A CARD dropped through my letterbox telling me an item was waiting at Birch Park. So I set out on one of the coldest snowy days to collect it, only to find a letter from City of York Council without a stamp.

I paid the missing 32p and the £1 charge for the privilege of going to pick it up and opened it with baited breath. It was a reply to an enquiry I’d made a month earlier – or, rather, it wasn’t. It was totally unrelated to the original query.

So off I went to the council offices only to be told it couldn’t have happened because they frank all post leaving the building.

One person morphed into four until I made them understand that all they had to do was match the writing in the letter to the envelope and they could refund me my £1.32.

But the council has a no-refund policy and there was no access to petty cash. They suggested I make a formal complaint through the correct channels.

I stood my ground until I was offered a gesture of good will – four postage stamps. The irony was lost on them and I left the building.

Beth Dale, Hawthorn Meadows, Water Lane, Clifton Moor, York.


Kate Dowling, Customer Services Manager, City of York Council, said: “The despatch of outgoing correspondence is now being monitored even more closely by our Customer Services team and this complaint has also been investigated with post-room staff. “Because of the high volume of post it handles, on rare occasions it is possible a letter may slip through the franking process. Regrettably this seems to have happened with our reply to Ms Dale’s letter.

“In the past, providing stamps to the value of the post has been the most cost-efficient and effective way of resolving the matter. We apologise that, on this occasion, we have not met Ms Dale’s expectations of customer service.”