Viewing 25 posts - 1 through 25 (of 25 total)
  • Is Royal Mail trying to kill off Post Offices?
  • Flaperon
    Full Member

    Noticed a very heavy advertising campaign at the moment for their parcel collection service (postman prints label and collects parcel for you). At the same time the decent parcel services (eg RM24 and 48 are only available online and require you to drop the parcel at the sorting office).

    Presumably this completely cuts the local post offices out of the loop. Is this a revenge tactic following the legal action taken by sub-postmasters over Horizon etc?

    fossy
    Full Member

    Local PO’s have gone, it’s a counter in a newsagent’s round here now. The one near work that was a PO, has a Subway in half of it.

    tenacious_doug
    Free Member

    It’s in response to all other parcel carriers offering the same service. I’d all but stopped using Royal Mail due to the convenience of pick up at the door from everyone else, since they started offering it I’m back to Royal Mail again.

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    Jordan
    Full Member

    PO and RM are two completely seperate companies. Tracked 24 and 48 have free collection, no need to take it anywhere.

    sharkattack
    Full Member

    I don’t know where my nearest Post Office is. They’re all small counters in corner shops like the local Premier and Spar etc.

    dissonance
    Full Member

    Royal mail and the post office are two separate companies (I am sure it made sense to the tories when selling everything off).
    So whilst possibly not wanting to kill them off they do have an interest in keeping the cash to themselves.

    wwpaddler
    Free Member

    Post offices were killed off when the government stopped paying benefits in cash through them and paid them all direct to your bank account.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    Post offices were killed off when the government stopped paying benefits in cash through them and paid them all direct to your bank account.

    Well, that’s a possible contributing factor – but I suspect it’s nicer for benefits claimants to have the money just pop into their accts instead of having to queue up in public to get it on a Tuesday morning.

    I don’t see what’s wrong with PO counters in the Co-Op or Spar, works well here as my local one always seem busy but I don’t imagine the margins are sufficient to justify a standalone premises.

    dovebiker
    Full Member

    We have a stand-alone one in the village – it also is the Royal Mail sorting office, so when the big van arrives with the daily delivery of Amazon parcels that get piled-up in the street – the benefits of living in a zero crime area 🤣. I use them for all my deliveries and they’ve only lost one in the last 500. For heavier stuff, I use Parcel Force and just drop it off at the PO. The only other choice is Evri – if I arrange a collection it take up to a week to collect. My last Evri collection ‘disappeared’ an Amazon return…deep joy.

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    The Post Office is doing an excellent job of killing off post offices (and sub postmasters) without any help from Royal Mail.

    I mean, who the f would want to work for them under threat of being defrauded of their life savings, persecuted through the courts, thrown in prison and then offered a piffling amount of compensation?

    footflaps
    Full Member

    They are an outdated concept (like bank branches) which are going to vanish almost completely in the next 10 years. Makes a lot of sense having the delivery vans which continually drive up and down most streets do collections as well; be they Royal Mail, Amazon or who ever.

    oldtennisshoes
    Full Member

    What @footflaps said. Add in digital passport, driving licence and vehicle taxing applications and they are pretty much an irrelevance. Will be interesting to see how collections deal with items that are priced in weight bands though.
    I suspect new pricing models based just on volume are incoming.

    Drac
    Full Member

    A separate parcel delivery service? It’s not the only one that does this.

    I’ve 2 PO within walking distance of me, the large village my parents live in has one that’s opened limited hours. It’s a very rural village that a lot residents relied on it.

    seriousrikk
    Full Member

    I’ve not stepped inside a post office since Royal Mail first started their collection service.

    Absolutely no reason why I would now. I’ll gladly pay a small fee to not have to make a trip out.

    airvent
    Free Member

    I mean, who the f would want to work for them under threat of being defrauded of their life savings, persecuted through the courts, thrown in prison and then offered a piffling amount of compensation?

    Agreed, I have less than zero respect for them as a company now.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Will be interesting to see how collections deal with items that are priced in weight bands though.
    I suspect new pricing models based just on volume are incoming.

    My Hermes tried this trick on me, held the parcel and tried to charge me a fine plus the shortage. I refused and pointed out I’d written the weight on the parcel as it was close to the limit. They never resolved the issue but turns the parcel was already delivered so they were just trying it on. However, that’s how they’ll enforce postage by weight.

