Royal blinkin' Mail and new deliveries

Does anyone know how long one should expect to wait before deliveries to a new postal address?

I moved into my flat on the 14th Jan, a couple of others have been in the block since the 22nd December. 7th February, and we're still not getting a regular postal delivery.

It appears to be erratic - three days last week I had post, none since.

Popped down to my local sorting office (Brinklow, Milton Keynes - I'll name and shame because they deserve it) at 18.30 tonight. Bearing in mind that they close at 19.00, I figured that it'd be plenty of time to check my mail...

Clearly not. Blokey on the front desk asked us to 'stand aside whilst I serve these other two people' (who came in after us and hadn't stood there for 10 minutes like we had to). Terse, rude and just what you don't need when you know you have post waiting (our Solicitors had sent documents out to us on Wednesday last week, which we still haven't received). Finally, he got around to serving us, huffed and puffed and made out as if we 'probably didn't have any post', and then disappeared.

I've been to said sorting office before to pick my post up in the first week of living here, before we had any deliveries at all, and the search took about ten minutes.......

... within 5 minutes he was back: "you don't have any". He didn't take our names, nor our postcode. I countered this with: "but I'm sure that we do, we had post sent out last week that still hasn't arrived, and we've had no deliveries since Wednesday. Our solicitors posted documents out on Wednesday, which I'd have expected to receive by now".

"Well, it depends on how they sent it", said he.
At this point, I nearly said "well, by pigeon would've been quicker than your so-called-service" (but held my breath).
"First class, as any important document would be", said I.

He looked flustered... and offered no more help, nor a telephone number to speak to his manager (which I already have, but wanted to see if he'd actually give it to me), and went to great pains to ignore me and serve the next person.

The minute I got home, I rang the RM Customer Service line, from which I usually expect to be cut off (as that happens every other time I ring). However, I actually spoke to a human being, who not only sympathised, apologised and noted my complaint down, she actually said that "no deliveries for five days is unacceptable". You heard it here...

Honesty costs nothing - if people would only hold their hands up and say: "I'm sorry, we don't appear to know where it is, I'll report it blah blah blah", I'd have been satisfied.

So - back to my original question - any ideas how long it should take to initiate a new postal service??