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The process works – or is supposed to – like this. If Royal Mail is unable to deliver a package, it is kept at the local sorting office. If no one claims it within three weeks it is returned to the sender or, if the sender’s address is not clearly marked, shipped to a huge returns centre in Belfast.Items are then held by staff for a further month, while ‘parcel detectives’ try to return the package to the rightful owner.The parcels are opened and, if no addresses can be found, the contents are separated – clothing, electrical items, jewellery – and sent to auction.The £1 million a year this generates is ploughed back into compensation for missing post and into the cost of running the Belfast centre.Courier firms Hermes and DPD have similar systems for selling undeliverable items, although a Channel 4 investigation showed that, at one point, Hermes had been sending parcels directly to an auction house despite having the correct details for the intended customers.A spokesman said: ‘Hermes successfully delivers more than 630 million parcels each year and has a policy of sending undeliverable parcels to an auction house. Hermes makes no profit from these sales as it has already paid out compensation to its customers.’Buying packages that genuinely have no owner is completely legal. But it is little surprise that the murky online marketplace is riddled with dishonesty.
