Royal Mail does not deliver for weeks on end then....

born_again

Bronvahl said:

Ergates said:

I don't see anything in what you've said that suggests the leaflets are at all relevant and it's not clear why you're fixating on them.  Also - given leaflets aren't addressed there is little point in telling companies that you don't want them.

You say you've seen RM in your street - have you spoken to any of your neighbours about their post?

I am not "fixating"

I noticed after camera evidence and what I heard guy on radio made me look into it more deeply.

Royal Mail only deliver leaflets on Thursdays in my area.

I tagged all the deliveries and downloaded the videos, there are zero deliveries without leaflets and I get mail when they have several leaflets to deliver. 

Your lucky. We can get the same ones several times a week..

In the letterbox, straight out the back door into the green bin. Recycling at it's best. 🤷‍♀️

Bronvahl

swingaloo said:

Do you live in a remote area. We never go weeks without a delivery, maybe a couple of days but we have never been in a situation where we have missed appointments and most things we are expecting seem to arrive within a few days. Its blatantly untrue to say Royal Mail do not deliver mail for 3 or 4 weeks at a time or that they hold letters till there are leaflets. The leaflets are a weekly thing which have to be delivered. The delivery offices couldn't hold such a backlog.

I can tell you as an ex postie that its far better to get out onto your round with a reasonable amount of mail. No postie wants to wait until there are enough letters to bundle up for each customer on their walk because of the weight. If the postie is in your street and not coming to you that is simply because there is nothing at the delivery office for you, they cant pick and choose which houses to go to. There is a delivery frame where all the letters are stacked for each address on the round and that has to be emptied, thy cant choose to do number 34 and 38 but not bother with 36 and 42, it just doesn't work like that.

I used to work for RM but things have changed considerably since then. I doubt very much that you opting out of leaflet deliveries and telling companies why will have the effect you desire.  Those leaflets are known as 'Door to Doors' and RM are obligated to deliver them unless the customer opts out, But with the income from those leaflets stamp prices will rise even more and delivery offices will cut back on staff and you may get even less deliveries. 

The whole system has changed since email became the main way of corresponding. There are a fraction of actual letters in comparison to what once was and parcel delivery is now the main focus. The days of each area having their own postman are long gone in most places and it isnt going to get any better.

Please don't accuse me of lying

" Its blatantly untrue to say Royal Mail do not deliver mail for 3 or 4 weeks at a time or that they hold letters till there are leaflets.£

First of all I have a plethora of evidence but I also have better things to do than make false complaints, I am just trying to get to the bottom of this.

As I explained in my last post, we only get leaflets on a Thursday and 3 weeks apart, I can even tell you who their customers are because the leaflets are sitting in my shredder waiting for me to shred.

It is very helpful that you were a former postie, I was wondering if my sorting office is a test bed for some sort of productivity test by management consultants.

It is interesting that you say they can't pick and choose, because when going through the footage I was able to see that on a few occasions there were deliveries for a neighbour but none for me, there were no leaflets that day and no mail delivered to me, yet 9 days later I got a bundle and mail dated weeks before the earlier delivery.

I used to have the same postie, well the same for letters, signed for always come by themselves for one item with a different postie.

Recently I had a query with a Gov Agency, they said they would send me something, I warned them that Royal Mail was unreliable, the letter they sent never came so I chased it, same thing happened, I chased them 4 times in total.  I got the 1st letter weeks later  and the other 3 all together, they each had a personalised covering letter with a date that matched the phone call.

I saw somewhere online, that getting a SIM card from mobile providers meant you get a prompt delivery, when I moved to Lebara via an MSE offer I did not get the SIM.  It was a nightmare as the process from Sky seemed to be quick and Lebara themselves told me they had sent the SIM almost immediately.  No SIM arrived so I chased Lebara, they said that if a SIM does not arrive they send the second one by 24h tracked and to their credit they did, I plugged in the SIM and got transferred. two weeks later the original SIM they sent turned up with a batch of mail and of course several leaflets.

I think you are right that a lot of things probably have changed considerably, I also think you are right that opting out of leaflets will not help, first of all it gives me a benchmark and secondly because if they are using leaflets as part of some productivity drive experiment then I may not get mail at all.  Who knows what will happen when Royal Mail is sold, it might get better or like with UK insurance companies sold to EU companies they may leave things as they are.  For example in Germany insurance companies are like they were in  the UK 30+ years ago, while in UK they charge extra or have conditions that wipe out the value of the benefit.

It saddens me to hear what you say is happening since email, I thought of ways that Royal Mail could provide additional services around 1999, I even spoke to them about it but they did not want to invest.  Ironically, others have started to do what I suggested, some even have their own dedicated business.

I will continue to monitor it, I had my last set of mail about a week or so ago I think, so I am not expecting any for a few weeks to update the thread with new information.

Bronvahl

sheramber said:

Ask other householders in your street if they have problems with delivery.

If you have a local community facebook site then ask on there is any others are having problems.

Gather evidence for OFCOM 

I hardly see other people around here, I have asked a few an I can see one on my door cam, so I have determined that Royal Mail delivered letters to them between two of my visits, but without them getting leaflets.

