Support Your Local Post Office

iceburn

Hence why the petition now not in year 2009. The last time it was done too late, the idea is not repeat the same mistake twice as they say.

Contains_Mild_Peril

wendym wrote:

When our local branch was under threat I signed the petition, wrote to my councillors and my MP, everyone rallied round, and................they closed it.

Sounds familiar. I signed a petition which eventually totalled over 10,000 signatures to save the PO I used to use (conveniently situated right next to the sorting office near the town centre), but they still "relocated" it to a Spar shop (whose viability is questionable since the opening of a giant Tesco Extra store a while ago). I went to the much smaller PO in the Spar shop and queued for around 45 minutes. In the old PO I hardly ever had to wait more than 5 mins, even when it was really busy.
A while before that, Morrisons closed the PO in their supermarket after they took it over from Safeway, despite a huge campaign to save it.
Post offices are essential in rural areas where other banking facilities may be a long way away, and public transport minimal.

angel

I had a very busy Post Office about 100 yards from my house. It closed last year. The next THREE nearest ones were closed at the same time. Now I have to use the main Post office in Croydon where I've counted in excess of 120 people queuing many, many times now. It gets so bad in there that often Police or Community Wardens are there to keep customers calm. I've given up going in there now and get the bus 20 minutes away to Purley where it's saner and quieter.

What's really bugged me lately is that they've had the cheek to put a magazine all over the place selling all kinds of insurances etc., on the front it says "Sorted, The Post Office magazine, making life easier" What a cheek! The one thing that the Post Office could do to make my life and many others lives easier would be to re-open the ones that they closed and start acting like a Post Office again.

As you can probably tell it makes me fume. And yes, we too had massive petitions that were simply ignored. The lovely family that ran it for 28 years are struggling to find jobs now. It's so sad.

Phew... I've needed to have that rant for a long time now!

trencherpilot

Did you see the item on the news where a post office instructed an ebayer not to use it because the volume of post the lady was sending was too much? Some people don't help themselves do they?

Personally our local PO can't do enough for about 6 ebayers in the village. The post Mistress admits its ebay thats keeping her income up and PO open. Also in the local town, the main PO is open until 8pm most nights :0) very handy for urgent deliveries!

soolin

Same here trencherpilot, at my local post office we almost get the red carpet treatment and on occasions when the other people in the queue moan about us taking too much time the Post Mistress goes out of her way to point out that if it wasn't for us she would have been closed down three years ago.

A few months back the sub post office computers went down and they were manually processing items but couldn't easily do parcels. I was in there and the Post mistress told me to leave my bag of packages and she would send them as soon as the machines came back on and pay for them herself, and I could pay the following morning on my way to work...how's that for service!

Soo

greenpixey

We had a similar problem in Sweden about 8 years ago just before I left to move to Wales. In the end there was major cut backs everywhere. You be lucky now to find a Post Office. Most of the service has gone to garages or the supermarkets. You have to queue up with people buying food and the lottery in order to send or to pick up a parcel. The service has more or less gone downhill in comparison to what the Post Office had to offer. I signed the petition coz I do not want to see that happening here as well.

ArthurII

I buy quite a few items off Ebay, and I've noticed that a significant proportion of sellers are using private courier companies now. This is a worrying trend; local Post Offices need the trade that they get off Ebay to keep going as a business. Not only this, but some probing questions should be asked about how much the the people woking for these courier companies get paid; my own guess is that in the drive for 'efficiency' wages have been cut. Not only that, but the local Post Offices serve as valuable focus point in the community; I for one won't be using the services of these courier companies.

custardy

its unfortunate but all part of the cost cutting plans.clearing out crown post offices and migrating the remaining ones into supermarkets etc is much cheaper for RM im afraid.
big businesses is what RM(and rival companys) are really interested in for the profit to workload

Hintza

I'm afraid my PO lost my business a few years ago. The hassle factor and long faces when they saw me coming was just too high. I now have an account with Royal Mail and everything is now sent via the sorting office. Saves me money and saves me hassle.

Lazy_Runner

I went into my high street PO and asked about this petition. They had not heard about it.

I mentioned POCA and losing government money, but still no recognition.

I probably need to ask at a sub post office...

Will try again in the next week.