I can ionly hope u get some good news very soon, this morning it was actually a UKBA employee who hand delivered the residency permit, my wife had to prove it was her address by providing letters addressed to her etc and then signed for it but apparently the passports will be delivered under separate cover in a few days time.
We also had a letter from Sarah Wells last year stating the same crap as yours, they obviously cannot cope with the situation and those of us with relatively easy applications still have to wait in line it seems although payment of an additonal £300 and they can find the time to process in 2 hours. The whole situation stinks and of course the next hurdle will be the life in the Uk test and then ILR and another huge bill