When did Royal Mail become so useless?

Lunatic Dreyfus · 24 Jul 2012 at 18:17

It's all about profits, targets, double standards and finding some one to point fingers at.

I've only been in the job for somewhere over 5 years and it just gets steadily worse, which affects morale and standards. All delivery staff know this, but the higher levels of management couldn't care less, just as long as the paperwork and performance targets are met.

twist3d0n3 · 24 Jul 2012 at 18:32

MooMoo444 said:
Oh really?

lost it there

Something Else · 24 Jul 2012 at 19:18

only problem ive had with the mail is when they left a parcel that said amazon all over it on my front door step for the world to see. it contained £200 of camera lens ffs! he knocked the door and walked straight to his van, it only took me 5 seconds to get to the door but he was already in his van! apart from that ive had no trouble

ste_bla · 24 Jul 2012 at 19:33

Royal mail guaranteed delivery, under pay postage it will defo get there as they love the £1 charge, simples!

uniQ · 24 Jul 2012 at 19:59

Hate to go against the grain here but I have had nothing but steller service from RM. Things will be a lot worse if/when it ever get's privatised imo.

Woden · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:01

uniQ said:
Hate to go against the grain here but I have had nothing but steller service from RM. Things will be a lot worse if/when it ever get's privatised imo.

They need some competition to improve the service. Right now there's no incentive.

Duff-Man · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:09

Lunatic Dreyfus said:
It's all about profits, targets, double standards and finding some one to point fingers at.

I've only been in the job for somewhere over 5 years and it just gets steadily worse, which affects morale and standards. All delivery staff know this, but the higher levels of management couldn't care less, just as long as the paperwork and performance targets are met.

Out of interest, what are the performance targets related to? Percentage of mail successfully delivered? Average delivery times? Or profit related?

Relating to the OP: I *always* use RMSD for anything important like documents. I don't really trust the standard service.

Gazanimal · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:10

Woden said:
They need some competition to improve the service. Right now there's no incentive.

Nobody will compete for the standard letter service. The other companies, such as TNT, cherry pick certain deliveries as they are profitable. They couldn't care less about the mail that has to get from Shetland or rural Wales etc

So I think if people presume having competition will improve things they are sadly mistaken. Even going private isn't necessarily the best idea, as a private company will be even more profit driven at the cost of jobs, safety, health etc and the cost will definitely rise, seeing as RM have been held back by legislation which has stopped them from raising prices for years.

That's why the recent jump has seen by many as too much, but if you owned a company and a Regulatory body said you can't charge more than 30p for a letter (although the cost might have been 25p to actually do the job) you can see why the RM has lost money and is struggling when they could have done a gradual increase over the previous years.

moon man · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:24

never had anything not arrive to customers from my ebay sales (modest 330 sales) so cant complain too much ,the local sorting office are pretty helpful as well

oliseo · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:32

Sending important legal documents that are time dependent using standard mail isn't the wisest of moves.

You should have used special delivery or a courier for those kind of documents in my opinion and then you wouldn't have felt the need to rant about how important they was and how they went missing.

Actually I have a different experience of Royal Mail. I made a mistake on returning my One X due to damage, I put SW10 instead of WS10. Naturally the postcode sent it to London. The London exchange sent it to the correct sorting office after realising it wasn't meant for them.

It got to the right destination despite me putting an incorrect address. Given the volume of mail they send, then some errors will occur.

Of course, it's also possible the solicitor had received you mail and hadn't actually gotten round to the job they was supposed to. It's very convenient to blame the post office. I imagine its an easy excuse that is hard to prove otherwise.

Hence why I ALWAYS send anything of importance recorded delivery at the very minimum.

You would be amazed how many times Student Loans have claimed they never receive my letters and that it must have been the post office. Yet when I give them the reference number that it was signed for they go silent...

PhilthyPhil · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:34

Woden said:
They need some competition to improve the service. Right now there's no incentive.

The "competition" is what has led to such aggressive cost cutting and loss of quality of service in RM. If you go back 10-15 years quality of service (amount of first class mail getting there next day) was much better.

