'Should the Royal Mail be part-privatised?' poll discussion

mazztheman

also bunking off
bt price of phone line £122.50 connection charge subject to survey + £11.25 line rental min pm +cost of calls
royal mail no charge for daily mail delivery to your letter box in a rual location or at the top of a mulit story in london

woodenhill

Royal Mail should not be privatised, but any progress towards dragging it into the 20th century is hampered by a dinosaur like union and entrenched attitudes of postal staff who probably wouldnt last 5 minutes in a proper job.

bunking_off

mazztheman wrote: »

you only have to put in a phone line once you deliver mail every day so your comparison between the two is flawed

bt price of phone line £122.50 connection charge subject to survey + £11.25 line rental min pm +cost of calls
royal mail no charge for daily mail delivery to your letter box in a rual location or at the top of a mulit story in london

You think it doesn't cost anything to maintain a line once it's in? Opex costs are typically 10% of capital....do you think all those Openreach vans driving around are doing so just to clog up roads? Times have changed since BT was the bloated organisation it once was, but at one stage they had the 2nd largest vehicle fleet in the world (after Coca-Cola)...largely dedicated to maintaining the copper drops. So both Openreach and RM have to spend money maintaining service to their customer base, some of which are profitable (densely populated areas), others which make a loss (rural areas).

Yes, installation can be more than £122 (but only in extreme cases) but there have to be limits. Likewise for RM I think you'll find that there are a small proportion of rural locations they won't deliver to. RM do make a charge to deliver your mail...that's what the postage stamp is for, it's paid by the sender not recipient. Where another postal provider uses RM for delivery, they're similarly charged by RM for doing so.

The analogy is absolutely valid : both phone and post are mandated by regulation to provide a universal service, within certain boundaries. This means profitable (urban) areas subsidise unprofitable (rural) areas...neither BT nor RM would pull out of serving the unprofitable areas because they're not allowed to by regulation. Whether they're public or private sector is totally irrelevant on this point.

npw32jnw

Asfar as I am aware there has been little real change within RM for a number of years. You can point to things like the change of the second post etc, but in reality the way they do things has not changed much in that time - any RM employees please feel free to correct me on that.

So, why is it that the service has deteriorated so significantly over the years. 20 years ago, post would be delivered before my dad left to go to work (by 8.30am at the latest). Today, I have just received my post at gone 1pm. First class no longer gets to a destination within 1 day. We constantly hear of post which never gets to its intended recipient - whether this is due to rogue employees or incompetence is not clear. All this on a backdrop of prices continually going up.

I have no faith in RM, and will only use it where I have no alternative. In my mind, to introduce proper competition to the markteplace would be the only way to get real change at RM. It seems to me, and again I will defer to anyone knowing better, that the union at RM are simply looking after their own, whilst not caring about the decreased service that they are contributing to.

custardy

npw32jnw wrote: »

Asfar as I am aware there has been little real change within RM for a number of years. You can point to things like the change of the second post etc, but in reality the way they do things has not changed much in that time - any RM employees please feel free to correct me on that.

So, why is it that the service has deteriorated so significantly over the years. 20 years ago, post would be delivered before my dad left to go to work (by 8.30am at the latest). Today, I have just received my post at gone 1pm. First class no longer gets to a destination within 1 day. We constantly hear of post which never gets to its intended recipient - whether this is due to rogue employees or incompetence is not clear. All this on a backdrop of prices continually going up.

I have no faith in RM, and will only use it where I have no alternative. In my mind, to introduce proper competition to the markteplace would be the only way to get real change at RM. It seems to me, and again I will defer to anyone knowing better, that the union at RM are simply looking after their own, whilst not caring about the decreased service that they are contributing to.

not changed? lol theres been massive changes
i wont list them but staff levels have been cut year on year
today i finished my delivery at 2.30pm,thats 50 minutes after i should be finishing.
my walks increased in size,i do all the deliveries that used to be done with a van driver
we start later so of course we will now finish later
on redesigning my duty the RM software allocated me 5 minutes to drive to my delivery and 0 to return
it takes 20 minutes each way. so is it any surprise im later?
since my office had its most recent round of 'savings' (RM speak for budget cuts) we have more duties being completed in overtime
we have a nightshift 6 days a week(these ceased over 2 years ago)
we have backlogs of mail/packets
the union line was to agree to no savings,as an office we decided to go ahead with RM's plan,note RM's plan with no union involvment
so who is at fault for the late deliveries & failures?

afoxeloni

npw32jnw wrote: »

I have no faith in RM, and will only use it where I have no alternative. In my mind, to introduce proper competition to the markteplace would be the only way to get real change at RM. It seems to me, and again I will defer to anyone knowing better, that the union at RM are simply looking after their own, whilst not caring about the decreased service that they are contributing to.

