Post Office – are they actually trying to go out of business?

Just popped in to post two little micro usb leads, 41 grams including the Jiffy bag. Then starts the third degree.
What’s in it?
Couple of phone charging cables.
Any of these things?
Yes, my mistake, it’s not a couple of leads, it’s a rear shock, wrapped in semtex and dusted with cat Ebola (is what I should have said).

Two pounds bloody eighty for seconds class, not even signed for but it’s me that gets treated like the criminal.

FFS!

i tried to send a pair of boots yesterday £10.50
madness

Posted a rear bike wheel yesterday for £15.50 via Parcelfarce. £15.50.! That was 48hr, I dread to think what 24hr would have cost.

No, they are trying to maximise profitability. GREAT INNIT?!

Please remember, privatisation gives better serivce!

Nationalised companies tend not to go out of business.

how big was the envelope? I pay less than that for first class recorded, on a dvd sized jiffy, It’s £2.34 for >100g, a bit less for under (can;t remember exactly).

But yes the ‘what’s inside?’ question annoys me also.

Sounds like it went as a small parcel. Should have been a large letter, which is 73p. A few times I’ve had to prove the thing I’m sending fits through the large letter test slot when they try to charge for a small parcel. (assuming it was less than 25mm thick)

I just use MyHermes. I can drop off at a time that suits me and significantly cheaper plus better online tracking.

Even a 5kg parcel to Orkney only took 3 days and cost about £6

Try posting a handlebar over 600mm long…

Can I interest you in Life Insurance/Loan/Insurance today sir?

No, just the &^$&ing first class stamp I asked for will suit me just fine.

Just ordered 5kg of caustic, and 5kg of propanol, wondering if they’ll come by RM/PF or someone else.

The thing I like the most about colect plus is that provided you’re not taking the absolute pee, they don’t eally care too much about the size. I still like recieveing post via royal mail, but they really do take give private senders a raw deal.

Started using Collect+ here. When you compare Royal Mail to a courier like Yodel operating out of an industrial estate with drivers leasing their vans you can see why they struggle to compete.

However, I’m sure I read that Royal Mail have announced discount pricing on parcels for Christmas.

No, they are trying to maximise profitability. GREAT INNIT?!

Please remember, privatisation gives better serivce!

Yes, please spend as much as you can there, my RM Shares are a bit low right now.

Despite being a committed Post Office/RM user for years I have finally given up. Even the woman who runs out local PO apologises about the prices and the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of sliding scale for weight or size – it just get to a certain point and goes from expensive to extortionate. A couple weeks ago I needed to post an old bomber fork to Finland. Even though I took the fork legs out of the crown and removed the brace to pack it right down, Parcelforce wanted £40 to deliver it. UPS charged me £16 and picked it from our pretty remote house.

I’ve had with RM/PO (apart from banking), but I’ll probably give up with that as well soon since Smile has gone from just being inept to being inept and really rude.

Please remember, privatisation gives better serivce!

Post Office are still a nationalised company, RM was privatised

My Hermes user here
I was astonished how much cheaper and more convenient it was
Wont be going back to the PO for sending parcels

Yes, please spend as much as you can there, my RM Shares are a bit low right now.

You’re history’s greatest monster!

My Hermes user here

The fact they only charge an extra 20p to come and collect a parcel, a) makes it a no-brainer, and b), makes me feel sorry for their frontline couriers.

Too little to late even the workers do not use the Post Office anymore! thats privatisation for you pure greed,even i have been shocked in the amount of parcels that we have in our workload!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29505694

Use Hermes too for all small parcels now for home and work as it’s tracked, they collect for 20p more if I can’t drop off at local shop, but still use Parcelforce 48 for big stuff like bikes if it’s an ebay purchase as price is only £11.99, much cheaper than going direct off their own site. Hermes is also good for linking to your ebay account, loads the info and tracking number automatically.

Yes is the answer.

Since moving to seven day working our local post office has moved to being consistently bad;

a) First class usually arrives 3-5 days after its posted
b) Second class usually arrives 6-10 days after its posted
c) Parcels appear to be delivered at random timed intervals different to those selected by the sender.

The only things that improved is
i) thier ability to ignore instructions not to leave things with neihgbours, some 20 houses down the street
ii)
their ability to find a window of opportunity to deliver the red card when we are not in
iii) Their gate slamming technique
iv) Their ability to squeeze the life out of anything upto 120% bigger than our letterbox through it.

Sold a handlebar on Ebay for £17. It cost £12.50 to post it.

RM is dead to me.

To be fair, when they said that’ll be £12.50, that’s the point you go say ,”no, no it won’t”. and walk out. 😛

Yes is the answer.
Since moving to seven day working our local post office has moved to being consistently bad;

Er, aren’t all your complaints about Royal Mail, and not the Post Office (i.e. separate organisations)?

Please please go else where then I will have less work to do that would be nice.

A few months ago our main PO introduced the mail version of self service tills. Two of them.

A special man came out from RMHQ or something, and smilingly introduced me to the end of queues.

In there yesterday, 2:30ish, the queue has snaked up to the entry door, two manned tills plus the currency exchange window are open. Self service is closed.
A few minutes of this and another one of the windows closes. I leave the queue, and ask what’s going on. Turns out the window has closed so the worker can go to lunch, nobody else is around because they no longer need as many staff due to the self service.
And why is self service closed then? …. Because the self service tills can’t be open unless there’s a staff member to man them to ensure that SD and parcels go in the correct bags, and the incumbent only works mornings.

Just checked the myhermes exclusions, which include batteries and/or electrical items, plus parts containing liquids (which might exclude forks). So not much different to RM, except much much cheaper.

The post office has been set up to fail.

….which might exclude forks).

I sent a set of 55’s recently and had no issues.
Perhaps I was lucky

So not much different to RM, except much much cheaper.

The problem is though – we don’t really know how much more expensive RM is than the competition. All the other carriers are cutting their throats to compete. Only a few companies will survive that and then they’ll have to at least charge a sustainable rate for their services. They’ll also be at liberty to charge as much or as little as they like, whilst still having the luxury of being able to pick and choose where they want to collect and deliver to.

It’ll depend if you say what’s in the package (which the website asks you for) and whether they care/have the common sense RM completely lacks. Can’t believe they’d actually check inside

Only £250 insurance too, so I wouldn’t fancy posting some new 36s

RM do seem woefully inadequate now. Smaller rivals are beating them on price and convenience and the big boys like UPS and DPD are probably laughing all the way to the bank.

I just wish DB Schenker would do letters 🙂

e.g. 1m cube crate to Sweden weighing about 300kg is something like £60+VAT and usually less than 3 days. TNT would probably want more than £500 but it would be a day faster. Wonder what RM would charge?……

Smaller rivals are beating them on price and convenience and the big boys like UPS and DPD are probably laughing all the way to the bank.

Although RM staff probably have decent contracts and pensions etc, whereas I would guess that the competition use agency or zero hours staff on minimum wage with no sick pay, pension etc. So yes it’s cheaper to post a parcel, but the staff are paying for it in their living standards….

Trouble will also be that where Royal mail put the prices of parcels up to maximise profits before privatisation, they’ll now have to keep increasing profits to please the shareholders, so they will lose more and more parcel deliveries and will put the prices up and up to try and increase profits too.