MSE News: Post Office could become a bank

clairmelville

I really think that this is a good idea. But for two different reasons.
Having lived in a reasonable small village, a post office is a valuable resource for the local community, not least the less abled members which as a civilised society we have a moral obligation to help live a full life. Also having recent memories of having to post important documents during the postal strike, a local post office within easy reach is of utmost importance.
If post services alone cannot justify opening of all these post offices, then bring on the other services.

Secondly, I trust the post office, and would think that the products they offer were sound. Perhaps not always the most competitive, but we all know that the cheapest isn't always the best option. I think having this service in places where a big bank (or any bank) is not available is a fantastic idea, again for the reasons I give why there should be a post office.

As an aside, I see people above me saying they have been bothered by post office staff asking if they want products. To my knowledge I have never been asked these questions by staff (or at least not in a way that makes me think about it once I have left). There are hardly ever what I would call long lines, and I have never had to wait more than 10 minutes to be served, besides gives me a chance to see what the post office has introduced recently.

stilernin

Having just spotted this news item I have come on here knowing you guys would be discussing it.

My first reaction to the news was also 'didn't they do this in the 70s with Girobank? because I had an account from the beginning with them. It is now Alliance and Leicester of course.

Mostly I bank online, but when I want to draw a large amount of cash, I just make a call to A&L who phone any PO branch I nominate and I can go in within minutes as long as they have the cash available. I've drawn over £5k sometimes. Much more convenient than struggling into town to a bank.

I think a PO bank could be made to work.

A_Different_Hat

Putting things in boxes.

A few years ago, in a moment of visionary genius, I realised that, over time, more and more products were going to be sold over the internet. Amazon’s business was growing at an extraordinary rate.

At the time, Amazon had made its name as the website of choice for books. Now, of course, Amazon sells virtually everything. But I remember thinking that books were a great place to start because, especially if you bought one at a time, they fitted conveniently through your average domestic letter-box.

Generally speaking, though, if you bought more than one book, or anything larger than the size of your letter-box, you had to be at home or a little card was popped through your door telling you that the Post Office had tried delivering a package but that, in order to retrieve it, and most annoyingly, you would have to pick it up yourself - back at the Post Office.

Well, I didn’t know much about the Post Office other than posting letters in nice, warm-red pillar boxes and receiving them through my letter-box. But I did know that sometime, somehow, somewhere, a box containing my online order arrived at the Post Office, was loaded into a nice red van and driven to my house. Then, if I was out, the driver would drive my box back to the Post Office it came from – with my order still undelivered.

In this new-age world, with more and more people buying more and more products online, this all seemed a rather inefficient, and decidedly non-eco-friendly, delivery system.

Now, please put all of the above in a little box in your head because while I realised this was happening, I became aware of another market trend.

More and more, at a rate similar to the growth in online purchasing, I read that Post Offices were being closed all over the country. In fact, the deeper into the country you lived, the more likely would it be that your Post Office would be closed. This meant that if you jumped onto the bandwagon of buying products online, but were not at home for them to be delivered, the wagon with your box in it would drive even further to find you were out and even further back to where it had come from.

Surely, if there was a system where you asked for your products to be delivered to your Post Office and that the card saying it had arrived was delivered by lunchtime with the rest of your morning mail, then you could go and collect your order at your convenience?

And surely this would save time and petrol and carbon for the Post Office as well as provide an exciting new reason for your local branch to survive?

Online retailers would offer their customers two options:

1. Would you like your order delivered to your home?

2. Would you like your order delivered to your local Post Office for you to “collect at your convenience (you will be notified when it arrives)”?

By saving all the inefficiencies outlined above, Option 2 might even be cheaper, creating a win-win-win situation. No need to close Post Offices (and perhaps the opportunity to open bigger and better branches); online retailers offering a choice of delivery options (and possibly cost savings); consumers in more control of their purchasing decisions (and supporting the survival of their local Post Office, especially in rural areas).

Perhaps, even, the Post Office could develop an expansion strategy? Maybe they have a wider product offering than they think? Maybe, because they have to store all these undelivered boxes, they Post Office has become a STORAGE, as well as a DELIVERY, service?

Why not invest in those storage places that have sprung up all over the place (especially those revolting, ugly, intrusive, big yellow ones which you can paint in your nice, warm, royal, pillar-box red)? There’s lots of boxes in those and they make lots of money. And yes, PO, you can charge money for storage. Even if only pennies a day, there'll be lots of them.

So come on PO – please don’t GO, we want you to GROW!

What a great idea. I dreamt of my destiny as a dotcom millionaire and, on 2 November 2005, I wrote to the Post Office. I told them what their problem was (but I didn’t tell them my solution).

What happened? Well I know my letter arrived, because a person describing himself as ‘Managing Director’ of a branch of the Post Office called me. He asked me to tell him my idea over the phone. I replied that if I did that, the Post Office could nick my idea (and my millions). He told me the Post Office had loads of new ideas and if I wouldn’t tell him mine over the phone, then he wasn’t interested. He put me back in my box.

Much more recently, Adam Crozier has been on the box. On the Andrew Marr Show (BBC Sun 27 Oct 09) he said: "Our market in the letters side is shrinking all the time whilst, at the same time, we are growing massively in terms of packets and parcels".

There you go. Even the Post Office agrees with what I told them would happen four years ago. So now we have more and more products being sold online, more and more boxes being driven around in more and more vans to more and more empty houses and more and more Post Offices being closed - apparently, since 1997, the number of post office branches has fallen from 19,000 to 11,000.

Can this be right?

And where did I go wrong?

glider3560

A_Different_Hat wrote: »

Surely, if there was a system where you asked for your products to be delivered to your Post Office and that the card saying it had arrived was delivered by lunchtime with the rest of your morning mail, then you could go and collect your order at your convenience?

And surely this would save time and petrol and carbon for the Post Office as well as provide an exciting new reason for your local branch to survive?

Online retailers would offer their customers two options:

1. Would you like your order delivered to your home?

2. Would you like your order delivered to your local Post Office for you to “collect at your convenience (you will be notified when it arrives)”?

Royal Mail offer a service called Local Collect - which allows businesses to send items to Post Offices. It costs retailers £300 per year, in addition to postage costs.

A_Different_Hat

Well, if they already offer this service to businesses, why don't they develop a consumer model like those Big Yellow people?

custardy

A_Different_Hat wrote: »

Well, if they already offer this service to businesses, why don't they develop a consumer model like those Big Yellow people?

they offer it to the business to offer it to their customers
so you order from company X and they allow you to opt for local collect if not in