Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Over the years, my sore points for the Royal and post office services has gone down so far, l have just give up as a customer, if is not bad enough that l get more mail delivered through my letterbox, for other people, just makes me wonder if l get the mail that is mine, now they are claiming to save money they are doing away with Saturday deliveries, they are now charging different prices for postal service, the 2nd class stamp is now a joke, as it takes a week to deliver a letter of Ist and Second class, and now we have the closures of post offices up and down the country, l live very near Hounslow, and the post office inside WH Smith, is on the Ist floor, so what about the lifts, that cannot take the pressure, what about the elderly, my local postmaster, was in tears, as he is being forced to close in June, maybe if they didn't pay themself outrageous wages, l read that one director pays himself £150.000 per year, how do these elderly people plus the younger generation who have ill health manage to get up there, l feel sorry for the postman, who take the rap for the pathetic way the postal services are run this country, and yet they have this advert on TV saying what they do, just pathetic.:mad::mad:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Arthur, when in doubt, use facts.

1) Royal Mail do not want to cancel Saturday deliveries, they are strongly against it - it was PostComm, the regulator who mooted it (and have since dropped it) Telegraph
"A spokesman said: "Royal Mail is dismayed that Postcomm is considering adverse changes including cutting deliveries on a Saturday and reducing our first class quality of service targets.""

2) Whilst I agree it is wrong for so many post offices to close, you can't really blame them for the lifts in WH Smith, can you?

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Hi foreverwar, it is always nice, when l hear from you, as we have such pleasant conversation, over the years, the postal service has really gone down hill, when l was growing up as a kid, you could tell the time, by the postman coming down our road, we used to have sometimes, a wrongly delivered letter, yet now, it is endless, l contacted our local sorting office, when someone brought a very important letter for me, that was opened, and all they would say its was a new guy, and wasn't trained enough, the price of postage, has now gone up in many stages, there should be only one price, and that is it, l sent out a test letter, l live in Hounslow, it took SEVEN days for a first class letter, too travel half a mile up the road, now this is POOR, as for post office closures, this is very poor, these should all be on ground level, and should be larger, the post office in Hounslow, was that big, the queue inside, was about the size of a terminal, what l am saying people, who push pens around, should think about other people who cannot climb stairs, cannot move properly - and no l am not a postman.:mad::mad:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

I think the standard of the postal service has declined in recent years to the point if i get my mail by midday i count myself lucky. But it is not the fault of the postal workers by and large it is the fault of management that constantly pursue cost cutting beyond the point of reason.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

and you wonder why. Postcomm has required RM to keep the universal service provision while letting other companies go in and take the profitable local delivery and business delivery in built up areas.
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage...value=postcomm

for full article follow link...

Do you really think it costs 36p to send a letter from Lands end to John O'Groats? Thats all RM get for it and with rising fuel prices and a large fixed cost base, after all you need a postie in John O'Groats whether he is delivering 1 letter or 1000 what did anyone think would happen if with deregulation.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Hey i agree i think it was stupid to open up the postal sector for multiple companys and was more then happy to keep royal mail as a monopoly. In fact i will go a step further i think any and all national infrastructure should be government owned and run it is a complete scandal that the water and energy in the UK is owned and run by anyone but the UK government. Telecommunications yep back to government control if labour announced that anytime soon i would start to support them more because if they can be run by private companys profitably then they damn well should be able to run at a profit for the government.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Mmmmmmm, BT did such a good job in eighties, didn't they?

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

And i said that where forever ??? they have been badly mismanaged in the past but i don't think it is right that major necessary infrastructure is owned by anyone but the government.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

To be honest like the rest of this country its gone downhill. If it ain't broke don't fix it but it seems they are raising prices and closing offices. Sure makes you wonder - seems mighty strange that problems and prices raising seem to co-incide with the announcement that we're hosting the Olympics!

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

imho, if they go back to being owned / managed by the government, you end up with monolithic monopolies with the agility of an elephant, having to get all initiatives signed off by whoever is in post at the time, and having strategy changed monthly in response to the government of the day's crisis/spin (for example, NHS, Local Government, Education, etc ad nausem).

imho ;)

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

As I have stated before, my postal service has got very bad in the past few years. The house next door is situated off the road like mine and is empty. I get lots of the mail posted in my postbox because the postman is too lazy to deliver there.

