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That may be true, but Royal Mail does not play a significant part in this fraud. There's nothing Royal Mail could do to stop this fraud.
by FDSGSG 7y ago
That may be true, but Royal Mail does not play a significant part in this fraud. There's nothing Royal Mail could do to stop this fraud.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoHaving correct tracking and proofs of postage, and potentially coherency checks between written address and barcode, would make it much more difficult to impossible.
- FDSGSG 7y agoNope, that'll do nothing at all. This scam works just fine even if the fraudster does not tamper with the label and the seller receives an empty box.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoThe empty box scam is one scam, all the abuse that is possible because of Royal Mail's negligence is another. At least if the seller is the one receiving an empty box he can set up procedures to attempt to prove it.
- FDSGSG 7y agoWhat abuse is that? The example in the article is the empty box scam. >At least if the seller is the one receiving an empty box he could set up procedures to attempt to prove it. I definitely agree that would be a better outcome, but I think it is a stretch to blame royal mail for this. If someone really wants their package to get lost in shipping there's not much you can do about it.
- rasz 7y agoReceiving empty box gives you evidence to submit for Police investigation. Much easier to prosecute than "system said I receive package".
- soneil 7y agoI was curious how much coherency would help, thinking perhaps it's just the postcode that goes in the barcode too. Apparently they also use a field "Delivery Point Suffix" "A postcode is not always sufficient to uniquely identify each delivery point in the UK – for example, in shared buildings. Some postcodes relate to only one delivery point, while others may cover up to a hundred. The average is 15. For that reason a Delivery Point Suffix (DPS) has been developed. The DPS is a two character code (a number and a letter) which enables each delivery point to be identified. The DPS can be created by extracting the postcode together with the house number or name using Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF)."
- mytailorisrich 7y agoA postcode never refers to a single delivery point (i.e. address), except in some specific, rare cases.
- ascorbic 7y agoIt's not at all rare. Any building that gets a large amount of post is likely to have its own postcode.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoSo it's rare and specific. It's certainly not the standard case as suggested by the quote I commented on.