Woden · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:35

PhilthyPhil said:
The "competition" is what has led to such aggressive cost cutting and loss of quality of service in RM. If you go back 10-15 years quality of service (amount of first class mail getting there next day) was much better.

RM has no competition. :confused:

oliseo · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:36

Woden said:
They need some competition to improve the service. Right now there's no incentive.

Someone like GS4 would be an ideal candidate. Really professional private company that always meets its targets.

Danthus · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:37

Imagine if you had to pay a fair price to send a letter!

Meridian · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:40

Woden said:
RM has no competition.

Not sure if serious? It has loads of competition, but only in the profitable bits (bulk business mail, urgent stuff, and anything with bespoke pricing). What exactly did you think couriers were, if not competition? Have you never seen things like TNT on your junk mail? There's competition in routine deliveries because that's a loss-maker and no-one wants it. The only way any company would touch that would be if the legal restrictions on a universal charge were removed, and the companies could charge more depending on where post was going.

M

One · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:45

I found them to be unacceptable with packet delivery. The postmen actually pre-write the 'sorry you were not in' cards and leave the packet at the depot and only deliver re-deliver requests in the hope half their work will be done for them by people driving to the depot and collecting. Not to mention 1 in 20 pieces of post going to the neighbours and also receiving neighbours mail. This is mainly down to the fact that a postman is a low paid job and as such can attract the dim-witted to do it; I obviously don't mean all posties though just all the ones I've had in this area.

Most other services are okay. If the mail is delivered to the correct person and it isn't 'too heavy' for them to carry around then the service works quite well.

PhilthyPhil · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:45

Woden said:
RM has no competition.

Yes they do. Just because they do not deliver it to you door does not mean they are not there. There are a lot of firms who collect bulk mail from large firms (banks, utilities etc) and then sort it and hand it over to RM for "final mile" delivery. This is called downsteam access and can be identified by a mark similar to this

If you look this will make up about half of your letters. There is actually also a small trial in London where TNT are delivering letters all the way to people doors totally bypassing RM. Obviously allowing private companies to cream off this most profitable business is damaging to RM and probably one of the largest reasons for the decline in service over recent years.

Of cause the packet/parcel market is highly competitive with loads of different couriers out there and this actually makes up more of RMs revenue than letters. So it is certainly not true at all to say RM have no competition.

oliseo · 24 Jul 2012 at 20:49

desires said:
I found them to be unacceptable with packet delivery. The postmen actually pre-write the 'sorry you were not in' cards and leave the packet at the depot

Sometimes the postman actually delivers the "not in" card that an earlier parcel van attempted to deliver.

Or else you have actual proof of this rather than just conjecture.

kPATm · 24 Jul 2012 at 21:04

Im currently on sick leave from my job (postie) and have been for 2 months. I had to go in yesterday to hand in a sick line and I notice a few new faces. Turns out they are agency workers. In my office the sick absences have take a sharp rise as the pressure put on the work force has gone beyond a joke. Treat the work force like xxxx and it will come back and bite you on the arse. I would imagine its like this all over the country. This job really is going to end up being done by part time agency workers who will do the job for peanuts.

Woden · 24 Jul 2012 at 21:07

Meridian said:
Not sure if serious? It has loads of competition, but only in the profitable bits (bulk business mail, urgent stuff, and anything with bespoke pricing). What exactly did you think couriers were, if not competition? Have you never seen things like TNT on your junk mail? There's competition in routine deliveries because that's a loss-maker and no-one wants it. The only way any company would touch that would be if the legal restrictions on a universal charge were removed, and the companies could charge more depending on where post was going.

M

I work for Yodel thanks, I know exactly what a courier is

Thats not competition though, that is, quite literlary, private businesses making a profit by dumping unprofitable work on RM. Downstream access has been forced onto RM, with forced price fixing.

What we have now is a faux free market. RM still deliver allmost all mail, so there is still zero incentive to improve the service. Send your letter by TNT? They dump it on RM anyway. You literlary have no other service to use.

Another fully RM-free service could be possible, after all Yodel/UPS/TNT deliver parcels without RM but it would take billions in investment to set up a network, and who is willing to do that just to take on a total monopoly?