Remember last year, when Royal Fail held about 15 of my parcels hostage and refused to allow me to collect them?

And took six weeks to deliver some of them?

And LOST one of them?

I thought it couldn’t get much worse than that. I thought that once the snow melted (Which it did, well over a month ago) and their main excuse for failing so miserably at their one and only function as a business was gone, the Fail would return to their usual, albeit pretty poor, standard of service, and I would have at least SOME hope of being able to send and receive mail.

I was wrong. Oh, was I wrong.

This year I’ve sent a total of two packages through Royal Mail.

They’ve lost both of them.

No, really: they have actually managed to lose every single item of mail I’ve given them this year, and sure, I know it’s only two items, but even so, that’s a 100% failure rate, and coming on top of the December of Disaster we’ve just gone through, during which sending or receiving an item through Royal Mail involved a leap of faith so large that it was like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and just hoping you’d somehow survive, I am BEYOND furious right now. Obviously I can and will claim for compensation for the missing parcels, but I’m led to believe that this can be a lengthy process, with no guarantee of success (and one of the items was sent to the States, which Fail are very unlikely to compensate me for, as they’ll say it might have been lost once it was out of their hands. I’m prepared to concede the possibility of that happening, but let’s face it: given the Fail’s track record here, we don’t need Sherlock Holmes to tell us whodunnit here, do we? Forgive my skepticism, Fail, but given that you’ve failed so badly at everything else recently, why would I think you got it right this time, and whoops, the dog ate your homework! A big boy did it and ran away! It wasn’t yoooooooo!) and meanwhile I’m out of pocket for the items that are lost. Awesome.

What the HELL are Royal Mail actually doing, I wonder? I know they’re not delivering mail – or at least, not MY mail – so seriously: what are they doing? And how is it even legal for them to be doing whatever-the-hell-it-is, given that they describe themselves as a mail delivery company? At this point I actually feel like they’re just getting money for nothing: oh, they say they’ll deliver mail for you, but will they actually do it? Not in my experience. And really, when every single item I send gets lost, and every single item I order takes a very long time to arrive (this year all of our parcel deliveries have been taking much longer than they used to. Up until December, we used to be able to order something online and, if it was  delivered by Fail, it would generally be there within 3 days. Now? At least two weeks. Very occasionally less than that, but for the most part, at least two weeks.), I find myself wondering what point there is of ever using this shoddy excuse for a “service” ever again.

I can’t think of one. I honestly can’t think of a single reason to ever trust Royal Mail again. The fact is, they don’t deliver. Literally. They just take my money and my package and… that’s it. I don’t know what they do with them, but the main point is that they don’t do what I’m paying them to do. It seems to me that sending something through Royal Mail these days is an act of blind faith. They may deliver it, they may not. They won’t care either way, so why take the chance?

Oh yeah: because there’s really not that much of an option, other than paying for courier companies, which could prove expensive. From now on, though, I’m going to be doing everything I possibly can to avoid having to use them for anything, because honestly, it’s just so much easier to simply take my money and set it on fire.

What are you doing with my mail, Fail? I would really, really love to know…

Posted on November 16th, just turned up this morning, without so much as an “Oh, hey, sorry we’ve been holding your mail hostage for the past two months!” (And yes, it was posted in Canada, but as soon as it gets to the UK, it goes into the hands of the Royal Fail, who have had it ever since.)

What have Royal Mail been doing? I mean, this parcel was posted two weeks before the snow even started! In NOVEMBER! And you know what else? Royal Fail aren’t even doing Sunday deliveries or anything in our area right now to catch up with the backlog. Here’s a quick multiple choice for you:

You are running a business. You suddenly realise that you are two months behind with your work. Do you:

a) Do something, anything, to try and catch back up again.

b) Do absolutely nothing. Lalalalala! People can just wait for their stuff! Who the hell cares? Ooh, is that a bag of Cheetos?

Guess which option the Fail have apparently gone for?

Still, I’m now wondering if this means there’s hope for the coat I won on eBay in November, which never turned up? Or the … whisper it… ASOS dress I’ve been waiting two weeks for? Please let there be hope. I really liked that coat…

(Dress, H&M; boots, New Look)

Latest Drama:

 Yesterday afternoon, we discovered we had no running water in the house. Well, that’s not quite true: we had a limited amount of hot water, but no cold at all, which meant no drinking water, no shower, no way to flush the toilet or do any of the many things we normally do without thinking about about, which actually require the presence of cold running water in your home.

At first we thought the pipes had frozen. Then we thought something was broken. Finally we just threw our hands up in despair and got rotten drunk drove to my parents’ house, which not only has the luxury of running water, but also still receives the occasional mail delivery, as the streets around it have been cleared of omgsnow. “We done found the promised land!” I said to Terry in a tone of wonder as we reacquainted ourselves with a way of living which doesn’t involve using bottled water to clean your teeth and constantly wondering what will go wrong next.

