Whats wrong with the postal service?
 

Few years ago we had mail delivered between 07.00-07.30, then second post at about 11.00.

Now we get one delivery at about 13.30. Seems they also deliver about 4 days a week now as well.

Post box also only has one time on it for collection as well wheras it used to have 3 guaranteed collections a day.

Why has the service got so bad? Unions? Bad management?

Chip.

Didn't the post office recently say that for every 28p 2st class letter it cost them 30p or something?

At home our post turns up at about 1pm. Business post is morning but not as early as it used to be. I think 2nd class is being phased out too.

They also seem to be closing or selling off post offices. I live in Haverfordwest which is quite a large town in West Wales. The local main post office is being sold to Asda or Londis or something stupid and the post office will become one window at the back of this new and YET ANOTHER supermarket. Its complete madness becuase at the moment during lunch with 4 people on the que is still out the door.

Post and delivery services takes ages in the UK. How come something can be sent from Hong Kong on Monday and arrive on my desk Friday morning yet I have to wait 2 weeks for something coming from Birmingham! just doesn't make sense.

Actually i was going to post on this at some point- beat me to it.

One post delivery a day here now, normally comes after midday- normally about 1:30/2ish which i think personally is ridiculous.
Ocassionally (like yesterday) we will not get any post, then loads the next day- very annoying, especially when waiting for records or mail that has been shipped next day delivery.

Wierd thing is, for large record deliveries/parcels they manage to get them here at 8am most days with no problems. Not like i live out in the sticks either

Post box in my road ( 5 yds from my house) is still picked up 3 or 4 times a day- no problems there

There is an unbelievable amount of post lost every day as well! I can't remember the figure but it is in the hundreds of thousands

I've noticed this too, we were told that second post was to be cancelled. However the earliest my post arrives is 1230 now when it used arrive at 8am. so it seems that it was the first post that was cancelled not the second.

If you believe the documentary on the Royal Mail a few weeks back its because the staff are all thieving scum, the managers don't give a damn and people at the top are clueless.

I had a CD stolen by someone at my sorting office. CD-wow sorted it for me but this should not happen.

Chip.

Sent a PC game by recorded delivery a few months ago and it never arrived. Phoned the Royal Mail to find out where it had got to and they offered me £28 (can only offer 100 X first class post charge) immediately and the cheque arrived the next day. The ease with which they offered me the money implies to me that thousands of recorded delivery packages must go missing every day.

A friend of mine used to run a mail order games rental service (Playstation 2, XBOX etc.) and some games would go missing for months and months before suddenly turning up. When he wound the company up and we went through all his stock we worked out that 15 games had been lost in over 3500 mailings, Not great but a lot better than we expected.

I ordered about 6 items on-line within one week and they lost ;) 5 of the six :( , and 2 of the replacements :mad: leaving me dangerously close to being blacklisted by the supplier :mad::mad::mad:

Thieving cnuts. I'm sure the cost of so called losses added to the constant rotation of disposable minimum wage staff could pay for decent well payed trustworthy staff.

You know what they say, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Thieving cnut monkeys :mad:

Some is genuine loss, which is somewhat unacceptable, but there is also a fair amount of mail theft as well, and we're not just talking about postmen/women or sorting office staff either, there are postal engineers who have to fix problems with post boxes (letters stuck, boxes set on fire, etc) and they have access to post boxes, as it's part of the job, it has not been unkown for them to open up any old postbox and have a rummage through and nick the odd 'interesting' bit of mail.

OK Lets get this straight, I'm a postman and have been for 16 years, and from what I have just read you make us feel like thives, you lot have been watching too much TV, whilst I admit a lot of post does go missing, the most of it is lost and not stolen, I am not and have never been a thiving cnut, over 1 million items are lost per week, but that does not mean the postmen/women are stealing them, You would not beleive the amount of items that get stuck inside the bottom of a bag whilst it is being tipped, If you have something that is expesive and you want to send it by post send it by registerd post, this way you can claim if the item does go missing, As for deliveries, Royal Mail stopped the second delivery because they say it was costing them too much money and wanted one delivery a day, too save money, but this has has not worked either, so they are now looking at other ways of making sure mail is delivered safely and correctly, may I also point out that some postmen take out as many as 7 bags a day BUT Royal Mail does not do everything they should to protect these bags, they are left in shops and other places where they cannot be looked after and where a thief could easily get to them, for those of you that slag us off I urge you to get out of bed at 3.30 to 4.00 A.M. to try it for a week, If I can answer any questions please ask.
Cheers
Colin

My business sends parcels all over the world and through out the UK. There are blackspots in the postal system (London especially) where things do genuinely seem to disapear, sometimes even when sent by special post, but generally the service is very good.

Its really no different from any other courier. For instance parcels sent via Buisiness posts cardiff depo seem to vanish for days. UPS are great for internationals apart from in Italy. DHL....well they hardly every achive the pickup :Whatever_.

My neighbour used to work in the royal mail, he told me that theft was treated very seriously there. One bloke being picked off his feet and frog marched into a waiting car when he pinched something. I am more inclined to believe its just a few people that the press has found and that theft is not systematic. Delays are more likely from industrial action or technical problems given the volume they deal with day in day out.

