Phill Sacre

Day: 7 January 2013

  • 2012: The Year in Review

    It’s that time again: time for another one of my much-loved reviews of the year. Well, I’ve only really done one review of the year before, for 2011, but still – who’s counting, eh?

    Once again, this isn’t really a review of things which have come out this year, so much as a review of things I’ve seen / heard / done this year (i.e. there will be a fair few things in this list from 2011, 2010 and earlier…). The reason for this is… well, mainly because I never see anything which is current. (Hey, one day I might get around to actually playing Portal, rather than just quoting ‘the cake is a lie’ from time to time…)

    So, without further ado (further adon’t?), here’s a few things which Phill quite enjoyed this year (and there’s no more glowing commendation than that).

    (more…)

  • The Mystery of the £1.09 Christmas Card

    Royal Mail card unpaid postageI’ll be honest with you: I like the Royal Mail. Despite its flaws – and they are manifold – I think it’s one of the services left in the UK which is actually pretty good. Whenever I order a parcel, I’m always pleased if I find that it’s being delivered by the Royal Mail (unlike some of the other delivery networks out there…) A few years ago, Top Gear did a race to see what would get from Lands End to John O’Groats the fastest – a fast car, or a first-class letter. Surprisingly, the letter actually won! It was pretty impressive to see how the Royal Mail operation actually works, and I think as a general rule it works pretty well.

    That said, you do get some … odd decisions made. On Saturday we had a card through our letterbox saying ‘We couldn’t deliver a letter because… it doesn’t have enough postage.’ Or something like that. We were apparently owing £1.09 in postage. We went down to the collection office on Saturday afternoon, only to find out that they close at 1PM (our fault, we should have checked the card; just assumed they were open on Saturday afternoons!)

    So, this evening, I decided to pop down to the collection office to fetch it. I honestly thought it was a parcel someone had sent us recently (we are due one). It turned out to be a Christmas card. You can see the picture above – I’ve edited out the address, but apart from that it’s as it was when we received it.

    Apparently the letter was less 9p in postage (that’s right, £0.09) – and we had a £1.00 “handling charge”. That’s right, they charged us a whole pound for the privilege of holding the letter back for us to recoup their 9p. Now, I know that rules are rules, but… 9p? Really? And a whole £1 ‘handling charge’ for that much? Crazy.

    But it’s not just that: there appears to be a valid, first-class stamp attached to the letter. The only thing which could possibly have put the card over was that the card was slightly folded over inside, i.e. it was a tiny bit wider than your average card. But not by much, and not in a parcel kind of way.

    I simply can’t understand what could possibly have made the Royal Mail charge us extra in this way! Not good, Royal Mail, not good. (Even if there’s a perfectly good explanation for why the postage was 9p under, charging £1.09 and the inconvenience of picking it up is not good).