AN ADVENTURE holiday firm claims it has lost thousands of pounds of potential business because of Royal Mail's failure to deliver its post. Ever since Outlook Expeditions was launched two years ago in Bangor, it has had problems sending and receiving its mail, says director Rhys Davies. The accusation comes as a report out today shows hundreds of letters are being delivered to the wrong houses in North Wales every month, but few customers bother to complain. As a new business, Outlook decided to run a series of expensive mailshot campaigns, but at least 50% were never received. Mr Davies said: "To start with, it was a joke. Following up leads by phone, we discovered that about half our letters had never arrived. "Potentially, it could have cost our business anything up to £150,000. "We're a fast-moving, global business, where people expect us to respond in the next hour, not the next day. "But how can we, when post is being misdelivered?" "Anything that's remotely important has to be sent by special delivery now. "For a postal business like Royal Mail, that's ridiculous." Across the UK, about 14.4m items of post are lost every year, with 60% simply put through the wrong letter box. Consumer group Postwatch commissioned a survey among 2,100 customers and found half had received mail not intended for them in the past six months. One in 20 put misdelivered mail straight in the bin, and 48% delivered it themselves. Chairman Peter Carr said: "Thousands of letters every month are accidentally put through the wrong letterbox and are never passed on to the correct address, and that letter sitting in your home could mean a great deal to the person it is addressed to." A Royal Mail spokesman said: "We have been working hard to improve our services and have substantially cut the amount of mail that is misdelivered, lost or delayed. "Misdeliveries happen for a variety of reasons: the item may be poorly or wrongly addressed, or may be mistakenly delivered to the wrong address. "Royal Mail apologises to customers for any mail that it misdelivers, or is lost or delayed for any reason. "Every single letter matters to us, so we are continuing to do all we can to reduce the problem, including improving training for new recruits and temporary staff and introducing better equipment in local delivery offices." North Wales has been running a scheme designed to cut delivery times. A bar-code system has been tested in Rhyl and Flintshire and proved successful. It records the time postmen open boxes. It suggested some postmen were emptying boxes before the advertised last collection time. Postwatch Wales representative Gordon Donaldson said: "Why should the public pay a premium for first class treatment only to have their letters lie in the box overnight because a few postmen empty boxes before the advertised last collection time?" | 