Anyway, luckily for us, it turned out that the hot water issue was a localised thing, and wasn’t just affecting our house, so by the time we came home last night, armed with more bottles of water which we’d purloined from my parents (we normally have a huge stock of this ourselves, but because our shopping couldn’t be delivered and we’ve only recently been able to get out of the street…), we found the water was back on. Another crisis averted, although, by this stage, we’re so used to not being able to shop, receive mail, book holidays or travel on the roads safely, that not being able to wash or drink simply seemed like the next logical step on the downward spiral.

Ongoing Dramas:

1. The Snow

It’s still there. We haven’t had any new snow for a few days, though, and most of the residents of the street have been out clearing it, so the roads are passable, albeit with care. No idea why Royal Fail are continuing to refuse to use them, though.

2. The Air Traffic Control Strike

All still up in the air, or rather NOT up in the air. The airspace is open again and flights are starting to get back to normal, so at the moment it looks like we will get to the Canaries at some point,  we’re just not quite sure when that will be – the airline are telling us to “expect delays”.

3. The Missing Mail

It’s still missing. Two courier companies managed to deliver stuff yesterday, though, which seems to suggest that the Fail COULD get to us if they really, really wanted to. Terry did go in and have a word with them, however, and they’ve now changed their story from “we haven’t even bothered sorting the mail“, to “we’ve sorted ALL the mail, but it’s in bags, and the bags are tied up, and we won’t untie them under any circumstances.” I’ve no idea which story is the correct one, or if the Fail themselves even know any more. If they’ve put the mail in bags, though, just to take it out for a drive every day and not actually deliver it then I think we’ve just discovered a whole knew level of “annoying”. We do, however, have a plan: the plan is that if they continue to insist that the mail is bagged up and these bags cannot be untied (What are they tied up with, magic?), we’re just going to go down there and refuse to leave until they manage to break the magic curse that keeps the bags tied shut and stop holding our mail hostage. We will not negotiate with terrorists! We may, however, organise some kind of “FREE AMBER’S MAIL” rally. I’ll contact Bono and Sting, the rest of you can get a Facebook group and online petition sorted, yes?

(Dress: Pinup Couture; Shoes: Faith. I’m not going anywhere so I figured I may as well dress for dinner...)

You see this dress, readers? This dress is a hero.

I ordered it one Monday afternoon, from a company based in LA. It arrived first thing the following Wednesday morning – in fact, it got us out of bed. I like to think that the moment my order was received, the dress jumped off the shelves and took off down the highway, dodging all obstacles in its path and leaping buildings in a single bound in order to get to the airport, where it hopped onto the first available flight to the UK, in order to be with me.

Like I said: a hero.

This dress crossed the United States, and then crossed the Atlantic Ocean, in less than 48 hours. Royal Mail, meanwhile, have had my packages for seven days now, and have been unable to transport them the two miles from their sorting office to my house. Two miles, people. Seven days. What’s more, when I called them this morning they said they have “absolutely no idea” when they’ll be able to deliver these packages, and that they’re not even going to try for the time being.

I’m not getting any of my parcels before I go on holiday, folks. They as good as guaranteed that. Given that many of those parcels were things I’d bought specifically FOR the holiday, that kind of sucks.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re all “Two miles?!” surely you could get off your lazy ass and walk it to collect the stuff if you want it that badly?”

You’re right. I could. And I absolutely would, no problem. But when I presented this idea to the Royal Mail, they stopped me in my tracks. I can’t collect the parcels, they said, because they haven’t even sorted them into areas. “See, we have a few hundred parcels here right now,” said the man I spoke to. “And they’re all jumbled up. We don’t even have them sorted into different areas, so it would take hours to go through them all to find even one of them.”

(I offered to go down and do this myself. They wouldn’t let me. At this point the most frustrating thing isn’t the fact that the mail can’t be delivered: it’s the fact that my stuff is sitting in an office just a couple of miles away, but I can’t get access to it.)

(Can we call them the Royal Fail now, or would that just be too much, do you think?)

I did, however, manage to get two of my parcels today, but only because of my other hero: Terry. These were parcels which were with courier companies in Edinburgh. Somehow they’d both managed to make it all the way up the country, through those great “snowfields of England” as Sky News now persist in calling them, and to the Edinburgh delivery office. After that, though, they apparently dropped off the face of the earth, because not only did those offices not deliver the packages, they didn’t even bother to update the tracking page to tell us they wouldn’t be delivering.  Terry finally managed to get hold of someone on the phone this morning, and was told they wouldn’t even be attempting to come into our town because it was “too snowy”. So he jumped into the car, and drove out there and back himself. Yes, through the OMGSNOW. It took him exactly the same amount of time it always takes to get there. Isn’t that amazing?

So Terry, you’re my hero. You and my green dress.