A ROYAL MAIL blunder has left around 650 members of the Kent County Cricket Supporters' Club with a small and unexpected price to pay this Christmas.

The unwanted pay out follows the disastrous distribution of this winter's edition of the club's quarterly newsletter, The Kent Supporter.

Sorting office officials in Maidstone forgot to frank the envelopes leaving each of the club's intended recipients with a 99p postage charge to pay.

Once the mistake came to light club and sorting office officials agreed to send letters of apology to the club's 648-strong mailing list, only for a number of those letters to go out unfranked and attract a second 99p handling charge.

Supporters' club chairman, Colin James, said: "When we first contacted Royal

Mail they said they would immediately refund the £600-odd, but three weeks on we're still waiting for that.

"Obviously the fact that some of the second letters went out without being franked has bought the club into further disrepute. Talk about compounding the crime.

"Our first concern is to get our money refunded and any payment over and above that will be treated as a donation to the club."

Editor of the club's newsletter Canon Chris Byers said: "You can imagine how we all feel about being let down in this way and draw our members' attention to a problem that is not of our making. As editor I feel particularly upset that several weeks of work has yet to reach our readership."

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "Royal Mail naturally apologise for the error that resulted is supporters of Kent having to pay excess postage. We are currently investigating this matter and our customer services team is looking at repaying in full the postage charges incurred."