems, just one single one that is properly invested-in.”

Time will tell what will happen, for better or for worse. in any event the BVI Postal Authority should ensure that  the BVI business community is not being put in the position of third world countries with a postal service that is slow, inefficient and unreliable.

One of the businessmen said that the BVI government has put in motion a five-year plan to reform the postal service in this little outpost of the former British empire. But serious changes and tangible improvements must become reality in a rather short time if the BVI wants to keep its postal communications to the level where they ought to be, especially when the Territory’s economy is fully dependent on business generated by tourism and financial services. Without an efficient and reliable postal service those industries will suffer serious losses. If the BVI postal service is not able to modernise itself  within the next twelve months more people will have second thoughts about basing their business in the BVI.

The alternative of sending sensitive documents and mail via private couriers such as DHL and Federal Express is there, but its cost is prohibitive for small businesses. A slim envelope to USA costs $34 plus.  And all is not roses with couriers either. One businessperson told this newspaper that he sent a packet of Christmas gifts to Italy in early December via DHL and he was unable to track his packet on the internet. After much anguish and with some delay the item was delivered. Just last week ago a similar shipment was sent out and the content arrived mutilated as Customs roughly opened with a cutter two of the gift packets inside and ruined the content.  There was absolutely no reason whatsoever to handle the content in that style!!

There is also another observation to be made and it must be spelled out without mincing words. The various administrations and governments that have ruled the Territory for the last two decades have seen it fit to give licences to private couriers that bring in mail to and from the United States Virgin Islands. More mail handlers have been authorised in the meantime, and their fees are often very spicy. For example, one courier charges $10 for a piece of priority mail to USA (actual cost is $3.95), and the same courier is now charging fees for everything that has the semblance of a packet. This has all been made possible because a letter from St. Thomas, USVI,  to the BVI still takes on avwerage two good weeks. Thank God the USVI Governor is a Tortolian!

Mail from Puerto Rico isn’t faster either: a letter (with a cheque inside, of course) from San Juan (8 January) arrived battered and covered with mould spots  on 10 March.

Another problem is wet mail. Every time there is bad weather some pieces of mail arrive soaked in water, with water stains etc. Books,  correspondence, documents and valuables are damaged and if one seeks an explanation, it  invariably happened elsewhere in transit, but once you carefully observe the pattern evidence does not always agree with that conclusion.

Meanwhile the BVI is still awaiting for the Express Mail service that our post office was supposed to offer since the turn of the century when a costly feasibility study and consultancy was carried out. 

Segments of the BVI public have remained silent about the postal problems of the Territory but their dissatisfaction becomes apparent as soon as one raises the subject.

Undeniably, a good quota of the problems affecting the BVI is “imported” and postal workers here are dedicated people who work hard. In conclusion, the BVI Post Office needs real leadership, and fearless, competent, customer-friendly, efficient management. If we have to make our voice heard in London, Bern and Washington it must be heard. We should make every effort to  provide a postal service that is up to the standard of most industrialised and developed countries, otherwise we will be left behind.