Alternative to Royal Mail

charlies_mum

Does anyone use an alternative to Royal Mail ? Two of my local post offices have been closed, and today I found out that the other nearby one is to close in August.

This is already causing problems with my Ebay shipments as I can now only post two days a week as I used to drop them into my local post office on my way to work.

The post office I am being left with is a busy one on a main road with limited parking, so I wondered whether anyone uses any other means of postage ?

custardy

theres no alternative to royal mail as such but theres plenty of couriers.
see the courier cost cutting thread
unfortunatly many are not without their problems like having to be home for collections

jacksons_mum

i use royal mails online service, you print your postage off then just put the items in a post box. obviously its only good if your items will fit in a post box and you dont require proof of postage. i like it as i only sell low value items so dont bother with proof of postage and it saves so much time and hassle of going to the post office.

Jakejakejake

I bulk buy postage stamps, and drop them off at the sorting/enquiry office with no queues, or in the post box, or courier it!

Keeping_Positive

jacksons_mum wrote: »

i use royal mails online service, you print your postage off then just put the items in a post box. obviously its only good if your items will fit in a post box and you dont require proof of postage. i like it as i only sell low value items so dont bother with proof of postage and it saves so much time and hassle of going to the post office.

I have just started using this as well. I think you can purchase all different types of delivey ie recorded (did that yesterday) and special delivery (not tried that yet). So far go good.

custardy

Jakejakejake wrote: »

I bulk buy postage stamps, and drop them off at the sorting/enquiry office with no queues, or in the post box, or courier it!

bearing in mind that handing over mail at the sorting office can add 1 day to the delivery time

custardy

wendy24g wrote: »

I have just started using this as well. I think you can purchase all different types of delivey ie recorded (did that yesterday) and special delivery (not tried that yet). So far go good.

you can add RD to any packet by applying 70p postage and an RD label
SD items still need to be sent via a post office

Jakejakejake

custardy wrote: »

bearing in mind that handing over mail at the sorting office can add 1 day to the delivery time

Can it? It never does for me! Maybe i've been lucky...
Ours is attached to the post office though, so dunno if that makes a difference.

custardy

Jakejakejake wrote: »

Can it? It never does for me! Maybe i've been lucky...
Ours is attached to the post office though, so dunno if that makes a difference.

yeah well thats different as the post office gets collections.
a delivery office gets mail on an inward stream with the day being 'over' by 9.30am and in real terms last mail 'collections' approx 7.30-8am

hamzramz

As a semi-economist, I've heard that other mail companies can enter the postal market ever since January 2006, like UK Mail but these are for big organistations like firms, however with all this happening to Royal Mail, who knows?

But with me, I am still relying on Royal Mail, but with time restrainants, I may consider the online service.

custardy

hamzramz wrote: »

As a semi-economist, I've heard that other mail companies can enter the postal market ever since January 2006, like UK Mail but these are for big organistations like firms, however with all this happening to Royal Mail, who knows?

But with me, I am still relying on Royal Mail, but with time restrainants, I may consider the online service.

many compainies are licenced to deliver but they also have access to down stream access (DSA)
so they can collect big contracts
eg BT use TNT
tnt collect the letters and sort them to a certain point
depending on how well sorted the letters are dictates theprice tnt pay rm
tnt then pass this mail to rm to be sent to delivery offices and delivered via rm
DSA is a massive revenue loser for RM,but is much cheaper for its competitors than actually delivering it themselves.
dont expect to see any rival posties on the streets any time soon.
i know tnt & other companys did trials but as you see nothing transpired