The Royal Mail has apologised for an "unacceptable" mistake after an Oxford woman was given the wrong information about the opening hours of a collection office.

Pam Philp, from Edmund Road, Cowley, received a Royal Mail card informing her that she had missed a delivery and telling her to go to her local depot to collect the package.

But the opening times were wrong by three hours - and out of date by three months.

Ms Philp only found out about the mistake when her son-in-law drove her to her local depot, the Sandy Lane West collection office, the same afternoon.

When she got there, she found the doors shut and a sign informing customers of a new closing time - some three hours earlier.

Ms Philp said: "The delivery card said I could pick up my post from Sandy Lane post office from Monday to Friday, 7am to 5pm.

"My son-in-law took me up there straight away and we found the doors all locked and a sign saying, as from November, the times were changing to 7am to 2pm.

"I was really annoyed. It is not like it was wrong by the odd half an hour. It was three hours out of time"

Ms Philp had ordered the package, a model aeroplane which had already been returned once as it had arrived damaged, as a present for her son-in-law.

A spokesman for Royal Mail Customer Services apologised for the mistake, labelling it 'unacceptable', and promised they would feed back the information to management.

A spokesman for the Royal Mail said: "We would like to apologise to the customer who received a card displaying the incorrect opening hours at the East Oxford Delivery Office. When the opening hours changed in November last year all such cards should have been destroyed, but it appears this one remained in circulation."

Ms Philp added: "The birthday present was already late and all this has just delayed it even further. I wonder how many more people have been caught out by this. It is not like they haven't had the time to change the details.

"I wasn't the only one up there. There was another young lady there who was also obviously trying to collect her post so it wasn't just a matter of me being given a card with the wrong time.

"You would have thought they would more than enough opportunity to change their times as November was three months ago!"