What’s going on with the Royal Mail?!

What’s going on with the Royal Mail?!

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soad

Original Poster:

33,444 posts

183 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
Deliveries are taking forever?!

Posted a couple items last Friday (in good time, early in the morning), one got there on Thursday. Second person is yet to receive his.

Granted, both sent Second Class Signed For - but seems far too long.

I’m not aware of any strikes/staff shortage.

Exasperated

437 posts

18 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
If it helps, and it won't, I posted something 2nd Class Signed For on Wednesday and the recipient got it on Friday morning. That didn't stop the tool from submitting an 'Item not received' case on eBay on Thursday night, however.

Saleen836

11,436 posts

216 months

Saturday 8th June
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Sheepshanks

34,970 posts

126 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
soad said:
I’m not aware of any strikes/staff shortage.
Apparently they’re so short of staff in some places they’re only delivering once a week.

interstellar

3,778 posts

153 months

Saturday 8th June
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My postie recently told me unless it’s a signed for parcel we’re not getting it for a couple of weeks, short staffed and holidays.

Basically, he said if it’s a letter it’s not coming until end of June.

I suggested to him that in my business I should keep charging my customers the same prices and supply our services 3 weeks after they expect it but tell them that’s just the way it is l, that I would be out of business by Xmas.

He looked confused……

A500leroy

5,587 posts

125 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
soad said:
Deliveries are taking forever?!

Posted a couple items last Friday (in good time, early in the morning), one got there on Thursday. Second person is yet to receive his.

Granted, both sent Second Class Signed For - but seems far too long.

I’m not aware of any strikes/staff shortage.
2nd class, aim for 3 days delivery but may take up to 10 working days.

Yes we have very few staff who want to stay and walk 12 miles in 4 hours while carrying 16kg bags for £11.50p/h and be free to work every Saturday or Sunday, its hard to retain staff.

Dingu

4,341 posts

37 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
interstellar said:
My postie recently told me unless it’s a signed for parcel we’re not getting it for a couple of weeks, short staffed and holidays.

Basically, he said if it’s a letter it’s not coming until end of June.

I suggested to him that in my business I should keep charging my customers the same prices and supply our services 3 weeks after they expect it but tell them that’s just the way it is l, that I would be out of business by Xmas.

He looked confused……
I’m not surprised. It’s not his fault you clown.

egor110

17,362 posts

210 months

Saturday 8th June
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You do realize the company is being run into the ground to make a sell off more attractive ?

And once it's sold off then letters will become even less important and the depots in desirable locations will be sold off.

The least amount of days they deliver letters the frewer staff they need .

egor110

17,362 posts

210 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
Sticks. said:
Near me, post boxes other than the main ones are collected at 9am - so effectively next day for most people. Genius.
It is genius because they've eliminated the afternoon collection and all the duties or overtime that did that work.

Sigmamark7

367 posts

168 months

Saturday 8th June
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I had a parcel collected from South Gloucestershire on Monday morning at 11am and it was delivered to an address in Northern Ireland at around 11.30 am the following day. Not bad for under £6.

Spare tyre

10,333 posts

137 months

Saturday 8th June
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We don’t see our postman more than twice a week. Im pretty confident he has three rounds each getting two deliveries a week

egor110

17,362 posts

210 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
Spare tyre said:
We don’t see our postman more than twice a week. Im pretty confident he has three rounds each getting two deliveries a week
Exactly , as staff leave they don't replace them they split the vacant delivery and add it to the remaining rounds.

New staff don't hang around long because they get paid less than long term posties and have to work sat and suns , so once a better job turns up they go.

Cow Corner

297 posts

37 months

Saturday 8th June
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Obviously the service has gone massively downhill, but they get away with it because, for the vast majority of people, post is now completely irrelevant. Parcels on the other hand…

I used to love reading a paper copy of The Economist weekly, but have cancelled it as it was usually out of date before it arrived and a few times they just stopped my subscription, because Royal Mail say they couldn’t find me (yeah, right). Sad, as I don’t really enjoy reading it online/on iPad, as it just feels like more screen time, rather than a mental break.




48k

13,951 posts

155 months

Saturday 8th June
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Provide a 6 day service using posties on 5 day-a-week contracts, mess them about changing hours and terms, then see how enthused they are to do overtime to cover shortages for you.

Skyedriver

18,856 posts

289 months

Saturday 8th June
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When I was a postie (isle of Skye - 2005) it was mostly letters and small packages with a few larger boxes that a guy in a van took for me. (I had a RM bike).
These days it's predominantly parcels, many large as letters apart from more legal stuff are all sent email now. They are competing with all the major couriers so need to keep costs down, delivering for the likes of Amazon. Our own postie retired a couple of weeks ago, he'd been in the job 35 years and was totally fed up with the work, middle of May, the Transit van was full like at Christmas time. Some days there just wasn't enough room in the van for all the parcels!

egor110

17,362 posts

210 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
Cow Corner said:
Obviously the service has gone massively downhill, but they get away with it because, for the vast majority of people, post is now completely irrelevant. Parcels on the other hand…

I used to love reading a paper copy of The Economist weekly, but have cancelled it as it was usually out of date before it arrived and a few times they just stopped my subscription, because Royal Mail say they couldn’t find me (yeah, right). Sad, as I don’t really enjoy reading it online/on iPad, as it just feels like more screen time, rather than a mental break.
They get away with it because they don't really want the uso license to deliver letters and no other delivery company does

The government are never going to take over the running of the company so RM can play hard re how many days they will deliver because there is no plan b.

colin79666

1,971 posts

120 months

Saturday 8th June
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It’s been bad for at least a couple of years now. Industrial relations broke down resulting in strikes but even since that was resolved 2nd class post/tracked 48 seems to be taking at least 4 or 5 days, sometimes a week. Untracked letters seem to have no priority at all now.

I saw a Bloomberg interview with the guy trying to buy RMs parent company. To be fair he probably would do better than the current mob, as long as he can keep the unions onside. He is in it for the longer term (at least he says he is) and will invest to get the infrastructure in place to compete with the couriers. If you look at just about any RM van or sorting office you can see the lack of investment that has been going on for years.

Skeptisk

8,229 posts

116 months

Saturday 8th June
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They are useless. We put in place a redirection when we moved abroad and rented out or house. Our tenants left and my wife moved back in early. She tried to cancel the redirection. She got confirmations and emails saying it had been cancelled…but they just continued to redirect our post anyway (now to an address we don’t live in).

egor110

17,362 posts

210 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
Are you for real ?

He's not going to give a monkeys about the union they lost the workforce after the last load of industrial action , you'll never get mass strikes again.

Re doing a better job , he'll just asset strip the company then put it back up for sale.

valiant

11,319 posts

167 months

Saturday 8th June
quotequote all
egor110 said:
Are you for real ?

He's not going to give a monkeys about the union they lost the workforce after the last load of industrial action , you'll never get mass strikes again.

Re doing a better job , he'll just asset strip the company then put it back up for sale.
Yep, just hive the valuable stuff to a different entity, load it with enormous debt whilst paying huge divis and run it into the ground and then hand it back to Gov.

See Thames Water for inspiration...