ROYAL MAIL faces an angry consumer backlash this weekend over more than 2m parcels and letters lost or delayed in the Christmas post.

Customers across the country are in danger of being left without their presents as postal workers are overwhelmed by the £10 billion boom in online shopping. The backlog has allegedly been compounded by postal workers deliberately failing to deliver presents to save time on their rounds.

Yesterday, at depots round the country, customers were being forced to brave the winter chill and wait in long queues to reclaim their Christmas parcels.

About 1.2m letters and parcels are already estimated to have been lost in the Christmas post. Hundreds of thousands of other items are delayed or awaiting collection at depots where queues of up to two hours have formed.

Postwatch, the independent watchdog, last week wrote to Adam Crozier, chief executive of Royal Mail, to demand that the recorded mail service be improved or scrapped, because so many customers who had paid extra for recorded mail complained that postal workers were routinely failing to get a signature on delivery.

The chaos managed to disrupt the last weekend before Christmas for thousands as they were forced to queue up to collect undelivered packages. At mid-morning there was a two-hour queue outside Totterdown depot in Bristol and similar waits at depots in Brighton and London.

Several customers claimed that they had been forced to queue because postal workers had delivered “you were out” cards even though they were at home. Curdell Smith, 71, was among those waiting outside in Wandsworth, south London, yesterday. “The postman came to my house yesterday but rather than knock on my door, he just posted the card through the letter box. They’re not doing their job properly, otherwise I should not be waiting here in the cold,” Smith said.

Many customers complained of long queues at the depots, only to be told that their parcels could not be found when they were finally served. Caroline Hawkins, 59, an NHS community manager who queued for an hour yesterday in Bristol, said: “I’ve just tried to pick up my parcel but they have no idea where it is. I feel angry and fed up.”

Royal Mail will handle about 120m parcels this Christmas, more than a 20% increase on last year. It says the vast majority will be delivered, but admits that it is recorded as a successful delivery even if a “you were out” card is dropped through the door.

In some areas customers have been forced to queue outside over several days. Paul Pover, 60, a former warehouse manager, told how he had waited for six hours on three separate days at a Bolton depot before staff finally found his parcels.

He was also at home on both occasions when postal staff claimed the gifts that he had ordered online could not be delivered. “They should never have allowed it to descend into this chaos,” he said. “Everyone has got their own horror story and the queues have been terrible.”

There have also been queues over several days at Kettering, Northamptonshire, where people had to wait in the cold. Customers have been handed a printed apology which blames “extremely high volumes and an inadequate building”.

Postwatch said last week it was concerned at claims that parcels had not been delivered when customers were at home. Millie Banerjee, the chairwoman of Postwatch, wrote to Crozier last Tuesday, outlining the problems with recorded mail and suggesting it should be abolished if the service cannot be improved.

Postwatch said Royal Mail’s most recently available figures indicated that it lost about 1m items of mail a month. Royal Mail said yesterday it was no longer publishing figures on the amount of mail it lost because the information was commercially confidential.

A spokesman said most postal depots were not experiencing problems, but any complaints would be treated seriously. Postal workers were always instructed to knock when trying to deliver a parcel.

Royal Mail said it will deliver more than 2 billion items of mail this Christmas and the lost or delayed items are only a very small proportion. It added that there have been significant improvements in meeting delivery targets and the number of complaints about the post has fallen significantly.

Additional reporting: Brendan Montague, Abul Taher, Holly Watt and Graham Hind

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