Receiving mail

Applies to all Customers

Incoming Post

The Whiteknights House mail hub receives ordinary mail for most buildings. Royal Mail pre- sort this according to postcodes. A few other buildings have their own deliveries. Generally, it is important to emphasise to delivery carriers that each building only accepts deliveries that are clearly intended for that building. We do accept deliveries from other carriers for Edith Morley, which we pass on during the day.

If students in halls ask about incoming items, they should be referred to the hall's mail room/ reception. All halls receive direct deliveries from all carriers.

Tracked Items

The mail sorting hub in Whiteknights House is not a central delivery point for parcels and other items requiring a signature on delivery (only Royal Mail). Staff in all buildings should be careful only to sign for items clearly intended for their own building.

The size of the University and the huge volume of these kinds of parcels arriving everyday, increases the chance of courier mistakes, carelessness, laziness and worse. We have proven that these types of poor customer service are a regular occurrence for items addressed to Whiteknights House, by using our 'Anonymous Signature' system for accepting incoming parcels. We recommend all University sites adopt a similar system to avoid accusations of signing for items that were never actually delivered, at least not to the correct address.

UoR Addresses

To ensure your mail reaches you as quickly as possible, please ensure that, in addition to your office/Department name, you provide the correct address, and postcode for your building. Please inform us if your department or unit moves by completing the change of address form.

All buildings now have a unique, satnav and online mapping friendly postcode. Some of these services are quicker than others at picking up the underlying location data but they all should catch up in time.

You should no longer use the now cancelled PO Box based addressing system. All new addresses are detailed in the following spreadsheet: Whiteknights Building Addresses.

UK addressing data

There is only one source of validated and reliable addressing information in the UK. Unfortunately it is maintained on behalf of national government, local authorities, OS and Royal Mail by a private company, GeoPlace. This means that access to commercial levels of data extraction is not free, which is why online mapping and related services are often out of date. Many of them rely instead on private users to provide data, which is unreliable. It is likely your favourite map search service is delivered this way.

The most ironic example of how this can not work in an end-user's favour, is that Royal Mail use OpenStreetMap on their website (They previously used Bing, which suffers from the same problem). OpenStreetMap are clearly not referencing GeoPlace data regularly. This means that the maps used by the organisation who issue post codes to display address locations can't be relied upon to display them correctly. It is possible that OpenStreeMap may never reference GeoPlace data.

If students in halls ask about incoming items, they should be referred to the hall's mail room/ reception. All halls receive direct deliveries from all carriers.

Tracked Items

The mail sorting hub in Whiteknights House is not a central delivery point for parcels and other items requiring a signature on delivery (only Royal Mail). Staff in all buildings should be careful only to sign for items clearly intended for their own building.

The size of the University and the huge volume of these kinds of parcels arriving everyday, increases the chance of courier mistakes, carelessness, laziness and worse. We have proven that these types of poor customer service are a regular occurrence for items addressed to Whiteknights House, by using our 'Anonymous Signature' system for accepting incoming parcels (intended for Whiteknights House). We track anything we have to sign for to its ultimate destination (even if it turns out not to be for Whiteknights House) using a system similar to the ones used by couriers to deliver them in the first place. See section below on missing items where we explain how this can sometimes find misdelivered items.

Tracked items that were mis-delivered to the wrong UoR (Whiteknights) location usually find there way to us via the internal mail system. When we find these and identify them as having been 'signed for', we will then treat them as though we signed for them and track to their true intended destination. These courier 'mistakes' are resolved by us at no cost to them but will result in delays.

We recommend all University sites adopt a similar system to avoid accusations of signing for items that were never actually delivered, at least not to the correct address.

Late or missing items

If you have not yet received an incoming timed or secure delivery requiring a signature, first check the location it was addressed to. Each University building has its own associated delivery point and procedures for handling items requiring signatures. If you cannot find your item there, ask the sender for 'proof of delivery' and insist on a copy of the signature. When you have evidence of a name the courier claims to have obtained, then email postroom@reading.ac.uk with -

• the tracking number
• the courier company used
• signature details
• claimed date of delivery.

We will quickly tell you if we signed for it and what we did with it. See the section above on Tracked Items to understand why a 'signature name' might not match anything on the staff search web page.

If you (or we) have not got the item and it cannot unequivocally be proven to have been delivered then insist on a refund or re-send. If you get no joy, tell your credit card company or equivalent. It is the company you bought the item from who have the contract with the delivery company and who have responsibility for getting it to you.

Business reply services

We are able to supply postage-paid envelopes printed with the University address for surveys, research projects and similar applications. For more information, including costs, see the business reply services page.