The only information in the letter is an object number, which I assume CTT have made up at the point of entry and an indication of the country of origin.

I have traced two items that have been posted to me from the UK, one is a personal letter from a friend who, knowing I collect stamps has included a few used stamps from countries around the world, and the second is a small parcel of quirky items bought from various shops around the UK, nothing from an e-commerce site.

Well I thought, let me try and disentangle one of these.

With so little information to go on, I chose a CTT generated object number at random from the letters, duly registered and logged in to the CTT web site and entered the CTT object number.

It appeared that I then had to select which e-commerce site I had purchased the unknown object from, of course the item was not purchased from an e-commerce site but there appeared to be no option for this.

In desperation I chose one at random, I was then asked to enter the invoice number? Again eventually I entered a random sequence of letters and numbers as an invoice number. This was accepted and I then had to enter a value for this CTT object which for a personal letter is ZERO. The CTT website would not accept a value of zero. At this point I gave up.

Reading the website, CTT announce that they will attempt to contact the e-commerce site, how they will do that is very unclear as the item was not purchased from an e-commerce web site. I have had to assume that they will contact the sender. After checking with the sender CTT have not contacted them as yet.

It seems that CTT are holding everything posted in the UK as if they are purchased on an e-commerce site regardless of any information to the contrary.

It would be helpful if CTT could give a little more information along with their own object number, such as the senders address.

I can only hope now that CTT will return the letters and parcels to the sender and not just destroy the objects as I will view that as theft.

It could be helpful to all if someone from CTT could explain how they decide an object is from an e-commerce web site and how they assume that an object always has a value greater than zero.

William, Tomar