Royal Mail suspended a street's deliveries because of safety fears after a postman hurt his back driving over a pothole.
Outraged residents of Bell Lane, in Smalley, Derbyshire, were told of the temporary halt to their local postal service in a hand-delivered letter.
A Royal Mail manager wrote: "The postman jarred his back after he had driven his van down one of the potholes along Bell Lane. This resulted in him having to take the rest of the week off sick.
"I have now suspended delivery of mail to your address until this problem is rectified.
"I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused, but I have to consider the safety of my employees, and also possible damage to our vehicle."
However, farmer Dan Oldershaw, 35, who lives in Bell Lane with his wife, Nicki, and two children, Charlie, five, and Harriet, 18 months, said that he was "flabbergasted" when he read the letter.
"If it wasn't for the date stamp I would have thought it was an April Fool's joke," he said. "I half expected Jeremy Beadle to pop out from behind the curtain."
Mrs Oldershaw said that the family were also "astounded" that someone hand-delivered the Royal Mail letter, but not the rest of their mail at the same time.
A Royal Mail spokeswoman said: "The letter was sent by the local delivery office manager because the road was in a very poor state of repair. Deliveries to Bell Lane resumed on Saturday after repairs were made to the road surface.
"We would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused whilst deliveries were suspended for a short time. During this time customers were able to collect their mail from the local post office."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article