Post Office Fast Drop Service

Hezzawithkids

Spotted at the PO near my work today, a counter advertising the PO's Fast Drop service for "Small Business/Ebay Users". You buy your postage online, drop the parcel at the counter then get en email confirmation of despatch.

Seems like a good idea at first glance to avoid queueing plus getting a foolproof POP. However, it costs 25p so probably only good for expensive items (which I suppose you would send recorded anyway). Still its good to see the PO getting on board and not trying to pretend that Ebay doesn't exist (according to some threads on MSE anyway!!)

Post Office Fast Drop

Had anyone used it? Is it reliable?

jumbojuice

first id seen of that - thats really good - although its unclear if its 25p per item?

custardy

Hezzawithkids wrote: »

Spotted at the PO near my work today, a counter advertising the PO's Fast Drop service for "Small Business/Ebay Users". You buy your postage online, drop the parcel at the counter then get en email confirmation of despatch.

Seems like a good idea at first glance to avoid queueing plus getting a foolproof POP. However, it costs 25p so probably only good for expensive items (which I suppose you would send recorded anyway). Still its good to see the PO getting on board and not trying to pretend that Ebay doesn't exist (according to some threads on MSE anyway!!)

Post Office Fast Drop

Had anyone used it? Is it reliable?

• St James
  
• Distance: 2.893 miles
• Frederick Street
  
• Distance: 3.294 miles
• Morningside
  
• Distance: 3.429 miles
• Wester Hailes
  
• Distance: 6.472 miles
• Haddington
  
• Distance: 13.244 miles
• Dunfermline
  
• Distance: 16.16 miles
• Falkirk
  
• Distance: 26.065 miles
• Alloa
  
• Distance: 28.678 miles
• Cumbernauld
  
• Distance: 33.637 miles
• Perth
  
• Distance: 33.951 miles

quite a small; uptake at the moment though

steviebabes

Fast Drop is a service that saves you time by offering dedicated fast track mail desks at participating Post Office® branches. The service costs 25p per item and includes email notification of posting which will be sent to you and the recipient (if this service is selected).

epm-84

A lot of Post Offices have an area where you can leave parcels that are paid for, but you don't get the email notification.

Philly81

We use this at our office as we send out about 200 parcels/letters a day.
A Postie arrives everyday and scans a barcode on our door and takes all parcels.

Saves us a lot of time. Well worth doing if you have a lot of post going out on a daily basis.

RFW

I recently spent some time in the US and sold some stuff on Ebay there. The US postal system offer a service that barcodes the parcels and they are checked and tracked when delivered, I think this cost 50c, might have been a bit less. The good thing was if you buy the postage on Paypal it gets tracked back to Paypal.

Given that the US is substantially bigger than the UK it would be a step in the right direction for RM to be picking up ideas like this. They seem to have a few good ideas and then more bad and annoying ones.

I noticed that when printing postage online they offer an opportunity to add a logo and for the privilege of printing your own logo with your own ink there is a charge, seems like a silly pointless charge. Whilst the drop off service is a step in the right direction I can't see what the point of a charge is, given that there isn't any great value to the service.

RM should be helping small businesses and offering better account services, they unfortunately seem to be a bit like a headless chicken with the direction of the business. It doesn't look like this government's plans are going to make it any better.

custardy

Philly81 wrote: »

We use this at our office as we send out about 200 parcels/letters a day.
A Postie arrives everyday and scans a barcode on our door and takes all parcels.

Saves us a lot of time. Well worth doing if you have a lot of post going out on a daily basis.

thats a standard collection

custardy

RFW wrote: »

I recently spent some time in the US and sold some stuff on Ebay there. The US postal system offer a service that barcodes the parcels and they are checked and tracked when delivered, I think this cost 50c, might have been a bit less. The good thing was if you buy the postage on Paypal it gets tracked back to Paypal.

Given that the US is substantially bigger than the UK it would be a step in the right direction for RM to be picking up ideas like this. They seem to have a few good ideas and then more bad and annoying ones.

I noticed that when printing postage online they offer an opportunity to add a logo and for the privilege of printing your own logo with your own ink there is a charge, seems like a silly pointless charge. Whilst the drop off service is a step in the right direction I can't see what the point of a charge is, given that there isn't any great value to the service.

RM should be helping small businesses and offering better account services, they unfortunately seem to be a bit like a headless chicken with the direction of the business. It doesn't look like this government's plans are going to make it any better.

But the US has a closed market
RM have an open market and are about ot be part privitised
all of these things should have been done years ago when RM was generating mass profits in a monopoly
Instead of reinvesting,this money was syphoned into the government coffers

RFW

custardy wrote: »

But the US has a closed market

It wasn't a comment on the business as such more that they treated Ebay as the enemy for long enough and very very slowly are moving round to working with them. I'm sure you know more than most that Royal Mail is a mess at so many levels for loads of reasons.

It does work well at lots of levels too, it just needs sorting out. Its unfortunate that it doesn't look like its going to happen in a good way any time soon.

custardy

RFW wrote: »

It wasn't a comment on the business as such more that they treated Ebay as the enemy for long enough and very very slowly are moving round to working with them. I'm sure you know more than most that Royal Mail is a mess at so many levels for loads of reasons.

It does work well at lots of levels too, it just needs sorting out. Its unfortunate that it doesn't look like its going to happen in a good way any time soon.

Oh yes,but as you say theres little interest in actually improving the business
crozier and his cronies were on a slash n burn mission from the start
this will continue