Before I put the postbox at the bottom of my drive the postman would very often deliver mail to any of the terraced houses in the street instead of walking up my driveway, and sometimes I get post for one of the terraced houses at the far end of the street. I often come home from work when it's raining to find that my letters are soaking wet because the postman is lazy and leaves them half way out of the box. I wonder how many letters have been taken out of there, as I have had a fair amount of mail that has failed to be delivered.

I did a little excersize last year and sent myself 4 letters, and only 3 arrived.

The postal service is certainly not a patch on what it used to be, I can't put a guess on when it all went wrong but certainly 10 years ago I would of not had any complaints to mention.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Not really much for a Director Arthur, there are are/were Sales Reps at VM earning almost as much.

You just said that you question if you get your post and you get other peoples frequently... I would say thats the postmans fault not the management.

As far as I know I get all my post, I'm in my late 20s and ive never used a post office.. Never had parcels damaged. I dont have any compliant

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Crimes like this also mess up the already messed up system :erm: Link

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Hi Whistled, Firstly, thank you for your comment, the directors that paid this amount of money, don't do anything, all they do is push pens around all day, VM Directors, probabely play golf all day, as they get a lot of grief from us.
Secondly, the postman, should be highly trained, so they don't make mistakes, but they do, l know some postman and they are great to get on with, but even they will say, that the postman who deliver the mail, don't get a lot of training, as the royal mail won't pay for it.:)

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

hi arthur i couldnt agree with you more,the postal service has gone down the tubes long ago,i myself have had 3 items lost in the past 2 months and imo its a case of sticky fingers,i have no faith in them and its near time they pulled their fingers out and got things sorted.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

I see my Director most days and when he isnt in my offfice he is often in another when I have people. I dont think he plays golf..

People make mistakes because they dont know or they dont care, its an unskilled role and I dont think anyone needs to be trained to look at the address on the letter before popping it through the door.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Tell that to our Polish postman, you would have thought that the only job requirements were the ability to read and walk, obviously not

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

You are lucky. Some days we get ours at 10am, some days not until 3pm - it makes it a pain when your waiting for a delivery that needs signing for.

I've had 4 items gone missing in the last month. Our postman has been changed at least 3 times in the last six weeks. The one that has been delivering this last week drives around in his own car with the post in the boot, and from what I've seen of him, has no obvious identification on him to indicate he works for RM.

-- that's assuming he does of course.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Could you send a letter to the other side of the country for 31p (or whatever it costs nowadays)

Despite their shortcomings they still provide a valuable service IMHO

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

No, I couldn't send a letter to the other side of the country for 36p.
But give me a 1000 letters a day and I might think it worth while.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

And you might make a profit out of your £360 per day if they were all going to the same place, from the same place ;)

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

No, and neither can RM on most occasions.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Most occasions? There's a stat that you need to back up, my friend :)

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

We've been having delivery problems since we moved here opver 20 years ago. It's nearly always the same thing, us getting other people's mail or vice versa. It's so annoying because in that time we've had several postmen who've been excellent and never let us down but these guys have always been moved away for reasons we can't understand.

Anyone who complains is ultimately guided towards Pos****ch and if you ever wanted an example of a waste of time that'd be it. Essentially our experience is that you are forced to endure a painfully slow and protracted process which involves documenting/reporting every mistake. Pos****ch then issue a series of complaints to Royal Mail and Royal Mail issues a series of responses which bear little relation to reality. Many months and/or years on, when you finally get to the end of your tether and ask what else can be done to solve the problems Pos****ch tell you they can't force Royal Mail to do anything at all!!!! :mad::mad:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

I guess, just like Virgin Media, service varies from region to region. At home we've had the same postman for the 12 years we've lived there, when I was back from uni over the Easter he commented how much I'd grown!
I've never had a problem with letters going missing either at home or uni, but I do always send parcels recorded delivery....their website is useless though and the delivery status never shows up.

Compared with the rest of Europe Royal Mail is a bargain, a 1st class stamp in France will set you back about 44p!

