Thank You Royal Mail

porto_bello

Royal Mail is often criticised (particularly after a substantial price increase) - sometimes fairly, but I often feel it's a soft target.

So, for a change, I thought I'd pass on some good news. Yesterday afternoon, during a day of gale force winds, I posted an item from Surrey to Birmingham via second class. Apparently it arrived this morning and the buyer is delighted.

I'm particularly impressed, since our main road was completely grid locked for hours, making the post office inaccessible, after this happened...

Crowqueen

That must be a miracle then - our post doesn't even normally arrive until lunchtime.

porto_bello

Crowqueen wrote: »

That must be a miracle then

You might have something there! ...Looking at the type of building from where this tree came from.

custardy

Crowqueen wrote: »

That must be a miracle then - our post doesn't even normally arrive until lunchtime.

what a shock.
Why do people see lunchtime as some strange time?
If you start work at 9am,is all the work done by 2pm on a standard 8 hour day?

Crowqueen

No - but it's getting later and later all the time. And it's like milk deliveries. We might use a local milkperson - if they delivered before people went to work. As it stands, I know my parents stopped using them when they realised they didn't appear until mid-morning. They didn't fancy milk getting left out in the sun all day when, if it had come before they left for work, they could have put it into the fridge sooner. Result: supermarkets 1, local dairy 0.

Sometimes convenience for the customer means inconvenience for the deliveryperson, but the seller is usually there to serve the buyer, rather than the other way round.

Which makes things like recorded delivery such a PITA, as perhaps there might have been a chance of catching people in if it came earlier like it used to do, but now anyone who works doesn't have the opportunity to sign for things. I would image RM's workload is now much more heavily geared towards packages rather than letters. So things that are too big to go through the letterbox get taken to the DO, which in my case would be a £15 round trip away. Now, OK, it doesn't affect me much, because the postman leaves stuff on the doorstep. But it might be inconvenient for people who do work and who do have postmen who take oversize items back to the DO. If that was the case for me, I'd save money buying online and just go to a normal shop - there would be no difference between going to a DO and going to an ordinary shop.

So RM lose out, online sellers lose out, and all because nothing outsize can be put straight into someone's hands at the front door because everyone is out at work when the postman shows up.

Work might be over for the day - as a student I am more productive in the afternoon and evening anyway, I'm not knocking people being able to get off at 2pm, as that is the time I normally start working, although I can keep going until about 10pm - it's just rather inconvenient for the recipients who have to go out before then.

It would only come up if something had been sent signed for but given some 'received wisdom' about eBay items and recorded delivery then it makes that service doubly inconvenient.

I've used it as an illustration of why it's annoying often enough, and it doesn't often even affect me personally.

I did hear it was because the local delivery offices changed their working practices.

custardy

Crowqueen wrote: »

No - but it's getting later and later all the time. ..........

................I've used it as an illustration of why it's annoying often enough, and it doesn't often even affect me personally.

I did hear it was because the local delivery offices changed their working practices.

thats one way of putting it.
staff levels have been cut by tens of thousands,start times are later,increase in part time staff,delivery duties have increased in size plus much more.

porto_bello

Well, despite the adverse weather across the country, the traffic chaos in my neck of the woods and whatever issues RM might have internally ...on this occasion, they got a package from a small PO in North Surrey and delivered to a private address in a Birmingham suburb, in no more than 18 hours - even though it was sent second class.

Credit where credit is due.

soolin

porto_bello wrote: »

Well, despite the adverse weather across the country, the traffic chaos in my neck of the woods and whatever issues RM might have internally ...on this occasion, they got a package from a small PO in North Surrey and delivered to a private address in a Birmingham suburb, in no more than 18 hours - even though it was sent second class.

Credit where credit is due.

well said.

Crowqueen

Yes, indeed, absolutely.

I also love the new postage rates - good value as I have a number of doorstopper books to list and it seems very good value. Widening the band really does help.

*smurfy*

Crowqueen wrote: »

So things that are too big to go through the letterbox get taken to the DO, which in my case would be a £15 round trip away. Now, OK, it doesn't affect me much, because the postman leaves stuff on the doorstep..

.

i see you live in Reading,just out of intrest how do you workout it would cost £15 to get to a DO?at most each of the 3 DO is no more than 2 buses away,granted it can be an hour round trip by car for some areas,more if using the buses,but price? you could easy save that by getting it redelivered to a Post Office or neighbour(free) if your not in.But like you said yours get left on door step,so heres thinking maybe you live on my delivery!;):rotfl:

Crowqueen

I don't drive, and I live out in Swallowfield, which is serviced by Hook delivery office.

Bus to Reading = £4.something (I have a multiple journey card) return
Train to Basingstoke = £5.50 return
Bus/train to Hook = given prices I'm thinking probably at least about £5 return, particularly when a single journey within Reading costs £1.80 and from my boyfriend's house in Basingstoke to the station, not a terribly long journey by any means costs £2.10; so between towns you are starting to look at £5 both ways.

Plus that would take me most of a day depending on buses/train times, certainly a great chunk out of it.

For that amount of effort, I could just go into Reading and buy something from a shop, and if I were able to drive to Hook, I could drive to Basingstoke and go to a shop there. The whole point of shopping online, for me, is to get things sent to me so I don't have to go to them. There is the situation where I can buy something online that I can't necessarily get elsewhere (e.g. stamps, postcards etc., books cheaper than in Waterstones) but then again, that also saves me £10-15 going to Oxford or Henley where they sell a lot of cheap academic/vintage books or travelling up and down the country to stamp bourses.

So it's in sellers/RM's interests to make buying online cheap and easy, since they both benefit from the buyer spending money with them.

Sellers who routinely use RD, or postmen who don't deliver until lunchtime, or a combination of both, really make it difficult to see much advantage in buying online - and they are, ultimately, only doing themselves out of a job since I can always buy what I want somewhere else. Thus I do not lose out at all - but the people whose livelihoods depend on me buying from them and not someone else do.

The really odd thing is that people carry on selling stuff in ways that simply don't make sense from a buyer's POV - and wonder aloud on forums why they are not getting any sales.

Surely the convenience for the customer would be more worthwhile than their own paranoia when people send cheap items RD.