    Royal Mail is not my first choice any more, if I miss a parcel from them, I have to collect from the main sorting office. It’s open 8am-10am each day, but they push the boat out on Saturdays and open 8-12. What a joke. Last time they had closed because someone had kicked the front door and the lower pane of glass was cracked… It’s always propped open and there are two doors so why that warranted closing the counter I don’t know…

    bentudder
    Full Member

    A former colleague has spent over a decade chasing the Post Office / Horizon IT / Fujitsu scandal, which wrongly criminalised hundreds of sub postmasters and drove some to suicide. It’s an absolutely horrific story: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252522141/Subpostmaster-campaigning-forces-government-to-set-up-compensation-scheme-and-make-interim-payments
    – so don’t be too down in the people on three front line of this.
    As pointed out, RM and PO are different. We are lucky to have a sorting office / PO I or town, but it’s clear the Counters part has come under more and more financial pressure over the last few years.

    mrchrist
    Full Member

    I can’t understand how they thought 720 people were on the take after a major IT upgrade.

    Absolute C****.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I can’t understand how they thought 720 people were on the take after a major IT upgrade.

    I guess at the time the system was deemed to be infallible, in which case it was fraud.

    Like all these things (eg Grenfell) there was no one person at fault, it was a whole set of bad decisions taken with poor information at multiple levels, which created the total and utter mess.

    kerley
    Free Member

    The PO a couple of miles from my house is always very busy. Mostly with people doing all the things that can be done online these days with very few people actually posting anything so if it did close those people would just have to realise it is 2022 I suppose.

    monkeyboyjc
    Full Member

    At the same time the decent parcel services (eg RM24 and 48 are only available online and require you to drop the parcel at the sorting office).

    I own/run a postoffice, so happy to answer any questions here….

    RM24 and 48 have a few options, you should be able to pick the right one for you. The cheapest is to go direct to royal mail and drop at one of their depo’s, but check the public opening times first, many open and close early (7am-2pm at our local one)

    You can pay for royal mail to collect, there is a charge for this I think and will depend on you being in at the time or leaving it in a safe place for your postman.

    You can pay to drop it off at your local postoffice – to do this go through the postoffice website rather than royal mail as any RM labels will be rejected by the postoffice system – as others have said, two separate companies and RM process labels have no po fees.

    monkeyboyjc
    Full Member

    Like all these things (eg Grenfell) there was no one person at fault, it was a whole set of bad decisions taken with poor information at multiple levels, which created the total and utter mess.

    I believe that theres evidence to suggest that those in charge at the time were aware of the issues but had dug them selves into a hole after spending millions on the new ‘infallable’ system only to realise it wasn’t, so it was cheaper to send everyone to prison than admit the system had issues, fix them or replace the system again. Hense the resent payouts to innocent postmasters convicted. The postoffice also have their own polices and investigation teams so the regular police were bi-passed.

    Btw the horizon system is still in use (with the same issues), a roll out of a new system is underway, but it’ll still take years to update the 11.5k post offices across the country.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I believe that theres evidence to suggest that those in charge at the time were aware of the issues but had dug them selves into a hole after spending millions on the new ‘infallable’ system only to realise it wasn’t, so it was cheaper to send everyone to prison than admit the system had issues, fix them or replace the system again. Hense the resent payouts to innocent postmasters convicted. The postoffice also have their own polices and investigation teams so the regular police were bi-passed.

    It won’t have been that simple, these things never are. They will always have been fraud on POs before hand so catching and prosecuting bad PO masters wasn’t a new thing when Horizon arrived. I don’t believe that someone sat there knowing the data was erroneous and yet was happy to send someone to prison as ‘it was cheaper’. It’s a tragedy and a disgrace, but it was also a complex mess. There will have been people who suspected the data was erroneous in the organisation, but they won’t be the same one who authorised the prosecutions etc. It was a massive organisation back then, 10,000s of people plus sub contractors doing the IT. Perfect setting for SNAFU.

    cookeaa
    Full Member

    I don’t think it’s RM trying to “kill” post offices, more like they’re trying to save Royal Mail in a market full of competition.

    We can wander round the corner and use ‘Collect+’ at the local newsagent, walk a bit further and use the local PO, or pay the extra, print labels and have RM pickup, or anyone one of about 5 other options all with variable reputations. personally I prefer and trust RM, but they have competition and I imagine letter carrying is a much smaller market than it used to be(???)…

    monkeyboyjc
    Full Member

    <span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>don’t think it’s RM trying to “kill” post offices, more like they’re trying to save Royal Mail in a market full of competition.</span>

    Rm broke their contract with postoffice a couple of years ago (two seperate companies) – by processing their own post they cut out postoffice from their online transactions. So postoffice don’t make any money on royal mail online processed and handled post – which is why you can’t drop them off at a local postoffice and have to go to a rm site.

    But this has also opened postoffice to other potential carriers, there are currently trials for DPD (processing) and Amazon (dropoff) being handled through the postoffice.

    It’s worthwhile noting that Postoffice, don’t just make money from post, significant income comes from banking (especially as high street banks are shutting at a high rate), travel money, insurance etc.

     I don’t believe that someone sat there knowing the data was erroneous and yet was happy to send someone to prison as ‘it was cheaper’.

    Internal emails at the time suggest otherwise

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