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

They can't, the 31p letter delivery is subsidised by more profitable elements of the business, those are the ones that the powers that be thought it would be a good idea to let any Tom, Dick or TNT bid for :rolleyes:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Surely you're not suggesting there was a lack of joined up thinking by those responsible.... :rolleyes:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Oh, I know that - what I was referring to was the insinuation that Royal Mail rarely manage to deliver things correctly. Only my experience obviously but, in the 14 years I've been living in Grimsby, I've only ever had one item I posted not arrive and, as far as I'm aware, nothing for me has ever disapppeared :shrug:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

RM's going down the tubes, no doubt.
I get mail from all over the area! Only similarity is the house number, not even the postcode!! As has been said, if that's happening to someone else's, it may just as well be happening to mine.
I send quite a lot of recorded post every week. I found out last week to send one of my poster tubes now costs £4.20 instead of £1.75 because it must now go by Parcel Farce. When I asked why this is so, it's because at 70cm it's now too long for the postman's bag!! lmao! Have their bags suddenly got smaller then, because I've been sending these same length poster tubes for the last 6 years.. Consequently, I've pulled the posters from sale as they only cost £5 - who's going to pay almost the same for postage..
I get lots of recorded letters and jiffy's pushed through without the postman having knocked for a signature, and yes, the strip is peeled off - so who signed for it??
Is this what happened to my wife's mobile phone last Christmas? My mail has just arrived at 12:30. It used to be here at 9am. Half the working day has gone if there's something you need to act upon/work with. There is now only ONE Post Office open in my area - fortunately close to my office. But, being the only one (in the dingy, cluttered end of a cheap booze shop), it's queued down the shop all day. Not only a pain in the rear for the customers, but damned hard work for the two girls working in there.

Yes, the postal system compared to some other places IS probably still good value for money, but in a typical English way we seem to accept it's ongoing decline from what it once was, just because it's still within acceptable parameters.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Hmmmmm I think your PO clerk does not understand the Royal Mail system.

Maximum length for a poster tube to go as a packet is 900mm. Assuming it weighs less than 150g it should cost £2.17 1st class signed for.

<cynic mode> As a sub-postmaster I can confirm that the commission payable for Parcel Force services is MUCH more than ordinary mail</cynic mode> ;)

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Be that as it may, mate.
I've been paying £1.75 (or thereabouts to be fair, sometimes a little more) for these for a long time, they are very light, but over 150g.
Last week I had to pay £4.20 as my poster tubes are 69cm and the max is 60cm for a recorded item. Wrong or right, I'm not going to argue with a postmaster at the counter who tells me the rates have recently changed and gets a tape measure out!

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/c...7&catId=500201

According to the information on the bottom of the above Royal Mail webpage, the max dimensions for recorded delivery on poster tubes is 900mm. However, to complicate matters, the item's length plus twice its diameter must also be less than 1040mm. Apart from that the cost is 72p plus the normal 1st or 2nd class postage as determined by the item's weight. I reckon your postmaster needs to adjust his glasses!

Hope this helps.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Not really, but thanks for the info!

End of the day, I've been going with these to the same girls for a donkey's age, we're quite well acquainted and they're very familiar with what I send. Last week, it was all change. I doubt they've picked this new rate out of the air somehow. As I said, I was handed a tape measure and told oh no, it's over 60cm, sorry! I suspect either the info on the site needs updating or there's been some mix up somewhere, or this has changed again since?? I still have my receipts anyway so if there's anything I can do, I will.
We're off topic now I fear anyway, but thanks again.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Well that's the general rule for non-tube items, the size for tubes is listed separately. Perhaps the Post Office you're dealing with have had a new printed price list through and the tube pricing has simply been omitted or isn't clear. I too have used special and recorded delivery for my business post for years and there have been quite a few times when I've almost been overcharged due to confusion on the part of the staff involved. What's happened more recently however with the change in pricing structure to take more account of sizes as well as weight has probably made things even more confusing. You could always call RM Customer Service (08457 950950) for a once and for all clarification as it'd be a shame to lose some of your business unecessarily. Worth the price of a phone call I'd have thought. Best of luck!

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Indeed. Thanks Osem.
I'm in there most days so I'll mention it next time.
Ta.

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Postcomm says part privatisation will help fix the problems...

Link

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

Postcomm?? Oh yes another one of those really useful publicly funded organisations set up under Bliar. :rolleyes:

Re: Postal Service And System So Pathetic
 

nice one !!.;)