‘I haven’t been able to buy food since November because of Royal Mail’

It was once one of Britain’s most highly prized institutions, but today’s Royal Mail has been failing customers for months, even before staff embark on a series of strikes in the fortnight before Christmas.

Patients are missing hospital appointments and test results, shoppers have been left without bank cards, and court cases have collapsed because documents arrived late.

Electronics giant Currys cut ties with Royal Mail – which floated on the stock market in 2013 – earlier this week, saying it had a responsibility to customers, while major banks declined to rule out following suit.

The 500-year-old institution has also struggled to head off repeated strikes that started in the summer. One expert warned the dispute was damaging its reputation and called on executives to show more flexibility.

Regulator Ofcom recently accepted Royal Mail’s explanation that standards slipped last year because of the pandemic, but is understood to be keeping a close watch as performance declines further.

Mike McCusker, a councillor from Salford, said he had had no post for two weeks and had discovered that his eyesight was at risk from diabetes only after retrieving his NHS letter from a local sorting office.

“The results came back and said there’s something wrong with the back of your eye, we want to increase your number of check-ups each year,” he said. “But it could have been: ‘We are very concerned about this and you need to make an appointment to get laser treatment on your eye.’ If you don’t know, you don’t know.”

Mr McCusker added that he had been contacted by residents who had learnt about hospital appointments only when it was too late or were waiting to receive crucial energy ­discount vouchers, for two months in some cases.

There were only four strike days in the month to Dec 8, but members of the public waited weeks for their letters. Postal workers say this is because they are told by their management to tackle the backlog of parcels first.

Anne Whalley, a housebound pensioner from Southport on Merseyside, relies on internet grocery shopping and has not been able to buy food since late November while she has waited for a replacement debit card to arrive.

“It’s traumatic,” the 81-year-old said. “Thankfully I’m old, I hoard food. I’ve always got things in the freezer and I’ve got a dry store cupboard with tinned stuff.”

Royal Mail’s failure to contain strikes has also hit the court system. A paralegal based in the North West, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said cases were falling through because documents regularly arrived three weeks late.

“It’s been extremely stressful because of the amount of additional work we’ve been having to do,” he said. “I guess we’re lucky – if it’s somebody trying to get custody of their children then that’s much worse for them.”

‘BT shows it can be sorted’

Since strikes began in August, goodwill has ebbed between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union, which accuse each other of “holding Christmas to ransom”.

Russ Mould of AJ Bell, a stockbroker, urged Royal Mail executives to reach a deal by copying BT’s example. The telecoms company recently won round striking workers with a £1,500 pay rise.

“BT has managed to reach a conclusion, albeit probably from a stronger base in terms of cash flow and profitability,” Mr Mould said. “But it shows it can be done.”

If the dispute dragged on in the “brutally competitive” field of parcel delivery, he added, retailers might follow Currys and leave Royal Mail for other couriers.

In the first half of 2022 Royal Mail made an adjusted operating loss of £219m, against a £235m profit a year earlier. Around £5.5m was spent on resolving hundreds of thousands of customer complaints.

This is not the only part of the business in decline. Between June and September, just 73pc of first class post was delivered on time – 20 percentage points below its goal.

Ofcom closed an investigation into the company last Friday but is already mulling another, noting its “concern” at falling customer service levels.

Royal Mail partly attributes its financial problems to the fact that, by law, it must deliver letters six days a week. It claims this service is in “structural decline”, with letter volumes down almost a quarter since 2019.

Its idea to spur sales is for new stamps to feature barcodes, allowing customers to send video messages by post. Non-coded stamps will cease to be valid from August next year.

A number of people who spoke to The Telegraph were sceptical of the move and claimed the scheme for exchanging old stamps was chaotic and badly thought-out.

Ed Clarke, a tutor from Hampshire, sent in £25 of stamps and received 199 first class stamps in return, which would cost almost £200. “They’re incompetent, but at least they’re incompetent in my favour,” he said.

A Royal Mail spokesman said it had made several concessions in its offer to the CWU, which include raising pay by up to 9pc over 18 months and delaying compulsory redundancies until April 2023 at the earliest.

He apologised for the fall in standards and blamed it on the strikes, while insisting that the “vast majority” of stamp exchanges had taken place “effectively and efficiently”.

The spokesman said Royal Mail prioritised delivering Covid tests and medical prescriptions during walkouts, with government and NHS letters immediately afterwards.

He denied that the company prioritised parcels, but said offices might shift larger packages to “address health and safety concerns” following a strike.