Announcement of redundancies today and also this:

AMAZON takes Yodel stake
Amazon has struck a deal with the Barclay Brothers to acquire a stake in UK-based parcel delivery service Yodel, the Guardian reports. Amazon has been given an option to acquire 4.2% of Yodel in a deal allowing for an overall valuation of the business at GBP207 million (USD339 million).

Maybe if they threw away fewer of their customers’ parcels, made an effort to deliver the item rather than the red card, they would be in a better shape!

to be fair our local postie is great and have few complaints about their service

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/25/royal-mail-shed-1600-jobs

Royal Mail look to be trying to commit business suicide at the moment, unless they are just trying to focus on letter delivery and let the parcel side die away. Other options are now so much cheaper and far more convenient.

As a customer I’d take royal mail over yodel every time, but as a supplier I expect there’s a different tale.

Yodel owned by Barclay(s) Brothers? why am I not surprised…

I hope not, I own a load of shares in RM!

As a customer I’d take royal mail over yodel every time, but as a supplier I expect there’s a different tale.

As a customer I’d take collect+, myhermes over both. I actually can’t remember the last time I posted a letter and the only geniune mail that I receive is from my bank. Everything else is spam delivered by RM.

Sad really but Royal Mail seemingly have an increasingly bizarre way that they are doing business.

I think the rise of couriers who allow online booking and will collect have definitely hurt them, and soaring prices and odd policies haven’t helped their case.

I usually use other suppliers these days.

I told the father in law to bump his shares off about 6/8 weeks ago…

I agree with Hora, Collect+ is a far superior service to royal mail. Reasonably priced and convenient.

Not using local PO’s as parcel collection centres, and taking undelivered parcels to depots miles away, has been bizarre for years. In Germany any undelivered parcel goes to my nearest post office branch (which seem more numerous than in the UK now). Trouble with the PO is has it been so badly damaged that it is now unrecoverable.

The Royal Mail has been dying for years. They remind me of woolworths tbh, cut adrift in a marketplace that is changing faster than they can adapt.

Royal Mail have been in trouble for many years.

My local postie is great. RM as a whole is a shower of s@@@e!

unless they are just trying to focus on letter delivery and let the parcel side die away

of course they’ll be wanting the parcel side to die away. They’ve got little or no competition for the delivery of letters. They have more competitors for parcels than I could list – and all those competitors have no remit to provide a universal service. So RM is probably happy to leave those parcel co’s to their race to the bottom and just focus on the services that they have to provide.

They remind me of woolworths tbh, cut adrift in a marketplace that is changing faster than they can adapt.

What killed Woolies was a ridiculous shelf/promotion period rotation of stock, the overstocks that resulted in the warehouses because of this and stores in really stupid locations. First and foremost.

When I was there there were 24(?) promotion cycles a year- stock on shelves, stock whipped off shelves, best sellers not allowed to be maximised, etc etc.

If soo many companies ARE chasing the parcel business what does that say???

thepurist – Member

As a customer I’d take royal mail over yodel every time, but as a supplier I expect there’s a different tale.

Amazon dont tend to mess around though, I’d expect Yodel to become “Amazon Prime Delivery” or something and the customer service to get a lot better

Amazon dont tend to mess around though, I’d expect Yodel to become “Amazon Prime Delivery” or something and the customer service to get a lot better

It wouldn’t be hard for Yodel to improve though. By delivering the correct parcel to the correct address once per day would see 100% improvement.

😕

I’d much rather have Royal Mail delivering my mail than Yodel. The amount of times I’ve has signed-for parcels left in communal building areas or just outside by Yodel is unreal.

Royal Mail missed the boat about 20 years ago when they could have positioned themselves as a global email provider. Easy to say with hindsight, although a friend of mine did approach them with the idea at the time and received short shrift from them.

They were too cheap for letter post until it was too late.

Now, they seem to want to cherry pick what, how and when they deliver.

