Royal Mail national strike looms for Christmas

bendix

Look, I'm sure you're right with all this USO and DSA stuff, although I have no idea what it all means. I'm sure it's something quite critical to the delivery of birthday cards and such like.

Now, can anyone remind me of more pressing matters? Has Mr Churchill died yet? He seems like such a nice man.

gingerdad

The royal mail offers a great service, deliveries at 3pm, collections by 2pm - I’m glad my business doesn’t rely on the post. I am in the its irrelevant camp. I’ll stick to ordering stuff by courier and sending my invoices, reports and all those things I used to post via e-mail. We send roughly one letter a week, lets see if I can reduce it further.

I love unionised business them always seem to have a screw you attitude..... (Railway, post, ba .... etc)

I'll stick with my small private business, with staff that likes to work here and want to make it work... most of whom are over 50...

bendix

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

No, the postal strikes in London have resulted in weeks of delays. .

Really? That seems rather strange. Perhaps your students are being singled out for special attention. Either that or you're exaggerating for effect.

My copy of The Economist has turned up on a Saturday morning instead of Friday for the past few weeks, and that's pretty much it.

Oh, and I got a credit card statement yesterday, posted the day before in Southend.

gingerdad

bendix wrote: »

Look, I'm sure you're right with all this USO and DSA stuff, although I have no idea what it all means. I'm sure it's something quite critical to the delivery of birthday cards and such like.

Now, can anyone remind me of more pressing matters? Has Mr Churchill died yet? He seems like such a nice man.

Ultimatly if its sent in the post via TNT, DHL, UKMail etc.... the Royal Mail will still stick the letter through the letterbox, they get a lot less revenue for it though.

If its sent as a Courier/Carrier parcel via THT, DHL, UKmail etc then it will never see the royal mail.


The best way to coment on the UK RM is to look at the Dutch post office now owners of TNT or the German post office now owners of DHL, SOE and lots more.. now look at the UK Postal Service - it dosen't seem able to get the bascis right let alone take over some of the largest couriers in the world..

Wookster

Generali wrote: »

Ah but you miss the point about the Roal Mail. They're a Taxpayer owned company which means you can't make them redundant without the permission of the union.

The union can refuse to recognise the future of postal services as long as they want. The taxpayer will have to continue to pay for the resulting losses.

Ah but you miss the point sir, there is an election coming.

And I'm sure that the next government (assuming it is the Tories) will be much less sympathetic to the Royal Snail workers than this one.

Custardy, modernisation is a euphemism for becoming more competitive.

Pennywise

I see amazing similarities between the Royal Mail dispute and the miners' strikes. In both cases, both the bosses and unions were wrong - neither side can claim any glory. If they don't sort it out, the Royal Mail will go the same way as the coal mines - it'll disappear. Why on earth can't the unions, workers and bosses see that there'll be no winners.

As a small business, we barely used the post anyway and, during the last few weeks, we've used it even less. Nearly all our clients now have broadband internet, so instead of posting paperwork for them to approve and sign, we simply email it, and they either scan and email it back to us or scan and fax it back. After reading this thread, I've just looked at our postage costs and it's quite unbelievable how little we spend now - this year is down over half on last year which was over half the year below. From over £1,000 a few years ago, we'll probably keep it under £100 this year. That's a 90% reduction in postal use and we're only a tiny firm.

The unions and workers need to get a reality check that things have changed. The bosses need to somehow work with the unions. It's difficult when both sides are so far apart and there is so much animosity, but surely the union and postal bosses, by being bosses, should have some excellent personal skills and should be able to work it through between themselves. If they don't, there'll be no Royal Mail and I'm not sure whether it will be that badly missed anymore. Perhaps it's time that the bosses of both sides were side-lined to allow two new "personalities" to try to reach a resolution without personal feelings and history that seems to be a major problem at the moment.

apexblue

Can you please PM with alternatives to Royal Mail please at the same cost. Another business who counts on Royal Mail being let down.

custardy

Wookster wrote: »

Ah but you miss the point sir, there is an election coming.

And I'm sure that the next government (assuming it is the Tories) will be much less sympathetic to the Royal Snail workers than this one.

Custardy, modernisation is a euphemism for becoming more competitive.

right so what does that mean for me?
i am human,ergo there is a physical limit to my carrying capacity and speed capabilities(though you would be hard pushed to convince some managers of this)
given i deliver to all stairs and RM have failed to introduce any technology that can walk sequence stairs (plenty of promises though)
whats left
human beings can only sort so much and carry so much
less FT staff means them doing more prepping for PT staff therefore less time available in the indoor hours.
so whats left,some offices (including my own) are showing the cracks,well massive fissures some weeks due to the cuts

custardy

apexblue wrote: »

Can you please PM with alternatives to Royal Mail please at the same cost. Another business who counts on Royal Mail being let down.

http://www.psc.gov.uk/licensed-postal-operators.html google broke?

Out,_Vile_Jelly

bendix wrote: »

Really? That seems rather strange. Perhaps your students are being singled out for special attention. Either that or you're exaggerating for effect.

My copy of The Economist has turned up on a Saturday morning instead of Friday for the past few weeks, and that's pretty much it.

Oh, and I got a credit card statement yesterday, posted the day before in Southend.

I'm afraid the disruption doesn't cause any pattern to the delays and backlog. Some stuff is gettting through ok, some isn't. Not everything can automatically be done electronically these days- just had a panicked call from a former student who needs a signed paper reference for a PostGrad application- emailing a pdf not acceptable apparently. I'm always surprised at how backwards it can be dealing with many institutions in the USA- they seem very slow in catching onto online submission of documents and still insist on fax and snailmail. When it works, the RM is actually an excellent service: ~30p to send a letter anywhere in the UK next day.

On a personal note, I write fairly regularly to my nans and always send postcards when I visit somewhere. People of that generation really appreciate the effort and I like to know I've brightened up their day a little with something in the post.