A man has been left baffled after a letter arrived on his doorstep that should have been delivered more than 10,500 miles away to an address in Australia.
When Keith Georgiou from Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, picked up the letter, he realized it should have been sent to an address in Penrith, New South Wales.
To add to the confusion, the state of Australia was shortened to NSW, meaning that only one word on the envelope matched Mr Georgiou's address.
Royal Mail said errors were rare but did happen.
“It's a joke how he ended up in Penarth instead of Australia, isn't it,” the 60-year-old said.
Mr Georgiou saw the letter over the weekend and saw from the envelope that it had been posted from the Exeter area.
“Obviously it has gone through several classification offices and no one has picked it up,” he said.
“It's got the airmail sticker, it's got everything right, and it ends up in South Wales. It hasn't even gone to Penrith (in Cumbria).”
Incredibly, this is not the first time Mr Georgiou has received a letter that should have gone to Australia, but he said this week's discovery was ironic, given the news about Royal Mail Takeover and the fact that recently fined £10.5m for missing delivery targets.
“Even with the mail delivering to the house, you would think it would have gone 'hang on a second',” he said.
“It's not exactly the same address. It's a shame it's gotten this far.”
Mr Georgiou has now reposted the letter – after writing a note about it informing Royal Mail of the error.
“Hope he doesn't come back here!” he said.
Royal Mail said: “We deliver up to 35 million letters every day in December and sometimes mistakes happen.
“It appears that, at this time, a letter addressed to Penrith was mistakenly read as Penarth… our team normally pick up any errors made by mail sorting machines, but they are seldom noticed in time.”