I don't really do Facebook or Social Media, but yes I am putting my evidence into a more serious order

and trying to write a log which will list what and when was delivered.  So far this year I have had just three deliveries, all bundles.

I have to wait for the latest complaint I am on to pass 30 days I think but I am going to see it through all the way to OFCOM unless it changes.

Okell

1.  Why don't you send yourself something tracked and see what happens?

2.  Sorry if I've missed your reply, but what is the experience of your nighbours?  Are they affected too or is it just you?

ripplyuk

I thought this was common. My postman only comes once a week, on average, since covid. Occasionally there will be a flurry of activity with him coming every day and other times it might be once in a fortnight. I assumed it was to do with staff shortages. I’m in a rural area and I’m quite fond of the postman (we’ve had the same one for years) so I’ve never complained but it can be frustrating when I miss important appointments. 

Bronvahl

p00hsticks said:

Bronvahl said:

I have missed important NHS appointments, including one for Cancer, so when NHS got a no show they put me back 6 months. 

I've not experienced the problems with Royal Mail you describe, but as you obviously have online access I'd suggest you see if your NHS Trust will send you appointment details electronically - you get a text and /or e-mail to alert you to a new appointment that you then access and can download on line.

 My local Trust and I believe many others use DrDoctor. https://www.drdoctor.co.uk/for-patients

You are right, I have a lot of medical appointments, most of them SMS me a link with a letter and if I don't follow the link a letter is posted a day or two later, but on the occasions where a letter was sent, it was in a batch with a leaflet.

When I berated the hospital that accused me of missing a hospital appointment (something I have never done in my life), I did a check and they had not sent me an SMS while on other NHS services I get an SMS with a link for the letter and an SMS saying don't miss your appointment tomorrow or it will cost £160 to the NHS.  They told me they opted out of using that service and were negotiating a new contract.  TBH that service went through a really bad time, all consultants were locums and morale was really low in the unit.  They are a lot better now.

I don't fancy using some 3rd party website for health data but thanks for the suggestion.  I was with another app but they required me to provide them with private information so I could not use them again and had to close my account.

Bronvahl

Okell said:

1.  Why don't you send yourself something tracked and see what happens?

2.  Sorry if I've missed your reply, but what is the experience of your nighbours?  Are they affected too or is it just you?

As I have explained above, tracked, signed for et al all work fine but they don't bring other mail.

As explained above I don't see them much, we have different timetables, but my doorbell has caught a delivery to one of my neighbours but no delivery for me that day, bundle followed as usual.

Bronvahl

ripplyuk said:

I thought this was common. My postman only comes once a week, on average, since covid. Occasionally there will be a flurry of activity with him coming every day and other times it might be once in a fortnight. I assumed it was to do with staff shortages. I’m in a rural area and I’m quite fond of the postman (we’ve had the same one for years) so I’ve never complained but it can be frustrating when I miss important appointments. 

Thanks for your reply, people always ask me if I am rural as if it is some excuse, I think you should get daily deliveries if there is post for you.  I do wonder what Royal Mail do if something is 2nd class, do they not send it out of source sorting office or leave it in box or pile after sorting a sack of incoming mail.  We too used to have a postie we knew well enough to say hello to and leave a bottle for at Christmas.  Now we seem to get different ones, not sure if they are rotating. 

I have tried to find reasons for this, like the prepaid licence or some other reason, but the only thing I can think of is that they have piles of mail thrown into a corner of the sorting office and they just get to it when they get to it but somehow funnel that into a leaflet delivery.

Bronvahl

born_again said:

Bronvahl said:

Ergates said:

I don't see anything in what you've said that suggests the leaflets are at all relevant and it's not clear why you're fixating on them.  Also - given leaflets aren't addressed there is little point in telling companies that you don't want them.

You say you've seen RM in your street - have you spoken to any of your neighbours about their post?

I am not "fixating"

I noticed after camera evidence and what I heard guy on radio made me look into it more deeply.

Royal Mail only deliver leaflets on Thursdays in my area.

I tagged all the deliveries and downloaded the videos, there are zero deliveries without leaflets and I get mail when they have several leaflets to deliver. 

Your lucky. We can get the same ones several times a week..

In the letterbox, straight out the back door into the green bin. Recycling at it's best. 🤷‍♀️

I don't feel lucky, when they do deliver them there are loads and often duplicates. It is just they arrive all at once, I get everything from car dealership leaflet to national companies flogging all the usual rubbish.

Bronvahl

Jenni_D said:

Even though you responded to @Ergates, you've not addressed the key question asked ... what do your neighbours say about their mail?

Sorry, I missed your message when thread expanded to two pages.

I don't know a lot of my neighbours, maybe about 8 or 9

I have not gone around asking them because they seem to go out early and when they come back I think it would be disturbing them in their family time.

On my video I have caught a postie delivering mail without leaflets to one neighbour, the closest, but nothing to me and the mail came with leaflets on the next due day, I say due day because it only seems to be Thursdays.

Of course I am only counting the days they actually come, I have not overlaid those on a calendar to determine all the days they don't come.

I noticed the Water bill being very late because the date it said I had to pay by had past already.

Then the next bundle had mail that predated the previous bundle, which made me think they were just piling up sacks of mail and not dealing with them chronologically.