Thousands could be hit with late payment charges
November 10, 2007
Following the latest Royal Mail postal strike thousands of consumers could find themselves being hit with costly late payment charges, as the postal service attempts to try and deal with the massive backlog of post.
The recent 48 hour walkout by Royal Mail staff over pay and conditions as resulted in a backlog of around sixty million items, according to recent reports, and this is going to take a considerable amount of time to get through resulting in postal items, including payments to creditors, arriving far later than expected.
More walkouts are planned for the coming weeks by postal staff, and this is set to make the problem even worse. Many are concerned that these strikes could result in huge penalties being applied to many customers’ accounts for late payments resulting from postal delays because of the strikes. Many consumers may have put cheques in the post to various creditors, such as credit card issuers, but their payments are unlikely to reach their destination in time.
One industry official stated: “Those borrowers who put cheques in the post to their lenders over the last 10 days or so stand to incur a late charge as their remittances languish in the Post Office’s overflowing depots.”
He also added that many of these lenders were set to enjoy a “huge windfall from others’ misfortune” as a result of the situation, and the consumers that have posted out cheques should contact their creditors as soon as possible to advise them.
He added: “With little or no deliveries this week and a huge backlog of post to be dealt with, millions of people could be affected unless they pick up the phone to their lender and stamp out the possibility of being treated as a bad payer.”
Alan Wright
10th November 2007
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