From my outside perspective, poor incompetent management for too many years and a culture that harks back to the days of British Leyland and it’s not surprising really.

Not using local PO’s as parcel collection centres, and taking undelivered parcels to depots miles away, has been bizarre for years.

parcel depots which are open from something like 11am to 3pm

<slow hand clap>

Amazon dont tend to mess around though, I’d expect Yodel to become “Amazon Prime Delivery” or something and the customer service to get a lot better

hasn’t this actually already happened- I’m sure my last parcel was an “Amazon own” jobbie..

Yodel have a massive trebuchet that they load parcels onto and then fire at the general direction of the recipients postcode.

They also have a few blokes driving round in vans deliberately cutting people up to get themselves noticed, so people won’t realise parcel delivery is actually via trebuchet.

Their focus has to be on parcels, the letter business is declining rapidly and does not generate enough profit to keep the organisation going long term.

hasn’t this actually already happened- I’m sure my last parcel was an “Amazon own” jobbie..

Yea, we’ve had a fair bit of stuff from Amazon Delivers recently.

We are focusing on Parcels but at an alarming slow rate!! Tracked parcels seem to be going through the roof and the letters are not dropping off. As for the news today it does not surprise me, we have to many Chiefs and not enough Indians.
Royal mail seem to be focusing on selling of a lot of the assets(land)will be interesting to see the operation figures since privitisation!

Rich

My postie is one of the best . And the parcelforce guy is top notch they both take stuff to my wife’s work if we are not about and we pick it up from there (small office).. now post office store staff is a different kettle of fish.the organization is on self destruct mode I can see the share price dropping and big German outfit taking a major stake on the cheap.

Welcome to the private sector RM. Whilst driving I heard on the radio today the unions were furious about the job cuts, citing, ‘they are unnecessary as Royal Mail are making a profit’ I nearly head butted my steering wheel. It reminded me of Dr Evil from Austin Powers, ‘why make trillions when we can make billions’…..

parcel depots which are open from something like 11am to 3pm

Our RM office is open until 8pm on Wednesdays and from 7:30am every day (they close at 3 all other days to be fair).

As ever, the posties and depot chaps and chapesses here are great, and have been everywhere we have lived.
It is the muppets at the top that seem to be the issue.

They were too cheap for letter post until it was too late.

They were restricted by government rules, and as competition opened up the private companies were allowed to collect comercial mail from big companies, sort it then hand it over to RM to deliver for less than cost.

RM may not have had the greatest management, but the were **** left right and centre by successive governments who seemed set to destroy them in order to help other commercial interests.

RM destroyed by a tory government to help private sector rivals shock !

Just like BR. Not quite so blatant, in the case of BR Ernest Marples was transport minister, and owned a corporation building motorways.

Vote tory, get shafted. At least with labour, they may use some lubricant…

To be fair it’s been going on for 15-20 years, they have been screwed by the tories in red as much as the tories in blue.

Spot on MSP. As a postie it hurts to see the way RM is being run down. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been praised for the service provided but we still get a lot of unnecessary stick. RM have been too slow in adapting,I personally like the collect+ system. Amazon provide a good service but don’t try and tell anyone who works for them that they’re a good company,you may loose your teeth.

Royal Mail missed the boat about 20 years ago when they could have positioned themselves as a global email provider. Easy to say with hindsight, although a friend of mine did approach them with the idea at the time and received short shrift from them.

They were too cheap for letter post until it was too late.

Now, they seem to want to cherry pick what, how and when they deliver.

From my outside perspective, poor incompetent management for too many years and a culture that harks back to the days of British Leyland and it’s not surprising really.

Yes, because they were controlled by politicians who were only interested in the cash they could deliver to the Govt – and the political impact of any price rises.

Amazon provide a good service but don’t try and tell anyone who works for them that they’re a good company,

I don’t think anyone thinks Amazon are a good company.

Agreed but I was thinking more about the way they treat they’ve staff rather than they’re tax evasion.