bazzabugs

iTrader: (2)

Where else can you send a letter for one price
The Government is planning to sell off the Royal Mail to a private bidder. Our campaign is rallying support to oppose these plans as we believe a reformed Royal Mail in the public sector will offer the best service to the people of Britain.
Sign the petition and demand that the Government scrap their plan to privatise our Royal Mail.
Keep The Post Public | Royal Mail not for sale

bugeyeandy

Personally i'd like to see the Royal Mail sold off. At the moment it's very expensive for a service that at best is patchy and at worst criminal.
Rarely does any post sent to me first class arrive within less than a few days and the postie even misses off our address regularly on Saturdays. Parcels are never delivered , we always end up picking them up as we were not home (despite waiting in especially on many occasions).
Sadly the service has been trimmed down so much now that it can never return to the level it was before. Wouldn't be so bad if the posties didn't steal valuables from all the mail yet manage to deliver a c**p load of junk mail without any problem.

I think the private sector can do much better given the chance. Sorry.

corradoboy

The service has been so shoddy for so long I have often stated that it should not be allowed to carry the name 'Royal' or bear the royal crest.

borderlinechris

iTrader: (5)

how else do they fill up their pensions black hole? by making me (the taxpayer) give them it? i dont think so. royal mail has been pissing money away for years.(and im not just saying that cause i work for one of the other private companys that would get more work from them)

dantastic

The reason there is a black hole in the pension fund is not the fault of the staff at royal mail, they have paid their part of their pension, its royal mail that got permission from the government to take a one year break from contributing their portion into the pension fund, because the fund was doing so well, but instead of a one year break they paid nothing into the pension fund for 15 years, thus turning a healthy pension fund into the financial black hole it is today, how would you like to have paid into a pension like i have for the last 20 years, only to be told that you will have to work on past your retirement date for another 5 years to get the pension you should have got when you reached the retirement age, or take a 25% cut in your pension when you have honored your side of the contract for 20 years, unlike your employer, as royal mail is a public company it is owned by the people and ultimately that means the government of this country, so it is they who have robbed the postal staff of their pensions by not paying their share into the pension fund, so its only right that they should make good the defersit after all they have been getting the profits, and why do we need a deal with TNT when they announced record losses this year, and royal mail made a good profit, seems to me its TNT that need help not royal mail, as for mail getting stolen, that sort of thing is on the increase because royal mail are using more and more casual labour, and these days they don't do the strict security checks they used to do when employing staff, its all agency workers from the four corners of the world, who don't give a dam about providing a quality service to a paying customer or the mail they are entrusted to deliver, royal mail is being deliberately run into the ground by the management of the company and this government to sway public opinion in favour of privatisation.
RANT OVER.

kingchrissyp

As a postie the reason your address may get missed on Saturdays is due to the reason we don t have to take the junk on Saturdays and as the majority of mail is exactly that,you may find you end up with no mail that day!If they are failing to deliver first class and the like then thats down to the individual postman not doing his job properly!I can only speak for my office but we very rarely have anything stolen/missing etc.
As for parcels having to be collected,i try to leave parcels that don t require a signature if safe to do so,but if i knock the door and get no reply after around a minute i have to leave a card as if i waited at every house that had a parcel i d never get home!
As a customer of Royal Mail i ve always been impressed by the speed of delivery as in my experience first class has always pretty much been next day!

FLAT ERIC

iTrader: (1)

Expensive compared to Europe? I don't think so. Even in euros the UK letter rate stands out as being too cheap to sustain the service demanded of it.

Cost of sending a standard letter first class in euros.

Spain: 0.32
Netherlands: 0.44
Great Britain: 0.46
Portugal: 0.47
Greece: 0.54
Germany: 0.55
Ireland: 0.55
France: 0.56
Belgium: 0.59
Italy: 0.60
Finland: 0.80

This has always been the problem. Because of the restraints RM has always lagged behind the rest of Europe. You only have to look back to these figures for 2004 when we were ridiculously out of step with Europe.

Cost of sending a 60g letter first class in GBP:

Great Britain: 28p
Spain: 45p
Denmark: 48p
Ireland: 54p
Luxembourg: 56p
Finland and Portugal: 58p
Austria: 68p
Belgium: 70p
Sweden: 75p
Greece and Neth: 79p
Germany: 94p
Italy: 112p

And when has the private sector ever made a better job of public accessed services? I await any commuter's answers.

And as for "Down stream access" (DSA) don't get me started. We are constantly told that we are losing money on every item we are forced (by government charter) to take off the likes of TNT to deliver the final mile or 300 if it's the Outer Hebrides. We have no control over the price we are allowed to charge for this service,it is dictated to us by some numpty in an office with a pin & a sheet of numbers.

This is cherry picking at it's worst. In simple terms a non RM lorry turns up at a company & picks up a lorry load of palleted mail. It is driven to the nearest RM hub & unloaded.That's their bit done & they take their payment from said company. RM then have to process it & send it to all four corners of the country, up hill & down dale, across rivers, up farm tracks & in boats to islands.

For this not inconsiderable task they are TOLD they can only charge x amount & obviously it has to be less per item than the original lorry owner was paid by the company posting it to start with. Is that fair reward for the work involved?

RM have repeatedly said the level set for the DSA tariff is too little & they are making a loss on every item. And the response "Be more efficient". When did Currys or Comet get told what they can charge for their TVs? As from Monday you can only charge £10 for your 32" LCDs. "But we'll lose money if we do that" "Tough be more efficient."

CE Crozier's basic salary in 2007-8 remained unchanged at £633,000, but this was increased to £843,000 because of an annual performance bonus and other benefits.

He also got £1.99million for a long-term incentive plan covering three years and a cash supplement in lieu of pension of £208,000, according to the Royal Mail annual report.

Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton, whose pay and bonus remained at £200,000, said of Crozier's salary: "The payment covers three years during which the group has consistently exceeded expectations and met all the targets set by the shareholder." (At what cost? 33,000 job cuts & 2,500 urban Post Offices shut. Then wonder why the service has suffered.)

The annual report also revealed that Ian Griffiths, who left his job as managing director of the letters business last year, received £500,000 as compensation for loss of office - after doing the job for only a year.

Royal Mail claimed Crozier's pay this year has been trimmed by more than two thirds to less than £1 million.

On top of a £633,000-a-year salary, he received £206,000 to put in his pension, £17,000 of other perks and what appears to be a performance bonus apparently pegged back to £139,000.

This year there is no money for a pay rise for postmen & no money in the pension fund but RM's CE paid himself a nice fat bonus & stuck over 200k in his pension pot. No surprise there then. So there's still some money in the trough.

bugeyeandy

All of which is why it should be privatised. In my post above I state the reasons I believe it should happen but lets be clear, I do not blame the posties for this (other than a few bad apples who nick stuff).
The service has obviously been run down with a purpose in mind - to privatise. Everyone would love to see it return to its former glory but we know that will never happen.

The only way forward now is to privatise and have a free and open market where the newly privatised company can compete. The price of mail will go up but at least we'll have a choice of who to use.