I wonder how much difference that would make to the operating costs of the service?
If I have to pop into an office on the high street next to the deli and the greengrocer then it could almost be an improvement.
I bet the queues will be tiny.
I mean, how long can it take to personally hand over (after checking ID) 75 million letters and parcels every day ?
Don't be obtuse. 
What does that fancy word "obtuse" mean BD ? .........Is it something to do with being in touch with reality ?
The issue is how far people have to go to collect it isn't basically?
That's true, but it's the thin end of the wedge isn't it?.
If you get rid of deliveries and ask people to go the the local office, then the offices become too expensive so they close smaller ones down. Then you end up having to go further away and before you know it, you have a 2 hour round trip to get to an office that's only open when you're at work.
Somethings services are worth paying for imo, and Royal Mail is one of those services.
My Father used to be RM management... I think it's something to do with offering a Universal Postal Service
Without RM you wouldn't be able to send a letter to any address for a flat fee. No Private courier is going to pick up that mantle.
I think you'd go to a model where you rented a PO box in the local office wouldn't you? Your local supermarket or whatever would probably be mad keen to have the boxes as it would bring trade in, so the rental would probably stay reasonably controlled and/or you'd get tie-ins from the junk mail people to subsidise the boxes so that they didn't have to do door-to-door themselves. I'm not sure I see why the point from which you picked up your mail would inevitably get further away, once you'd trimmed back the very substantial costs of door-to-door delivery. If it did turn into a 2 hour round trip then the post would simply die out altogether. You'd never, ever make a trip like that to collect a gas bill afterall.
I indirectly have a 'share' in Royal Mail, and it's profits reduce my tax bill.
GG, I shall remind you of that point of view when Lloyds/RBS announce record profit-based bonus for their employees
[chuckles at Stoner]
Royal Mail PO box stuff here
USPS PO box stuff here
USPS seems to be rather good at this. Although there apparently aren't many countries one would necessarily leap at the chance of living in which have no door-to-door at all. Namibia is cited as an example on Wiki...
Isn't one of the problems with RM being the breaking of the RM monopoly? Didn't the Government open up the "market" for mail services to "private enterprise", ie a lot of businesses paying employees around minimum wage creaming off the lucrative stuff, therefore wiping out a massive part of the cross subsidy inherent in the RM monopoly and causing the current fall out? Maybe we should just go back to the way it was recreating the monopoly and paying posties a decent wage. A one up for the common weal rather than the "free market."?
I don't think the free market is the best way of allocating resources in a natural monopoly like the postal service. Ref see also Gas, Electricity and Rail networks.
I think you'd go to a model where you rented a PO box in the local office wouldn't you? Your local supermarket or whatever would probably be mad keen to have the boxes as it would bring trade in, so the rental would probably stay reasonably controlled and/or you'd get tie-ins from the junk mail people to subsidise the boxes so that they didn't have to do door-to-door themselves.
I could see this working in filthy London, where everyone is so inured to inconvenience that they would probably walk to work on their hands if they thought it was necessary. For people out in the sticks, no way, look at how many small villages have lost their post office over the past couple of decades.
Re the OP's point, I think this was summed up quite nicely by a Grauniad article the other day, in which they tried to send a letter without using RM. The best price they could get was a shade over six quid. If RM goes, it'll be a major disaster for everyone, with the possible exception of tramps.
GG, I shall remind you of that point of view when Lloyds/RBS announce record profit-based bonus for their employees
You can remind me of how many days there are before Christmas for all I care ..........what's that got to do with the price of rice ?
I think you'd go to a model where you rented a PO box in the local office wouldn't you?
Surely the flaw in that is that you'd need as many PO boxes as households in the area served by the local office, since no-one would have any mail delivered? - That's going to have to be a pretty big 'local' office.
How many millions of households are there in the UK? Boom time for pigeon hole / PO box manufacturers I guess
Can't see how that is practically possible.
