Are they struggling? They should be.

I rocked up to my local sorting office at 10.00am today to collect a parcel. I’m not kidding, there must have been 25 people stood in the queue, all waiting down the pavement outside the office like some kind of communist bread queue.

When I finally got to the desk (about 25 minutes later), there was only one poor girl “on duty”. Whilst inside the waiting area we could all hear the guys having fun out the back and swearing loudly(the little kids next to me in the queue were a bit shocked, it was hilarious).

When will Royal Mail learn that they need to up their game? To the layman (ie me), online shopping has increased HUGELY over the last few years, but Royal Mail don’t seem to have improved the efficiency of their service to match this trend.

Or have I got it all wrong?

I know what you mean, but I kind of like my local sorting office.

Not bad productivity though – serve a customer a minute.

I hope the girl on the desk is on some sort of productivity bonus.

I’m not kidding, there must have been 25 people stood in the queue, all waiting down the pavement outside the office like some kind of communist bread queue example of what happens when you let free marketeers deregulate the postal system.

Fixed!

A queue of 25 people out of the door, sounds like they have plenty customers then.

Most collection points are not client focused , hence the background happens everywhere bedlam.

There has been a massive increase in parcel delivery in the last few years , but point of collection points are like a 1970’s social security office

When will people learn! some hints so you dont have to queue again.

1. Be in when the parcel gets delivered
2. Get it delivered to work
3. Safe place to leave your item of mail/parcel tell your postie
4. Ask Doris next door to take delivery of the parcel
5. Ring the Delivery office for redelivery you can chose the day except Sunday (free of charge)

You might have heard some industrial language it happens if offended ask to speak to the DO manager he will be there.Usually they only have a couple of staff that work in the security cage and they are cleared to work in there you just can not let any old tom,dick or harriet in there due to Security.

Queues are usually down to customers not having the right documentation with them or @ lunch/school kicking out time.

Postierich, that’s all very well but a friend of mine posted a parcel to my house, though in hindsight I should have chosen option 5 😆

the royal mail has its problems but i’d rather wait a few minutes at the local sorting office to collect an undelivered item than go on a 50 minute drive to some industrial estate to some mail depot that i’ll spend ages trying to find because its not signed and then wait in a line to be served there. Because that seems to be what the alternative is if i dont want to pay twice to get something redelivered 🙁

Maybe its just me but i think the Royal Mail is actually pretty good.

Eh? Never paid twice to get it redelivered Omar. IIRC you can get it redirected too.

stevewhyte – Member

Maybe its just me but i think the Royal Mail is actually pretty good.

Me too, perhaps the others live in areas where no one gives a shite.

Our post girl is superb, not only does she always have a cheery smile & makes that extra effort with delivery’s but our local sorting office is only a 1/4 mile away & staffed by pleasant people.

Where is this utopia of postal joy I hear you ask. Less than 9 miles from the center of that supposedly bolshy militant city Liverpool.

but i’d rather wait a few minutes at the local sorting office to collect an undelivered item than go on a 50 minute drive to some industrial estate to some mail depot that i’ll spend ages trying to find because its not signed and then wait in a line to be served there. Because that seems to be what the alternative is if i dont want to pay twice to get something redelivered

+1
Convenience of being able to collect from my local Royal Mail(Victoria Rd Glasgow) sorting office or my local Post Office for Parcelforce stuff is well worth it IMHO.Queues happen from time to time ,rarely more than a few minutes but my local posties and sorting office provide a great service which is more than I can say for some other courier services .Many threads on here about their poor quality service.

Postierich, while you’re here, perhaps you could answer a small query for me. Where I work we get lots of mail delivered, (two Yorks yesterday, 63 trays on first delivery, 24 second), and in amongst that lot inevitably there are wrong deliveries. So, we give them back to the postie, and a day or so later they come back. So they get handed back, and a day or so later, lo and behold, guess what turns up…
Just before Christmas a large, bright pink envelope from Essex, addressed to India, came back six times over a period of around two weeks. Care to hazard a guess as to why these bloody letters keep haunting my post room?

If you look on the envelopes normally on the front there is a bar code put a pen through it it will stop it being sorted to your address by the LSM,s Letter sorting machine about 60% is sorted this way obviously write on it aswell!

I like them. I’ve not had to buy a rubber band in years.

Royal mail is crap,

bunch of lazy moaning/lying old gits, who always complain that progress is not good/or fair,

Most have not done a hard days work in their life.

And they cant even do the job you pay them for.

Im awaiting a parcel that was guaranteed to be delivered yesterday by no later than 1 pm.

Waited in until 2.30 pm (as i need the item for work) and they didn’t show.

I get home from work that night to find a card through my door saying they called at 1055 AM

Phones them this morning to say i waited in until 2.30 yesterday and theirs no way you came at 11 AM as i would have had to walk over the card when leaving my house.

the woman at the other end said well i don’t know then, and hung up.

Its now 4pm ( and over 48hrs since posting )and the sorting office still don’t know where my guaranteed by 1pm the next day parcel is.

crap service provided by people who don’t give a sh1t

It reminds me of the NHS but for idiots.

Some of our posties appear to have a policy of leaving a card rather than even attempt to deliver a parcel. Twice in recent times I have heard the card being put through the letterbox and caught the postie before he could get back to his van. Other posties have been excellent and because of them I have chosen Royal Mail over other options in the past but not any more.

Yes Merchant Banker, it’s completely reasonable to judge the entirety of one of the country’s biggest organisations with what must be the biggest throughput of individual services on one instance.

