Mr Chris wrote:
It's the "they" that trips this up, though. The "they" in this instance was a lazy posty, not the company itself. The company isn't its employees, and so unless it directs its employees to forge signatures (or is aware of it and doesn't stop it) the company has done nothing wrong. And the posty hasn't committed "fraud" as he hasn't done anything for his personal monetary gain or with the intention of making a monetary gain for the company.
Sorry, Meems, but rather than being a cirminal issue this is just one of lazy, incompetent staff. Isn't there a "Postwatch" regulator that could get interested in this sort of thing?
I did mention before that when I phoned up to enquire about this I was told that signing for packages at the beginning of a round was quite a common practice - that they did it in case they didn't finish the round on time. He didn't say that they condoned this, but he didn't say otherwise, either. he said it wasn't exactly great for the customer, but... I supposed he gets paid to do his job, and he isn't actually doing his job but forging people's signatures to falsely prove that he has performed the tasks laid out by the job.
I don't think it is a criminal matter, I wouldn't have the time nor energy to do anything about it if it was - I have my item now, so at least that's something. I will encourage Craig to claim for the Recorded delivery compensation, though - he had a contract that they'd deliver it prior to 1pm, they did not, he's entitled to his money back.
Postwatch are useless. I had a terrible, terrible bout of post theft one year. I never received any birthday cards (boo-hoo) until about New Year when 17 slit open cards found their way to my door. I got nowhere with the sorting office, no apology or anything. I eventually contacted postwatch and after about a month I got a letter saying that they'd passed my letter on to the sorting office, even though I contacted postwatch to explain that the sorting office refused to deal with the matter.