What happened to Royal Mail

Years ago RM and Parcelforce were the premier service, now they’re a bit of a nightmare for me, not sure if it’s where i live now, or the overall standard, but every time i get a delivery from them there’s an issue, this week it was due to my house being ‘inaccessible’, yes that 3 foot high garden fence without a lock does look quite formidable from a distance!

It’s just every time now, the time before that it was having to chase down the package, which made it back to the shop without having seen a card, then several times over the last couple of years it’s no delivery from the parcels van, then a card being delivered 3 or 4 days later by the postie telling me they’ve attempted delivery but nobody was in, every time, whilst we were all working from home, even the postie was embarrassed to tell us that story.

It’s weird that a decade ago you used to get put off if a company used Hermes or DPD, those guys deliver on time every time to us, same with the others, it’s just RM that are a nightmare now, and as for their predicted times, they’ve never delivered a RMSD by 1, and this weeks ‘missed’ one was meant to arrive 1140 to 1340, but the inaccessible message was on the website by 0930, in the day and age where i can get up to the minute info on amazon deliveries, or even tweaks to the delivery window from DPD, are RM just not using anything more technical than a diesel van?

Royal mail / parcel force are the only reliable delivery to me.

Never had a problem with them,whereas some of the ‘competition ‘have been a complete nightmare.

Still good here and now deliver in the evenings too, DPD still remain king.

The short answer is privatisation has destroyed the RM we know from 10+ years ago.

The slightly longer answer is Covid has massively increased parcel delivery demand to pre-Covid Xmas levels on a daily basis, while there’s been a need for lots of posties isolating and in the last few months many duties have been increased in size using data from before Covid. Full time staff also had their weekly hours reduced by another hour to 37 hours, because without properly consulting the CWU members the union are hell-bent on reducing the postie working week to 35. Too much workload for the daily contracted hours, regularly being asked to deliver 2+ days of letters, they haven’t got the energy or will to do overtime.

My incoming is fine, local postie is great, but outgoing is terrible, first class stuff I send takes days to get anywhere

Special Delivery is reliable. Otherwise we only get post twice a week on my street.

I guess we are lucky, both RM and Parcelforce have no issues. Local Post office/florist seems very efficient and our normal postman is great-he does Ironman events and often cycles for a couple of hours before starting his round at 7.30am yet always looks fresh. He used to park his van and run up and down the road with his stuff as part of his training until he was told he was completing his round too quickly and he either had to slow down or take on more addresses!

The delivery service itself seems ok but their offices/depots are generally pretty shabby and down at heel. I was told recently I’d have to pay cash on some import fees because ‘the card machine doesn’t work after 5 o clock’ which seems quite hilariously shoddy.

DPD are really good and since we left a glowing review we get really happy drivers.

RM are great for me, perhaps it’s more about how your local postie is than the business as a whole.

DPD are useless for me.  Lied about attempted delivery, didn’t leave a card.  Parcel returned without any attempt at delivery

Posted something with 1st class recorded RM a couple of weeks ago for the first time in ages, disappeared without a trace and left me quite a bit out of pocket. Should have read the compensation rules better.

Tories happened to it.

Just area then, where i am we’ve had about 4 or 5 posties over the last year, the previous had been around a while by what folk said, same with the van deliveries, never used to see RM in hire vans, but around here they seem to get that more than actual RM vans.

It is an old main sorting/post/collections centre, guess it’s just pot luck, mine sucks now with RM, if we miss a parcel it was a nightmare during Covid, they would only have collections on a Wednesday between 10 and 1, the queue was around the block, hence why i used to get a bit demoralised when the postie would give me a card and say they tried a few days back.

All fine for me. Great local posties and post offices, reliable delivery times and comparable prices but with easier access.

It’s all down to volume. There’s just too much work to do at the price that people are willing to pay for the service. The quality of service has nosedived across the board over the last 20 years.
In 2003 I took on a franchise with DPD (it was Parceline then). The round was based on an average 52 stops. The same round now is based on 90 stops and one of the three towns has been taken off it. Also worth noting that I was offered 25k p/a profit in 2003 qnd the DPD guy I spoke to said that they’re now aiming for 30k profit, so not exactly a huge financial incentive.
I still work in the industry. In my experience all of the delivery companies have pluses and minuses but the biggest factors that will determine how good a particular company will be in your area ( Brexit and Covid aside) are down to the capability and workload of your driver and the efficiency of the local depot.

Here – Royal Mail fine,
Hermes – better (he will leave stuff on my doorstep)
Dpd – also fine
Amazon ( whoever they use – their own drivers?) also fine.
Hermes delivered a (boxed) wheel during the storm yesterday, thats going above and beyond, if you ask me!

I miss Red Star.

I agree re the comment about volume. If you have over 200 parcels to deliver in a day you need to deliver a parcel every 3 minutes. That includes driving to the address, finding the parcel in the van, getting access through the door buzzer and climbing up all the stairs( if it’s a flat). It’s not an easy job. No time for a coffee or toilet stop it’s go go go.

