How long is 1st Class letter post taking?

turnitround

I posted a letter 1st Class last Thursday knowing it probably would not arrive on the Friday or Saturday  but hoping it would get there on the Monday.
It was just a normal letter and it has still not arrived. Is ages since I last sent something by post so wondered if its become the norm for it to take this long. Its going about 40 miles away.

tacpot12

I think it is very variable at the moment. I posted a letter on Saturday morning and heard that it had arrived today (Tuesday). The city where it was posted and where it was received are 120 miles apart, so that seems ok. 

turnitround

tacpot12 said:

I think it is very variable at the moment. I posted a letter on Saturday morning and heard that it had arrived today (Tuesday). The city where it was posted and where it was received are 120 miles apart, so that seems ok. 

Thanks. I have edited my post to add that it is going about 40 miles so that's not great. Just a bit worried that it may be lost, its not of value but Im trying to let someone know that a mutual friend has died before the funeral date and I dont have a contact number for them.

Spoonie_Turtle

Very variable unfortunately - depends on how many staff are delivering for the destination and if/when they're delivering letters.  RM seem to be focusing on parcels and letters aren't reliably being delivered like they were in the past.  So it could be already sorted and sat in the destination delivery office, waiting to actually go out and be delivered.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Cloth_of_Gold

As others have said, it's very variable. I regularly send post, first class, to Plymouth and Manchester, both a couple of hundred miles from me. The ones to Plymouth, which I generally send on a Friday, almost always arrive the next day, although occasionally not until the Monday. The letters to Manchester very occasionally arrive the next day but usually it takes 3 or 4 days. Last week I posted one which took a week to arrive. I sent one tracked a few weeks ago and the tracking showed it had been delivered but the recipient said they hadn't received it. The next day they found it it the recycling bin outside their house where the postman had left it but not told them! I occasionally send things to Easy Yorkshire and they often take quite a while, over two weeks on one occasion.

Our own postman, who has been delivering here for years, told me recently that there are a lot of people off sick in his delivery office and he was overwhelmed with deliveries. It may be the same elsewhere.

forgotmyname

Always been variable.  Worked at a company in the 80's and we did tests using franked mail and stamped mail, first and 2nd class etc.

Sometimes the 2nd class would arrive before the first class and sometimes it could take 7 days for the letters to arrive. Being franked
and with a stamp seemed to make no difference. Just pot luck with rumours of the staff putting bags back into the system if there
was too much mail to deliver.

A few years later I had a letter from my own town go via several South Wales towns before it got delivered some 10 days late.

We tend to have 2 different postmen, one never puts missed you cards through the door but the other will.

ciderboy2009

I think a lot depends on where you are posting to as well.

Here in East Bristol we've averaged just over 1 delivery per week since before last Christmas. 

First Class post regularly takes 3 or more weeks to get to me and I've lost track of how much post has just never arrived.

RFW

turnitround said:

tacpot12 said:

I think it is very variable at the moment. I posted a letter on Saturday morning and heard that it had arrived today (Tuesday). The city where it was posted and where it was received are 120 miles apart, so that seems ok. 

Thanks. I have edited my post to add that it is going about 40 miles so that's not great. Just a bit worried that it may be lost, its not of value but Im trying to let someone know that a mutual friend has died before the funeral date and I dont have a contact number for them.

If you don't have any contact details there are other variables besides the letter not being delivered. The recipient may have moved, be away or otherwise unavailable.
You could try checking on a Facebook page local to the address you have sent and see if they have been having delivery issues.

badmemory

I must be the odd one out.  Posted 4 letters in the last couple of weeks & both 1st & 2nd class arrived next day.  I have 2 more 2nd class which hopefully will get dealt with on Monday.  So fingers crossed.  I wonder if it could be the post box the items were posted in?

Jerry_Cornelius

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gsxz0q