I don't really think it's possible to talk about the decline and asset stripping of Royal Mail without breaking the no politics rule. It's dimise has been caused by ideology.
That said, it sounds like I've been lucky to have a decent postie.
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Bloody terrible for me. I don't get deliveries for weeks at a time, and then I get a whole load all at once. Not fit for purpose.
What I hate is that companies can pay to have posties deliver their junk mail to you, and you have to jump through a lot of hoops to ‘opt out’.
You’re ‘opted in’ by default, of course… 🤬
We had great success just putting up a little sign on the door that said "no unaddressed mail".
Of course since we were buying a custom sign for it we also added "...or else", and one time I just happened to open the door after a young lad had pushed a leaflet through. He sort of stepped backwards a bit and his eyes went down to the sign and he stuttered "I'm so sorry I didn't see the sign" as if he thought I was about to wallop him.
Bless.
I opted out multiple times and still get the junk mail. Feel sorry for the posties having to lug all that pointless weight around that just goes straight into the recycling!
Just like everyone else right now, posties are overworked, underpaid and crippled by "targets".
Initially I was going to lodge a complaint. I'm in two minds after a few days stewing on it, on the one hand I sympathise with anyone in the situation you describe. OTOH, they're clearly not doing their job properly and potentially cost me £105. All they had to do was put it back in their trolley, and whatever process is required to lodge it back at the depot. Though perhaps management has made that process fiddly and they CBA.
Despite what I said, you should 100% make a claim. You've lost out. It may or may not be the postie's fault, but you don't deserve to be out of pocket.
I just got home, went round to ask if neighbour has it. He sent his son to the door who said his dad is in a 'meeting'. I explained situation, he said he'd pass it on... he hasn't come round so either has it and isn't giving it back, or doesn't have it.
ASOS actually emailed me today to check the situation, and offered me a replacement w/ express shipping or a full refund, which imo is excellent customer service considering it's (mostly) not their fault. I appreciate that bigtime, sometimes it feels you have to really battle nowadays to get a resolution to something like this.
Despite what I said, you should 100% make a claim. You've lost out. It may or may not be the postie's fault, but you don't deserve to be out of pocket.
Worked for royal mail as postie for nearly 15 years now, was an incredible job and a decent company to work for but now they are racing to become Amazon whilst also trying to ger rid of the uso ( government agreed 6 day a week mail service that hits targets) we are tracked and given more work than possible and they are now bringing in a new workforce on terrible contracts for less money. Our strikes did nothing because the company is rogue asf.
Wow. It's very interesting / illuminating to hear from a postie on this issue. Thanks for all your years of service, for what it's worth I respect the fuck out of you. It's such an important job.
My usual postlady is fantastic but recently we've had a new guy, he returns the cheery 'hello' with a glare and a grunt. And I presume is responsible for the recent cockups... but I'll temper my annoyance because from the sounds of it, they're massively taking the piss out of you all.
Never had the sort of shenanigans you’re talking about, but there’s definitely been a decline in service – late deliveries, posties racing the clock, and a general sense of perpetual crisis.
Homemade pizza is something else though. Love a nice thin and crispy margherita straight from the oven.
Definitely:
- 1st Class taking days or weeks to arrive. Looking at Ofcoms report Royal Mail massively underperformed.
- Receiving other people’s post.
- At work (where we pay for collection) no collection or delivery for several days.
- increase in post arriving damaged
- Post collected from post boxes earlier than last collection time.
- Drastic increase in items going missing.
- This might be controversial but poor service from Postman. (Smoking, ditching post, missing out parts of their route)
I honestly think it’s time for a radical rethink. Daytime deliveries for businesses, evening deliveries for homes. Postman to be paid for performance.
BTW I just noticed your username... that's the punchline to my favourite awful joke ('What do you call a Frenchman in sandals?"), don't think I've ever seen it in the wild before!
undefined> Postman to be paid for performance. Postman to be paid for performance. I don't think that works.
If it did, flyers and phonebooks (back when they were a thing) wouldn't be found dumped in hedges in bulk. Post is a little different, but not that much. and there have been many cases where bags and bags of undelivered mail have been found stashed in postmen's homes because they couldn't be arsed to deliver them.
I think thats a reason to pay them for performance. Not just how quickly they deliver but how they perform accurately.
