A Royal Mail fiasco which is plunging the postal system into crisis has been exposed by the Sunday Mercury. The under-fire company is losing a potential fortune because letters can be delivered first class - without payment. One simple scam involves writing the word 'Freepost' below the address on an unstamped letter. The second requires just sticking two 1p stamps on the corner of an envelope instead of the usual 28p cost. A Sunday Mercury investigation last week discovered that BOTH methods have a 100 per cent success rate. We sent 10 letters bearing the word 'Freepost' and 10 with the 1p stamps to different addresses across the Midlands. All 20 were delivered without any questions asked. Eighteen of them arrived the next day, with the other two a day later. The mail should have been stopped at the sorting office and a bill for the missing postage pushed through the letterbox of the addressee. Last night the ease with which the postal system can be defrauded was condemned by workers and customers alike. One union chief described the scams as yet another example of the crisis in which Royal Mail is embroiled. And one Midland customer, who last week received four correctly addressed and stamped First Class letters more than TWO MONTHS after they were posted, labelled the service a shambles. News of the cons comes just days after it was announced that Royal Mail admitted failing on all 15 performance targets in the three months to the end of June. More than 1.7 million first class letters were delivered late every day, official figures show, forcing the beleaguered company to pay customers a record £50 million compensation. And just 88.3 per cent of First Class letters were delivered on time, against a target of 92.5 per cent. Unions blamed the dismal performance on too many job cuts. But the Sunday Mercury understands that the sorting office machines which are supposed to double-check addresses and stamps cannot tell when the system is being abused. Franking machinery is unable to calculate the value of stamps on the letter. If more than one is used, they simply assume the correct postage has been paid. And an insider has claimed that the Royal Mail cannot tell the difference between genuine Freepost addresses and fake ones. Businesses have to buy a licence for a genuine Freepost service, costing between £60 and £157 per year, plus a deposit of up to £50. They also have to pay more than 20p a letter received and a small handling charge. One office manager from Redditch, Worcestershire, who last Tuesday received legitimate first class mail posted way back on June 16, said: "It's an utter shambles. "Someone sends mail without paying for it and it arrives next day while I have to wait more than two months for properly posted letters. What's going on? "I couldn't believe it when four letters arrived so late. One contained tickets for an event my son was due to attend, and which he missed as a result. "Another advertised a July sale. That's a fat lot of good when the letter arrives at the end of August. "These letters arrived on the very day the Post Office admitted it missed all its targets. Perhaps they were just rubbing salt into the wounds." Postwatch, the consumer watchdog for the Royal Mail, said: "We have asked the company to get to grips with this problem." A spokesman for Birmingham Communication Workers Union (CWU), which last week described the city's postal service as being in 'total chaos' said: "This shows there are things wrong with system. "Allowing these letters to be delivered without charge means Royal Mail is losing revenue. "The company says it is dragging more and more money back but there is a lot which could be done to help." A Royal Mail spokesman said: "Any deliberate attempt to send mail without the proper postage is an abuse of the postal system and is akin to fare-dodging. "Our clear message is: don't do it. We continually review our security and we will rigorously investigate any cases that come to our attention." The spokesman requested the Sunday Mercury to pay the correct postage cost for the 20 letters we sent - a total of £5.40 - which we willingly offered to do. He added: "Royal Mail has a range of checks and safeguards to check postage and last year we held 19.6 million letters which did not have the correct postage or no postage. We successfully collected a surcharge on the bulk of these. "In the vast majority of cases customers had made genuine mistakes - as is the case with 12 million other items that were posted last year without any address." The spokesman added that the Redditch fiasco - in which an entire street's mail was 76 DAYS late, was believed to be due to an employee dumping the mail. An investigation is now underway. Explaining the company's poor performance last week, Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier said the decision to ditch second delivery had required huge changes. But he insisted that there had been a sharp improvement in recent weeks. He claimed 90 per cent of first class letters were now arriving on time and delivery targets for second class mail were being hit. But the CWU said the new single delivery was placing 'appalling' pressure on postmen and women to complete their rounds in three and a half hours. "Bosses ignore complaints being made by staff," he added. "Something is surely wrong if we have people still delivering at 7pm and wives are having to take sandwiches to them." Have YOU had a problem with the post? Send your letters to Royal Mail Fiasco, Sunday Mercury, Weaman Street, Birmingham B4 6AY - and hope that they arrive. You can also e-mail SundayMercury@mrn.co.uk | 
