Is dishonesty on the rise?

[Booldawg]

This seems to happen more and more; you send a bday card via Royal Mail and some unscrupulous mail worker opens the envelope and whips the voucher away. This never happened until recently. It seems rife these days. Are we becoming more dishonest as a nation?

[mightywease]

How do you know it didn't happen until recently? And how often does it happen now?

[jackthehat]

I think, at times, there becomes a culture of dishonesty in cerain places.
The PO sorting Office where I used to live had a terrible reputation and became a 'closed-shop' almost, staff-wise.

It took a lot of under-cover work, secret filming and investigative input to wheedle out the rotten eggs, and then once they were gone...........problem solved.

I think this applies wherever you get 'like-minded' people.

[Booldawg]

personal experience wease! As I have family oop north bday and christmas presents are usually vouchers. The last 3 years we've had problems both ways. Resorting to sending cheques!

[Ankou]

actually if you look at the figures for the past 6/7 years for postie letter theft, its dropped by nearly a half,

case law in prosecuting posties and post masters goes back to 1913 and beyond, so postie theft /dishonesty is not new, and from the reported figures, it aint rising either.

[mightywease]

Fair enough. I have never experienced it with the post, though I know it goes on.

As to whether society has become more dishonest, no I don't necesarily think so it is just that we maybe notice it more and there are more opportunities for people to practice it.

[milly143]

Cheques aren't as safe as you might hope either. I was chasing up a cheque I was promised had been posted by a customer for two weeks, thinking they had lied about sending it. Until the time I called them and they informed me the cheque had been banked and the money left their account. Not by us it hadn't. Someone had got hold of the cheque and changed the name (god knows how they could make our company name look like anything else) and it was then accepted by their bank. It was £16,000.00!

[ummmm]

I don't think we're more dishonest. In my 37 years on this planet there has always been someone with their hand in the till. Much of the time it was the person you'd least expect. We also ended up having to have the safe alarmed.

[Ric.ror]

I want to speak up for the postie - my mums is a darling and so are the one I have now and the one I had at the old house - they could not do enough
As for dishonesty - it happens everywhere in all shapes and guises

[Davethedog]

did you read that or is it from your own observations?

[Red_John]

trouble is that Birthday cards etc are so obvious and there's a good chance they contain money/vouchers. We could try puting them in a brown envelope with a printed label and they'll probably get ignored by the thieving scum.

[Postdog]

As an ex postman I strongly object to some of these comments. You get bad apples in any walk of life but I didn't, and I doubt any of my then colleagues, would consider throwing a job away for the sake of a voucher. At my office we had a practice of showing the manager any cards that looked damaged or tampered with so that any approriate action could be taken - it wasn't a directive, just something we did.

[smart1]

This has been happening for years - before the advent of vouchers, cash was put in cards and was being stolen 'in transit'. That is one reason why vouchers became so popular. So to answer the Q, not about this, but yes in general I think.

[wolf63]

I have never had any problems with missing mail - either parcels or letters. I think that our postal service is pretty good.

Most people are honest and that has always been so.

[Khandro]

Milly, I'm intrigued by your post about the £16,000 cheque scam; so what happened next?

[boxtops]

It's not new, stuff in transit has gone missing for years, at any point along the delivery chain.

I'm amazed about the £16K cheque though - not only fraud, but couldn't a payment of that size been done by bank transfer?

[DTCwordfan]

Bit like British Airways workers with your luggage - bad apples........

[JonnyBoy12]

It is usually very obvious when something is a birthday card, due to the envelope. I think that you shoud all disguise your cards to look like normal things. One thing you can not hide is DVDs from Love Film by post. What is to stop the postie opening up your DVDs, watching them, and then posting them on? How would he or she be found out doing that, as the only noticable things would be a slight delay in getting your films back? Has anyone here encountered this problem?

[Khandro]

JB, Tampering with the Royal Mail and thereby risking your job, may be worth it to someone for a decent financial return, but to watch someone else's DVD ? I think not, - you might have already seen it anyway!