The problem is - except for tracked parcels, nothing is traced and there's so many ways for something to go missing between sender and recipient. Hard to measure performance if you can't rely on that.
As I wrote. I’m talking a radical rethink. Not using existing work practices and systems. There’s absolutely no reason that each item can’t be tracked through Royal Mail. In fact it’s quite surprising that they don’t already.
Because postboxes mean no origination, or at least, none that can get back to the poster.
But they could track them from the postbox to measure how the service is performing in general, and how each stage performs including the final sort and delivery.
This is not tracking as in people seeing where their letter/packet/parcel is but as I mentioned in an earlier post, tracking to see how the service performs.
Who is going to pay for evening deliveries for households?
“Performance goals” sound good on paper but don’t work and would introduce extra cost. Delivery time would require all post to be tracked, which would take extra time (=cost) at delivery. To track successful deliveries, you’d need a complaints procedure that’s simple enough to be widely used, and staffed well enough to check up on a subset of complaints so to not lead to unfair punishment.
Instead of all this extra complexity that would make posties lives worse, we could just do what we did before - pay them reasonably well and hire enough of them so they can do their job properly. 🤷🏼♂️
I sent a letter at 2pm from Belfast and it arrived in Durham the following morning first class numerous times, seems fair enough to me. Sounds like you just have a bad postie vs royal mail itself
We're rural, and often postman and couriers are the only people we see day to day, so we build a good relationship with them. It's a 20 minute trip to the closest postbox, so they often pick up our outgoing parcels too (I sell stuff through ebay so there's quite a few)
Two years ago our postie of 12 years said he was leaving because there wasn't enough staff, deadlines were too tight and management wasn't coping well. Local POs closing, even our regional sorting office closed and went elsewhere. Deliveries were missed, booked pickups too. The worst was when they came to collect a parcel, but it had been collected the day before. Instead they took one clearly marked "Hermes" from outside our house and only having the Hermes label, which was a £90 car heater I'd just sold. I immediately rang the number but despite the lady trying to trace him down, it vanished. If I hadn't had caught him on cctv I'd never have known where it had gone. I lost all that money, including the Hermes fee.
We had a few random postmen since then, changing every week, but now have settled down to a regular one and we're lucky in that he's one of the great ones who goes out of his way to be helpful. He's also a biker so we have have that in common too.
That's sad to hear, someone dedicated has left because of the new changes. Absolutely insane that someone can just blatantly swipe your item, in uniform, on camera and there was no satisfactory resolution for you. Not surprised to hear that Hermes wouldn't help you out, it probably is sat in their depot to this day (imo they're one of the worst of a bad bunch).
Pleased to hear you have a good postie again!
Now that you mention it, I have recently started occasionally getting next door's post through my letterbox although I'm pretty sure I have the same postwoman as before!
I’ve noticed they’ve started using gig workers as well as the regular posties. Understandably the gig workers give less of a shit.
Generally, deliveries are OK (I think this just depends on the quality of the local workers) but there seem to be more problems further up the chain in the offices or depots. For example, I sent off the form to replace old stamps with the QR coded versions several months ago, and never heard anything back, so that's a fiver down the drain. My small act of protest will be to refuse to buy any postage from now on, and try to use alternatives if I absolutely need to send anything physical.
edit: I actually contacted RM about it: they said the stamps were sent out, and agreed to send another lot, so that worked out OK.
That's nuts. I wonder how many people sent in a form for a small amount of stamps, didn't receive anything, and just said "meh it's only a few quid"? The way it's being managed at the moment I would not be surprised at all to find out they're deliberately ignoring smaller requests in the hope that people don't chase them up.
Our postman refuses to ring the bell for some reason, but otherwise I find them fairly reliable.
I haven’t experienced too many issues with post being lost, but delivery times have definitely got a lot worse over the years.
Once upon a time you could post a local letter in the morning and it would be delivered that afternoon. Now it seems lucky if anything gets there the same week.
No issues in my area, sorry.
I run an online business and have had quite a big increase in people not getting their items since the beginning of the year.
I definitely used to feel somewhat comforted when I knew a package I'd ordered online was being delivered by RM, cos I could usually trust that it would be on time and in one piece. The last, I don't know, five or six things I've ordered that have been delivered by RM have been delivered literally up to a week later than the timeline. Gimme DPD or DHL anyday.
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