The government opened up the postal network a few years back,giving other companies the opportunity to set up a delivery network to compete with Royal Mail.
This is known as Down Stream Access.
It should have enabled other companies to set up a rival service but has so far failed.You will all no doubt have seen your bank statements,Tesco clubcard points,bills etc with logos of companies such as DHL,Business post,TNT,the list is endless.These are still however delivered by your Royal Mail postie who has to go the Final Mile under the downstream access system.
So no rival delivery networks have appeared to date? Royal Mail cannot compete on price as the other companies offer the service cheaper, but pass the mail on to Royal mail who have no choice but to deliver this mail.
The opening up of the postal market has led to its decline.Mail Companies are approaching businesses and offering to deliver their 1000s of items for less than Royal Mail.When they are given the contract they simply pass the mail on.
You will have noticed the price rises,the possible poorer service,the later arrival of your post?This is because Royal Mail is trying to survive the loss of £1000000s by anymeans possible.
Prices have risen because of downstrem access:eg
Royal Mail offers to deliver business postings for ?p per item
Other companies offer to deliver business postings for less, then pass the mail on.
Royal mail loses money as a result so has to increase prices.
other companies increase their prices as they use the delivery network of RM.
Stamped mail prices increase.
So there are no other companies it appears that want to risk competing with an alternative delivery service? but plenty in the queue for cherry picking the most lucrative contracts,thus hastening Royal Mails decline

p00pieb0tt0m

Royal Mail Group makes profits. No shareholders means the profit goes to the public purse. Over many years the company has been mis-managed. For many years NO money was put into the pension scheme, that money was not used for improvements or to give employees a huge payrise, it went to the public purse.
The Communication Workers Union(CWU) has had a plan for modernisation for many years using natural wastage to reduce the workforce without redundancy, this would have needed funds for new machinery, never taken up by management.
Royal Mail Groups operating profit this year was £321million, yes really so much.
I don't understand why any government would want to sell off any part of a organisation which currently makes it so much money and with a little time, money and expertise, could make it so much more.

matthew13

when tnt took over dutch post they laid thousands of people off and took on temps on short ongoing contracts people often receive there post at tea time if you want it earlier you have to pay for a po box.stamps in the uk is the cheapest for stamps in europe and we deliver to every address if it goes private it will be a disaster.job losses and worse service

scott_lithgows

The first thing to go will be Saturday deliveries if this goes through saving RM 15% of its labour costs.

matthew13

npw32jnw wrote: »

Asfar as I am aware there has been little real change within RM for a number of years. You can point to things like the change of the second post etc, but in reality the way they do things has not changed much in that time - any RM employees please feel free to correct me on that.

So, why is it that the service has deteriorated so significantly over the years. 20 years ago, post would be delivered before my dad left to go to work (by 8.30am at the latest). Today, I have just received my post at gone 1pm. First class no longer gets to a destination within 1 day. We constantly hear of post which never gets to its intended recipient - whether this is due to rogue employees or incompetence is not clear. All this on a backdrop of prices continually going up.

I have no faith in RM, and will only use it where I have no alternative. In my mind, to introduce proper competition to the markteplace would be the only way to get real change at RM. It seems to me, and again I will defer to anyone knowing better, that the union at RM are simply looking after their own, whilst not caring about the decreased service that they are contributing to.

post is not gauranteed to be delivered at a certain time.(RM SAY APPROX LUNCHTIME LATEST) fact 94% of 1st class letters are delivered next day the ones which are not normally have badly written/wrong addresses on them. you have no faith we are the cheapest in europe and deliver to every address in uk if this is privatised it will change stamps will go up and you will receive your post anY time of day in eurpoe this is often 6pm. posties walk approx 8 miles per day in all weathers only for people to complain we have to do more work in the office and dont start our delivery until approx 10am after starting at 545 am this is supposed to take 3 1/2 hours but often takes more as rounds have increased so we have no break and work for about 8 hours a day if we finish on time we are harrassed by management soon people will work to rule we are hea ding for big trouble