I telephoned the number on the receipt and found that you can only check five at once on the phone and of those five only two had been delivered, three they had no record of at all. Interestingly enough I have had a 'phonecall from one of the three, so I know that one has also arrived yet Royal Mail have no details.

I just wonder what I paid £1 for.

I also learned that you must wait 15 working days before Royal Mail considers an item lost.

Further, when I spoke to the complaints department I discovered that at present the Track and Trace facility on the Royal Mail website are experiencing delays and are currently inputting data for items that were delivered on 4 July, which would explain why none of my letters are traceable online yet.

It turns out that Recorded Delivery is not a guaranteed service either, Recorded Delivery items can get lost and are treated as any other first or second class item.

Now that they have lost their monopoly you’d think they would actually try harder