Its not the first time though and i think completely reasonable. i dont care how big they are ( all the more reason to get it right )

if i pay for a service thats guaranteed by them not me then the least they can do is stick to it.

or is that to much for you to understand mr calaperty clap

So…you’ve never made a mistake?

postierich, do you mean the two dayglow orange barcodes printed in dots on the right-hand side? If so, I thought they might have something to do with the problem. Would going over them with an orange highlighter cancel them, or does it need to be something like a black ballpoint?

Its not about making mistakes though is it,

its about taking money for a service that you don’t provide,and then being rude to the customer when you’ve been found out to be lying.

thats what its about.

I’ve just had a parcel not delivered. It was 36p short on the postage (how the sender from Kuala Lumpur was could have guessed) and now there is a £1 handling fee.
I know they do a good job but a 400% charge!!!

Ah, you’d not said that before, much clearer.

so they’re rubbish as soon as one of their 176,000 stuffs up?

Count Zero… It is the orange barcode, just scribble over it in biro or peel it off if it’s a sticker and mark return to sender.
Cheers
Postie Sid 😀

Cheers Sid, I thought that might be the case, but had no-one to ask to confirm it. The percentage of mis-delivered mail is fairly small, but it’s a pain when it keeps coming back. Now I know for sure how to stop that. Thanks for your help. 😀

Other postal delivery servicesare available

Not when you are ordering stuff, nor for letters.

Other postal delivery servicesare available

you’ll have a loooooong walk to their local sorting office though

I have said it before and I continue to say it, they are a bunch of thieves and incompetent fools.

Not the day to day posties but the management, there will alsways be fools that will try and say they are value for money for that they should be allowed to be the only company with access to the post offices.

But the card through the door scam and attitude of the royalmail is disgusting.

Unfortunataly the oldest political trick in the con people out of national assets book is, run it so uselessly that you have no other course of action but to sell it to your friends for pennies, who then make money from it 😉

Kaesae you never fail to disappoint but your last line is so true 🙂

the only company with access to the post offices

How many times do you need to be told Royal Mail and the Post Office are one and the same company! thats why.

When Burger King start selling Big Macs and Asda start selling Morrisons beans maybe the PO can be forced to work for other couriers (although they already carry competitors mail)

Well the postie that delivers to our house is ace. He consistantly brings the parcels and is really helpful

carlosg – Member

the only company with access to the post offices

How many times do you need to be told Royal Mail and the Post Office are one and the same company! thats why.

When Burger King start selling Big Macs and Asda start selling Morrisons beans maybe the PO can be forced to work for other couriers (although they already carry competitors mail)

Royalmail and the post offices belong to us genius, they are not privately owned and if they refuse to do thier jobs or even adhere to their own terms of condition, they will have to go!

If they where a private company then that argument would have some merrit, they are not and they exist as a national asset that is supposed to benefit this country.

They do not and the primary concern for any logical person in the middle of a recession should be a reliable postale service!

Not a rip off! piss take! the attitude of the royalmail is disgusting and thier behaviour no better, fot too long they have not answered to the public they should be providing a service for and that needs to change!

Royalmail and the post offices belong to us genius

Does that mean I can be blamed for the red rubber band trail along the street? How much responsibility does said ownership entail?

My wife had a run in with our postman on Saturday. Quite bizarre. There are three cottages in a row, my Mum’s house on the right, another cottage in the middle and ours on the left. There is a letter box in each and also an old milk churn by my Mum’s gate with her house name on it, in front of he middle cottage. I saw the guy a couple of weeks ago and he was confused so asked me. I explained the middle cottage was now empty but the milk can could do for either my mum or us as we were all related etc. I’ve already told the local sorting office that our bell doesn’t work but the knocker does if anything needs signing for etc. We’ve had a couple of incidents when packages that need signing for have not been left even though someone has been at home and seen the van drive away and had a card left instead.

Anyway my wife politely pointed out to him that our house was the address he was looking for but he got angry and said how was he to know that; she then pointed to the 2’ x 1.5’ name sign in the front wall. He got a bit flustered and possibly angry through embarrassment and was actually going to leave with the package until my wife got a bit angry herself at being messed about. She signed for the package and he left in a huff.

A queue of 25 people out of the door, sounds like they have plenty customers then.

i know, how they ever manage to lose money is a mystery…

So far today I have had an item returned that was posted to canada with a w7? scribled on it and incomplete address, so I sent this message to the rider that has 439 feedback and is a repeat customer.

Hello Adrian
The bushing tool that I posted out to you has been returned stating that the address is incomplete, even though you have hundreds of feedback and this is the second item I’ve posted to you in the past 3 weeks.

The last one went through OK. That said can you check your address just to be 100% sure that the royal snail fail are yet again emphasizing that they’re utterly useless and couldn’t manage a fart the morning after a heavy night of drinking and too much curry!

Address has indeed been confirmed and is correct, also had two other riders one via the phone and one via ebay messages asking where their items are.

These clowns are costing me thousands of pounds each year in extra hassle/time spent trying to use the useless tracking system and constant complaints, and although I know we will need to pay more in the future once the royalmail is sold for the service they should provide, although I also know that all of the money they made previously in profits that should have been reinvested was squandered by one incompetent bunch of bullshiters after another.

It doesn’t change the fact that they are a liability or that this country needs a proffesional modern efficient mail service.

Sorry to all the good people who work for the royal snail fail, but you simply must go, sooner or later, your days are numbered!