Mr-A, Quite take the point that big cities are a separate case, but people in the country are going somewhere to buy their food and so forth, often fairly frequently. A bit of creative thinking could get their PO boxes into pubs, shops or wherever they're going anyway. Also, the revenue from a post office ont he current model relies on people actually wanting to post things doesn't it? Whereas a PO box rental model relies on people renting a box in the hope of receiving things, so the income is perhaps more predictable and stable.
It would take some getting used to, but I suspect that a lot of the places where home delivery isn't done are places with much worse communications links than much of rural Britain.
RBS/Lloyds owned by taxpayers (i.e. you)
In order for the tax payer to get the significant investment made on its behalf back, RBS and Lloyds have to be highly profitable and grow massively in market capitalisation as a result for when the government sell down our shares again...
Profit related bonuses in the banking sector are the proven method of growing profitability in the short term in a rising market.
Therefore it is in your/tax-payer's interest for RBS to pay eye-watering bonuses to their bankers. Im sure you wish them well for this bonus cycle....
That's going to have to be a pretty big 'local' office.
Or a large number of local offices. This is when I wish I knew more about the business. There's all this talk of the "last mile" being the expensive bit that TNT and the rest won't do. If your collection points are serving an area of a square mile it sounds as though that ought to be tolerable and wouldn't involve too vast an office. Think how big the pigeon holes for a block of flats aren't.
Stoner - I have no idea why you want to talk about banks on this thread.
Try this thread :
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/how-angry-does-this-make-you
Bimbler, the wage for us posties isnt great, but its OK- the dispute is categorically not about pay.
The ultimate insult about deregulisation is that not only are private and foreign companies allowed to cherrypick profitable mail, but under 'downstream access' they simply hand all mail they cant economically deliver back to us, for a below cost fee, effectivly turning what would be a loss to them into a profit. We absorb the loss!
RM management had a chance to argue against or influence this policy, but chose not to.
BD, that assumes that every local community has a shop or a pub, or that such places are unchanging fixtures of everyday life. Or even that people go to shops - when I was growing up it was a novelty to get your shopping delivered to your home, now it's pretty commonplace.
Well if you've got a remote community where everyone is getting their shopping delivered to their homes then getting their post as well shouldn't, economically or practically, be a problem, should it?
You could have an address "c/o Ocado delivery ref: X" and your mail would turn up with your quails eggs and foccacia. Limitless possibility.
Hope you don't feel I'm judging you harshly here Jon, but you don't venture outside London much, do you? And when you do, I'm guessing it's usually to Surrey?
You're correct, of course.
I'm not sure it's a killer point, but we'll let you have it. 
Removing an institution like the Royal Mail would just be another step in the de-Britishanisation (new word for today) of our fair nation. Yet another step towards anonimity when the United States of Europe finally kicks in. We'll be like the 50th state in the USA that no one can ever remember....
I like the Royal Mail, even after the postie putting my new forks in the wheely bin, and it should be a state subsidised monopoly - why not??
....Delaware is it???
Hope you don't feel I'm judging you harshly here Jon, but you don't venture outside London much, do you? And when you do, I'm guessing it's usually to Surrey?
Not really sure you're getting at but I don't live in London and rarely go there.
He meant me. And he was dead on.
Oh, OK. 
The ultimate insult about deregulisation is that not only are private and foreign companies allowed to cherrypick profitable mail, but under 'downstream access' they simply hand all mail they cant economically deliver back to us, for a below cost fee, effectivly turning what would be a loss to them into a profit. We absorb the loss!
RM management had a chance to argue against or influence this policy, but chose not to.
Blimey it's worse than I thought. Thanks wk.
What do we need RM for?* Stealing my Economist every week, otherwise who else would do it?
*-strictly it should of course be 'for what do we need RM?', as one should never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
You saw the Top Gear race didn't you? The one where they posted a letter in the Scilly Isles then raced it to an address in the Shetlands (or was it Orkneys?)
Either way for a couple of quid special delivery the letter went via plane, lorry, train and van to it's destination and beat a Porsche. That's value for money.
But was it profitable?
If postman were having such an easy ride and savings could be made quite easily and justifiably,why do ROyal mail bosses refuse to let ACAS resolve the dispute ?
This topic has been closed to new replies.
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