If you have a good local delivery guy who knows the route well that’s half the battle.

The other issue is people ordering items for home delivery knowing they won’t be home. I laughed at a delivery guy getting upset because the lady customer took too a long time to answer the door. He could see her get up from her chair when he rang the doorbell. She then sat down again for a minute or so then got up and answered the door. He asked her why. She said it was her favourite programme. The steam was coming out his ears.

RM is usually fine for us. We try to give the postie a christmas tip as he really good and friendly. Parcel Force can be hit and miss. All the others are fine. Very much down to who the individual is delivering to you a lot of the time it seems.

perhaps it’s more about how your local postie is than the business as a whole.

Not sure about that. The Christmas cards and presents I sent (first class) to my friends and family in Kent took between 4 and 6 weeks to get there from Scotland. I’m not sure the individual posties can be blamed for that.

But I can post a card from a remote post box in Perthshire at 5pm and it arrives at a remote address in Aberdeenshire at 9am the following day.

Never had a problem with RM or Parcel Force. The amount of people complaining about Hermes on the local chatty page is beyond a joke, never hear any complaints about RM.

Yep, I generally only send stuff RM or PF. Always at least signed for and preferably Special by 1pm. Never had a single issue.

Incoming post is regular as clockwork also and never not received something I was expecting

Really lucky that almost all of the delivery companies are great where I live. I have noticed that the Royal Mail posties seem less stressed out than the others. Our Yodel guy in particular always seems knackered.

Never had a problem with them, nor many of the others to be fair.

I sent over 200 packages during November and December using Royal Mail signed for – everything arrived safely. There was a week where we had some delays due to cancelled ferries and COVID where stuff took 10 days. Stuff delivered Hermes to here can easily take 10 days – the local drivers here are absolutely maxed-out. Never had a problem once it gets on the island – they just open the front door and leave it in the hall cos no one locks their doors.

(thread bump)
I just had a status of a DPD parcel I’m awaiting – tells me I’m delivery no. 117 at 15:46.

Thinking about that, if the guy has to work 10 hours and has 120 deliveries, that’s a delivery every 5 minutes ! No doubt it’s far more than 120 deliveries. Mental.

Our local Hermes driver has been doing 200-250 drops a day during the last two years – said there’s been a massive drop off this month & is now on 100-120.

As for RM we rarely have an issue ourselves.

Thinking about that, if the guy has to work 10 hours and has 120 deliveries, that’s a delivery every 5 minutes ! No doubt it’s far more than 120 deliveries. Mental.

Don’t forget to take out of that 10 hours how long it takes to load up in the morning, any breaks they get to take (most don’t, highly illegal but hey), traffic delays, driving between calls and whatever they have to do at the end of the day. It’s a hellish existence that I could not do!

Can recommend watching “Sorry we missed you” by Ken Loach enough to put you off using any service that uses gig economy delivery drivers 🙁

Or try the BBC and watch “life & death in the warehouse” if you feel tempted to order something from amazon / sports direct etc

Three missing birthday cards here.
All posted on Saturday (5th), first class. Two from 10 miles away (same county, Sussex) the other from 40 miles away (Kent). All expected to arrive for birthday on Monday.
The senders have thought I was being rude by not thanking them – but the cards have not yet arrived. I did, however, receive the Council Tax invoice, printed and posted on Monday (7th) arrived yesterday.
Who knows where they are….

Can recommend watching “Sorry we missed you” by Ken Loach

I can’t. Bloody awful misery of a film, with really bad acting. Apart from that hmm… don’t see how it can “put you off using any service that uses gig economy delivery drivers” – very few online services use RM and online shopping is just a fact of life.

The ‘inaccessible’ thing is just a menu option posties can select on their PDAs to justify non-delivery and keep the managers’ tick lists straight. It can mean anything – big dog unattended in the garden; couldn’t find the address; oops, just found this parcel under the van seat when I got back to the depot…it eliminates the need to red card the address.

Absolute shower of a company to work for.

We seem to have 7 day delivery from Royal Mail at the moment, no idea when it started, but I thought they were cutting back on deliveries.

Service seems excellent round here eg I stuck a pair of cycling leggings in the postbox, 2nd class at 5pm. The recipient (on STW) got them the next morning!

Never have any particular difficulties with any of the delivery services, the ones that show the progress on a live map are particularly good. Being able to change a drop-off location is especially useful.

They’re all really good around here. DPD especially so. I can’t vouch for posting stuff, cos never do, but deliveries are always pretty quick.

I only ever have problems with the royal mail at Christmas. They obviously have a backlog of the previous house owners Christmas cards stockpiled somewhere.

It can’t be that she forgot to tell folk she had moved, can it?

RM still reliable here (West Highlands) out and in. All other couriers hand off to smaller firms in Oban or Inverness for delivery here so add at least 1 day onto quoted timescales in and 3 plus out.

What happened to Royal Mail

Bottom line, other companies got better at delivering things.