What's going on with The Royal Mail?

Just received a letter from a hospital 20 miles from my door, that took Royal Fail 5 days to deliver and will now have to cancel the date as it is too short notice.
Lucky it is private and I can get the next week, but 5 days to do something I could cycle in a couple of hours is utter *****.
 
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Not RM, but DHL have just delivered a parcel from Taiwan faster than DPD with a parcel from Bolton. Both were despatched on the same day.

E: Bolton is 45 miles away
 
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Wife is hopping mad with RM at the moment. Young son had medication posted (to be signed for) and there was no-one at home mid-morning for two days. They tried to deliver two days in a row even though we logged on and asked them to skip the 2nd day delivery and we would collect. When we went to collect, on the 3rd day, they had "Returned to Sender". Their own rules state they should have kept it for 21 days or thereabouts. When we called to complain we were told "We're sorry but there's nothing we can do".
 
So my turn for exceptionally poor effort from RM.

Passport delivered this morning. Only it's not mine and addressed to the rightful owner, 6 miles from my house.

Called RM and after about 40 mins got thru to a barely-human. Explained the situation and they had the cheek to ask if I would take it myself.
 
aVdub said:
Just received a letter from a hospital 20 miles from my door, that took Royal Fail 5 days to deliver and will now have to cancel the date as it is too short notice.
Lucky it is private and I can get the next week, but 5 days to do something I could cycle in a couple of hours is utter *****.
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Most NHS hospitals letters are printed in Bath as return address is Bath.
 
aVdub said:
This was a private hospital posting from an address 20 miles from my front door.
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Just received a NHS hospital letter, an appointment letter for my son's neurosurgery pre-op assessment. In my letterbox at 10:50 today (17/10/23) having been posted 1st class on the 11th (according to postmark). Return address being the hospital which is 20 miles away, from where it was sent.

For an appointment YESTERDAY.

Luckily the hospital rang to confirm the appointment on Friday so my son didn't miss his pre-op.

It's ridiculous that RM keep raising their prices and cannot provide the service in which they are contracted for.
 
Can I join in, had a birthday a little while ago and 2 cards (from family) were posted 1st class at the same time in the same pillar box. One took 5 days the other 4 weeks!
 
picnic said:
Can I join in, had a birthday a little while ago and 2 cards (from family) were posted 1st class at the same time in the same pillar box. One took 5 days the other 4 weeks!
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Earlier this year, the husband of one of Dad’s cousins died. Sent three cards - one each for cousin and both children. All live in the same village of c5,000 population. Two received within two days and the other 6 weeks.
 
A few years ago when my parents were on holiday, I popped round to water the plants and check post. Amongst the post were two large envelopes with another person’s address on it. Same house number, but in the next street along.

Went to the house. Couple were doing gardening. Explained what happened.
“Oh those are our new wills” said the man.

Since then my parents and the couple had each other’s post at least once every month. The postcode last letter for both roads are 5 letters apart in the alphabet!

At least we are honest. I bet some people would have chucked the mail out as too lazy.

I’m sure in many parts of Leeds where the street names share the same 1st word. For example, Fairfield Crescent, Fairfield Avenue, Fairfield Green etc. Some of these roads - there’s 12 of them together!
 
aVdub said:
www.ofcom.org.uk

Royal Mail fined £5.6m for missing delivery targets

Ofcom has fined Royal Mail £5.6m for failing to meet its First and Second Class delivery targets in the 2022/23 financial year.
www.ofcom.org.uk www.ofcom.org.uk

As a business it has become nothing short of a ******* expensive embarrassment.
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I wonder what the total loss rate was.

I know I've had 3 packages sent within the UK go missing so far this year, which is worse than the highest number of lost packages I had back when I was getting 2-3 items a week on average via international mail* in addition to any UK stuff.
I've also noticed i'm getting shipping notifications from multiple companies, then an email about 2-3 working days later from RM saying they've received the package, so either multiple companies are packing stuff and holding onto it for days by choice, or RM is taking it's time to book the items into the system and get them out (not to mention how many tracked items have arrived at 6pm delivered from the neighbouring sorting office, almost like it's been noted they are tracked and thus easy to show if they fail their delivery target).

If they continue to fail in their most basic obligation the whole thing should be nationalised again, as physical post is not some business opportunity where the idea is to extract as much money from it as possible, it's a basic part of a functioning country.



*The good old days of an exchange rate of about £1=$2 and some really deep discounts on new releases (I was paying something like £7 a dvd inc shipping).
 
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Gepetto said:
Wife is hopping mad with RM at the moment. Young son had medication posted (to be signed for) and there was no-one at home mid-morning for two days. They tried to deliver two days in a row even though we logged on and asked them to skip the 2nd day delivery and we would collect. When we went to collect, on the 3rd day, they had "Returned to Sender". Their own rules state they should have kept it for 21 days or thereabouts. When we called to complain we were told "We're sorry but there's nothing we can do".
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Oh yeah its pointless trying to go online and change the delivery day etc they don't pay a blind bit of attention
 
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I sent to a customer a parcel via RM24 and they delivered it to a collection point and then delivered it to the customer the following day. I'm guessing to meet targets and make it look like they delivered it on time.
 
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Blackjack Davy said:
Oh yeah its pointless trying to go online and change the delivery day etc they don't pay a blind bit of attention
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This is really irritating. Used to work fine but it seems since they introduced the automatic "next working day" attempt it's now just ignored. I've had to go and pick multiple things up from the delivery office which of course is only open for 30 seconds every other week if the moon is full and is in a really annoying place to get parked.
 
tom_e said:
This is really irritating. Used to work fine but it seems since they introduced the automatic "next working day" attempt it's now just ignored. I've had to go and pick multiple things up from the delivery office which of course is only open for 30 seconds every other week if the moon is full and is in a really annoying place to get parked.
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I know the pain.

Our local delivery office is now open for 2 hours a day (IIRC mon-fri), during peak work and school traffic on an estate with zero parking.
Mind you it seems half of any (tracked) parcels aren't even coming from that DO any more, they're coming from the next town over.
 
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