Royal Mail Strike

Steel_2

whypayhighfees wrote: »

So how is all this the fault of Joe Bloggs or businesses trying to make honest profit?

If it is true that government set the prices and make the conditions under which RM can operate, why is it that posters here are blaming the public for the potential downfall of RM? Why do they also complain that businesses are looking for the best deal possible to achieve the very sensible and businesslike goal of raising profits?

Sounds to me like the problem that RM has is with the government and that's who the unions should be targeting instead of damaging their relationship with the millions of customers who are stuck in the middle with no choice in the matter.

I don't recall anyone blaming the public or businesses for the mess Royal mail finds itself in. In fact a number of posters have said - as you have - that the government needs to sort this mess out. However, the unions quickest and most effective way to !!!! off the government is to strike because it puts the heat on them a bit more instead of letting them poke their head out of the country club every now and then to direct things. Absentee landlord is the phrase that springs to mind and like all absentee landlords they're only around when the **** hits the fan.

It is universally acknowledged by the Government, Postcomm and Royal Mail that domestic post has been subsidised and charged at lower rates for many years and business post has been charged at far higher rates to make up for it. When the anti-competitive measures were brought in to break Royal mail's 350 year monopoly of the postal service, Alan Leighton made it very clear that tying RMs hands regarding prices would lead to a situtation of 'cherry picking', where businesses would use (as is there absolute right to do so) the competition to do the bulk of mail process as they were cheaper knowing they would still get a RM delivery service for the 'last mile'. RM would then be left with the bulk of its business coming from unprofitable domestic post that they make a loss on and small contracts from TNT etc.

Postcomm and the Government insisted it could see no problem with this and that it wouldn't affect RMs profits. This was back in 2005. When Alan pointed out that a situtation would further develop where TNT etc would develop their own city delivery network to rival RMs while RM was still realing from the effects of 'the last mile' plan and subsequent drop in profits, Postcomm and Government said it wouldn't be for at least another five years and by then RM would have found other ways to make money to compensate. Fast forward to 2007 - only two years later - and I believe the first rival delivery netowrk is now operating in Manchester city centre.

I agree with Postcomm to a certain extent when it said that achieving profitablility in the postal business has been all about pricing so far and this needs to change to where innovative ideas that increase efficiency and profitablility become key. But I think they've lost the point that for business and domestic customers price is still the main concern for them!!!

You can witter on about service all you like, but at the end of the day no-one wants to pay decent money for a good delivery service once they realise how much it will cost! We've all been conditioned to look for bargains and offers, then we sit back and complain when service goes out the window. Would you pay the real price for having your domestic mail delivered? The cost of delivery alone (excluding collection, sorting and transport costs) for rural post is 29p while it's 4p for urban areas, so the revenues from low cost urban support high cost rural. But if you add in the total costs in wages etc do you begin to see just how much money your post could go up to?? And before anyone says the most obvious solution to the problem, Postcomm has vetoed any suggestion by RM for a zonal pricing policy because the negative effect it would have on rural domestic and business post.

Every solution brings up a new problem. You can't please everyone all the time.

My final point is this: how can you open up a previously closed field to competition then suppress one player on the field? Make it a level playing field because anything else is anti-competitive. I appreciate small businesses trying to get a foothold in the postal delivery network will find it difficult to set one up because of cost isues but hey, that's called business. If you got the funds to develop your business and implement a rival delivery service great. If you haven't, don't run screaming to 'mummy' to 'lock the big boys' up so you can 'play with their toys'.

postingalwaysposting

I have no problems with this as an ebay seller (not a regular) as i have timed my auctions that every parcel will arrive (hopefully) from my last batch on thursday I do however think postal workers are underpayed as with many other jobs in the customer service sector. If they want to carry out a strike good luck to them but other than them having more work the following days and a backlog that could last weeks they have no real answers.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

first of all...... i have a lot of autcions finishing tonight...

when i send out my invoices i will be emailing the winners... pointing out about the strike.. and it would be in their best interest to pay asap... otherwise their item could be cought up in the strike and take longer to deliver....( i can see the scammers latching on to this, and saying they havent received their parcel)

what i can understand by talking to the lady in my local post office..( her hubby and son works in royal mail )....is that the way they want to restructure the business they will be losing a huge amount of staff... but not only that the people who are left have got to cover the work load of those people... with in effect less money.....due to the new pay structure.....

i can see it ending up like the national health.... falling apart at the seams... cost cutting.... and the service going to the wall.......

people are moaning about the prices that royal mail charge.... but as people have been saying in reality.... the costs to deliver those items out weigh what they charge.....if royal mail start charging the 'true' cost to deliver a letter/parcel.... you can say a big goodbye to selling on ebay... as it just would not be worth sending anything by post....( small items/paarcels )

i honestly dont know what the outcome of the strike will be in terms of their demands.....

but the way i look at it.. ..its like the government putting the royal mail into a boxing ring with both hands tied behind their back.... and expect to compete with the...competition........and win ....

its is the same with the post offices....

you wont realise what you got until its gone......

Steel_2

By the way, if anyone is wondering why they get their post late morning (and sometimes late afternoon) I can tell you.

Post late morning
Previously all mail was sorted in two steps. 1) Staff working at night take the sacks of mail from the vans and sort it according to postman's walk by a combination of hand and machine. This is called inward sorting. 2) The postman/ woman comes in and picks up his bundle of mail and then sorts it according to street and house number. He then takes it out and delivers it. If he's fast at sorting, he gets out really early in the morning (sometimes before 7am) and you get your mail early.

All good so far, yes?

