A woman said she is "heartbroken" after Royal Mail lost some of her mother's ashes in the post.
Christine Evans died in December 2021 after catching Covid-19. She was 62 years old. Honouring her mother, Kayleigh purchased a silver memorial pendant to encase some of Christine's ashes. The necklace was supposed to be a gift for Christine's sister Michelle.
However, after posting the pendant from Swansea to Colchester, where Michelle lives, on September 21, the necklace never arrived. Panicked, Kayleigh contacted Royal Mail to clarify its whereabouts but claims the postal service told her they don't know where the necklace is.
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Kayleigh told WalesOnline : "Royal Mail hasn’t got a clue where the necklace and the ashes are. They keep saying they just can’t find it. Obviously, my auntie is mortified. She's devastated. She was saying ‘that’s my sister Kayleigh!’, but what can I do?"
Kayleigh decided to get some of the ashes encased in the pendant which read "your wings sister were ready but your heart was not" as a gift for her mother's only sibling to have some of the ashes near her. She claims she posted it first class on September 21, however, as of October 25 - and countless phone calls with Royal Mail - the package still hasn't been located.
She said: "They’ve [Royal Mail] just said they don’t know where it is. They blamed it on the strike first of all, I just really don’t know. It’s just been lost. They’ve said there’s nothing they can do."
The missing item has caused a lot of emotional distress for the family. Kayleigh said: "It’s not even about the necklace, part of my mother is floating around somewhere. It’s not nice. It’s heartbreaking, it’s weird really.
"It’s her sister more than anything that I’m upset about. When I sent it off to her she was saying ‘thank you so much’ and she was so pleased, and now she’s just devastated."
Kayleigh said they expected the small parcel to be delivered within days, however nobody can locate it. She said: "When I rang and said it should be there by now, Royal Mail just said it’s in a postal station somewhere. We're all devastated."
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We are very sorry for the distress experienced by our customer in relation to this delivery. We understand the deep emotional significance of this item, and extend our deepest sympathies.
"We plan to contact our customer to apologise, gather further information and discuss next steps. Unfortunately it appears that this item was sent using a service which does not offer tracking and this makes it harder for us to locate it within our systems.
"The tracking options and level of compensation cover vary according to which delivery product is chosen, so we urge all customers to carefully consider which product is best when sending highly significant items. Information on our different delivery products is at: https://www.royalmail.com/sending/uk.”
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