Sir - There should be a special jobsworth' prize for insane petty bureaucracy, for which I nominate Royal Mail. Yesterday I got a card through the door saying the local delivery office was holding a letter underpaid by 6p for which they wanted to charge me £1.06: "includes handling fee for underpaid items".

Having failed to find a human on their official help'-line, I phone the local delivery office (yes, I still have their number, despite attempts to hide it). I am told that the postman is not allowed to deal with this on the door, but the addressee must send money/stamps to the delivery office for the item to be released.

However I have no idea whether I want the item, which might be junk mail, though it is more likely that the sender just made an innocent mistake with the new letter sizes. The person I spoke to wasn't going to find it to see who it came from, and said that, unpaid, it would be returned to sender (costing them time and effort) or, if there wasn't a return address on the outside, "sent to our returned letters centre in Belfast to be opened to see if there is an address inside for return".

Belfast! What's that going to cost? And all for underpayment of 6p. As the saying goes, this would be funny if it wasn't happening to me . . .

Anthony Cheke, Oxford