Right, in my husband's office they got rid of night duties to save money. Now when my husband goes in, he starts work early at 4:30am (his choice to 'get a jump on the day' as he calls it) on what they call 'general inward sorting'. All the postmen/women in his office are now doing the general sorting that the night staff were doing. Once that's finished, they are allowed onto their frames to sort their own mail. The doors are now locked to prevent the staff from leaving the building before 8am in the morning.

If you live on the beginning of my husband's delivery, you get your mail early. If you don't you get it later on in the morning. If it's really heavy i.e. there's loads of junk mail, sky magazines and utilities bills, it takes longer to deliver so you won't get your mail until the afternoon if you're on the end of a delivery.

Also, postal workers are not allowed to take their huge volume of mail out in their own cars to save time. They have to use the vans. The postmen/women take a few bags out with them and then text the van driver to come and drop off more bags to them when needed. If the van driver is busy delivering packets/parcels and dropping off stuff, he gets there when he can (my husband has waited up to an hour for a van driver to turn up before). If they deliver to two different areas they need to text the van driver to come and pick them up and take them over there. Again, if the driver's late it has a knock on effect on the timing of the mail delivery.

Post late aftrenoon/evening
And if you get your mail sometime late afternoon/early evening, it's usually because your usual postman/woman is sick and someone has agreed to go back to the office after they've finished their own delivery and start the proces all over again to cover for your sick postman.

However, it's not unusual for staff to leave and no-one to be assigned permanently to that walk so it ends up always done by temporary staff or people needing overtime payments. In my husband's office, it's usually those workers who are supporting two families and paying high child maintenance costs. This is in the process of being reviewed after several workers in their late forties/early fifties keeled over with heart attacks and strokes due to the constant stress of doing an overtime shift almost every day, taking their working week to 14-16 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I hope this answers some people's questions about why mail is delivered at different times. Some people think taking away second post means you should deliver quicker. But the stuff still has to be sorted regardless. The volume of letters in second mail didn't just disappear from the system. They're still there and are now sorted in with everyting else.

But a combination of all the factors above means that mail deliveries are getting later.

whypayhighfees

Steel wrote: »

I don't recall anyone blaming the public or businesses for the mess Royal mail finds itself in.

wullie wrote: »

What you lot don't seem to realise is that the service won't exist for people who live rural areas soon. Fine if you live in a big city, but once you've destroyed Royal Mail ...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=5534932&postcount=6

Steel wrote: »

... So Royal Mail's client's are being offerred by TNT etc the chance to save a penny or two on the cost of every peice of mail it sends out safe in knowledge that it can offer Royal Mail a pittance to deliver that mail. The client gets the same Royal Mail service at a cheaper cost. Meanwhile Royal Mail are lumbered with domestic post that loses them money.
....
It jumped ship because saving a few pennies on every mail piece it sends out will add up to millions and make it more profitable.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=5535038&postcount=9

Then perhaps you and I are reading posts and understanding them in different ways.

user051105

A lot of us don't have unions to back us up when we get our poultry pay rise. Why should they?

Then get onto your employer, you have the right for union representation.

wullie

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

first of all...... i have a lot of autcions finishing tonight...

when i send out my invoices i will be emailing the winners... pointing out about the strike.. and it would be in their best interest to pay asap... otherwise their item could be cought up in the strike and take longer to deliver....( i can see the scammers latching on to this, and saying they havent received their parcel)

what i can understand by talking to the lady in my local post office..( her hubby and son works in royal mail )....is that the way they want to restructure the business they will be losing a huge amount of staff... but not only that the people who are left have got to cover the work load of those people... with in effect less money.....due to the new pay structure.....

i can see it ending up like the national health.... falling apart at the seams... cost cutting.... and the service going to the wall.......

people are moaning about the prices that royal mail charge.... but as people have been saying in reality.... the costs to deliver those items out weigh what they charge.....if royal mail start charging the 'true' cost to deliver a letter/parcel.... you can say a big goodbye to selling on ebay... as it just would not be worth sending anything by post....( small items/paarcels )

i honestly dont know what the outcome of the strike will be in terms of their demands.....

but the way i look at it.. ..its like the government putting the royal mail into a boxing ring with both hands tied behind their back.... and expect to compete with the...competition........and win ....

its is the same with the post offices....

you wont realise what you got until its gone......

Thank you . Someone with common sense. When you think about it, it's extremely cheap to send an item through the post. I mean what can you buy for 32p nowadays. Who is going to buy an item from Ebay for less than a fiver if the postage is going to cost more than the item. Ebay has been excellent for Royal Mail and viceversa

deanos

Ive noticed Postmen/Women using there own vehicles alot recently over the last few months, not just my town but others too, anybody know why this is :beer:

rabbit_burrow

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

people are moaning about the prices that royal mail charge.... but as people have been saying in reality.... the costs to deliver those items out weigh what they charge.....if royal mail start charging the 'true' cost to deliver a letter/parcel.... you can say a big goodbye to selling on ebay... as it just would not be worth sending anything by post....( small items/paarcels )

Where are people moaning about the cost of RM post? I haven't seen any on this thread. Someone made a comment meaning 'would you rather pay 41p', to which I replied that it would go upto that anyway if RM wants it to, but I haven't seen anyone actually moaning about the price. I have only seen lots of misunderstandings to people's posts.

Steel_2

deanos wrote: »

Ive noticed Postmen/Women using there own vehicles alot recently over the last few months, not just my town but others too, anybody know why this is :beer:

Because of the length of time they have to wait if they are dropped off in vans. Have a look at my post above about the time it can take some van drivers to drop off mail and pick up posties.

Some sorting offices are more stringent than others about it, but basically you are not allowed to use your own car unless it has business insurance so if you have an accident RM are covered. RM have told hubbie his sick pay will be 'reconsidered' if he has an accident in his own car while out on RM business and has to be off sick, so now he goes by van.