So redesign the effing bag them FFS! :mad:

I'm going put a big envelope of E's and associated punctuation in the mail... ;)

I couldn't possibly come up with a solution for a problem this complex. I have a similar problem with me leaving a few notes from my wad of cash in the cashpoint machine. I don't know what to do about it :(

Answers (ironically enough) on a postcard please...

In all seriousness the Royal Mail is much better than the US Mail, it can take forever for mail to get delivered here (although it's pretty good from big city to big city). I understand that the country is a bit bigger but it's not like they walk it from A to B, is it?

For the postpeople on here, maybe you could answer this....

20 years ago when I was a lad (!!), the postman delivered mail at a time you could set the clock by! It was 7.30am every morning - Mon-Sat, and a 2nd delivery at about 11am Mon-Fri.

Now, I often see post being delivered at 4pm on a Saturday, and once or twice even had post delivered at 3pm on a Sunday?!

So, what has changed?

- less postmen?
- more mail?
- less dedication?
- too many casual staff who don't give a toss?
- no pride in the job?

It seems that today's postperson is allowed to deliver post as & when they like, even if it is a Sunday afternoon.

It all just seems a bit lax. Control of the system seems to have gone out of the window. I don't know who delivers our mail now - seems to be a different person every week, but twice in the last week I've had a batch of mail put through my door for someone else, only to have the postie knocking on the door asking for it back....

The postie of 20 years ago seemed to be on the same route for decades, and knew everyone.

I guess things are different now.... :(

I've posted quite a few bits lately - they are ****e :mad:

Needs sorting big style IMHO.

I suggest you guys start having a pop at your local sorting office managers, because they are the ones causing most of the grief.
Cheers
Colin

the time on a box represents the time of the last collection, it was changed because of some stipid rule.
alot of the so called lost mail is also down to wrong or badly addressed letters.

Royal Mail is a joke here, my post gets delivered between 6.30 and 7.00 P fecking M

afaics, the govt has managed to turn a profitable and effective state monoploy into a loss making f*ckin shambles. i would like to know how "competition" in this sector ahs benefitted the customer -

has service improved? err... no, quite the reverse
have priced dropped? err... see above.

imo some services are natural monopolies.

Imlach, you are right mate, their is more mail, less postmen, and definately less dedication mind you having a manger come straight out of college and into a managers job and not have a clue how the system works is how Royal Mail seem to work these days, gone are the days when you had to work your way up the system, and these seems to reflect on the service badly, I'll give you a for instance, a while back Royal Mail were clamping down on health and safety, nothing wrong with that I hear you say but when guys walk into work in trainers and not safety shoes, they were sent home, and the mail stayed on their bench till the next morning, when the guy returned wearing the right shoes but was expected to deliver 2 days mail in 1, so when the guys time was up his mail was not all delivered so he bought it back, so we go into day 3 and so on, when you order foot wear you are given a choice trainers of steel toe capped shoes, and being on your feet all day, I know which ones I would wear.
What would Scooby do,
If you are having mail delivered that late you have the right to complain to the office and it should be investigated why the mail is being delivered so late, the sad thing is the more people complain the more will be done, and I don't mean just ringing the office manager put your complaint in writting and IT must be followed up by the person in charge of the office, and has for having mail delivered on a Sunday that is a big NO NO.
Cheers
Colin

Why though?

Chip.

Postman charged with letter theft
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/s...re/3903273.stm

It them 5 years to catch him! :freak3:

insurance for one thing, and I think it is mighty unfair to have mail pushed through your letter box on a Sunday, going back to the insurance, we the postmen beleive it or not are only insured to deliver mail Monday to Saturday, so if a postman delivers mail on a Sunday he is doing so at his own risk......sad but true.
Cheers
Colin

Why is it unfair to have mail put through my letterbox on a Sunday. Unfair on who?

As for insurance. Seems a pretty lame excuse that one. Surely that could be easily resolved. Or won't the CWU allow it without strings attached.

Chip.

Nothing wrong with the postal service - they're riding a fantastic race.

The royal mail is in a mess, but you cannot put all the blame down to the posties.
The delivery staff are at the short end of the stick. There is far more junk mail now than ever before. Your postie does'nt like it, but he has to deliver it so that you can stick it straight in the bin.
With the latest system he can not possibly carry all that mail out in one go, so he will take out say two bags with him and will deliver these. He will then have to pick up another couple of bags from a mid way pick up point and then deliver these as well. Hence the late delivery. A lot of the senior staff have left the buisness over the last few years, and royal mails policy is to cut staff numbers so they recruit casual labour who are not vetted anymore as they used to be (too expensive).

We all know how much fuel has gone up in price over the last 10 years, but the price of postage stamps never kept pace. Royal mail are obliged to deliver to every household in the uk, no matter what the cost for 28p.

Dont forget that the royal mail is a buisness now, not a public service:rolleyes:

..and why do I often get no mail for 3 or 4 days and the suddenly in one go get about 15 letters ? That must be down to the sorting office surely ?

our postman changes every day, post sometimes arrives 9am, sometimes 2pm, then sometimes no post for a few days then i get 20 leters at once! yesterday our postman was about 19, wearing a burberry cap, no uniform apart from the royal mail postbag and was smoking a spliff as he past me, you can bet your life a lot of people post went missing that day!

i have to admit tho parcelwise touch wood ive been very lucky, i expect next day delivery to take 3 days as thats the norm with royal mail, but touch wood i havent lost anything yet and im a right ebay freek lol