why Royal Mail is going down the pan

[kuki9591]

Remember the days when there were two deliveries by Royal Mail everyday, if there was an item that required a signature, chances were you had not left the house for work before the postman knocked on your door. Now days your lucky if the post arrives late morning or early afternoon.

So it was quite refreshing Wednesday evening when I returned from the gym at about 7pm to see somebody knocking on my door, it was an agent from the Home Delivery Network attempting to deliver a package from Amazon. With service like this, no wonder Royal Mail are losing out to other commercial operators.

So a big well done for the Home Delivery Network.

Mike

[B]

yes quite... where is the logic trying to deliver a parcel to homes when most are out during the day, causing hassle to the receipient and the post man to be frank..

adopt the scandinavian way, delivery of parcels in early evening, 95% of all people or their neighbours are definitely in...

just a thought, possibly in the too difficult box... I too had to queue at the post office yesterday for my parcel which was ofcourse delivered when I was at work..

B x

[SoggyFox]

or the magazines that seem to go endlessly missing. I had 5 months of argueing with a magazine publisher about not receiving my subsrciption and finally telling them to send it in a blank brown envelope rather than see-through plastic type. Lo and behold it arrived.

i guess someone at the post office was into Fish keeping too.

[chrisch]

Originally Posted by SoggyFox

... a blank brown envelope ....

No-one at the PO into S&M then???

Chris

[SoggyFox]

with all the others being delivered to my flat it was one of many by then.

[Dave Crampton]

I watched a program recently about pensions and discovered a possible reason why the RM is going down the pan.

They used to have a near monopoly, and I'm sure we'll all agree that with a monopoly you will get a good service as they have 100% market share.

The trouble began back in the late 80's when the interest rates were so high the companies pension scheme was nearly 'running its self' The Royal mail, like a few other (now defunct) pensin companies/schemes decided they should stop putting money into the schemes and use it in the business instead. This continued but as the ecconomy recovered and the interest rates came back down the money now missing from the pensions schemes could not be put in. Plus the RM has had its business taken away with the opening up of the market to newer businesses in a move to increase efficiency.

As a result a lot of pension schemes have suffered. Now companies were faced with topping up the missing money and profits were nolonger ploughed back into the business, but diverted to top up the 'payment Holidays'. Now so many Company pension schemes are closing to new members and companies are faces with hundreds of millions of pounds of 'catching up'. When ther new CEO took over the RM he was faced with a ~£250 M deficit. This is why I suspect the RM has now annpounced that it is closing its Final Salary pension Scheme to new members.

[StuartC]

yup, the "pensions crisis" is going to be picking up the blame for a lot of things business-wise in the future.

Major motor manufacturers in the US are struggling partly due to their pensions and health benefits commitments.

Many UK businesses and public sector organisations with final salary schemes have closed them to new entrants.

And even worse, if the company goes bust it seems the pension pot is the last thing to be sorted and all the workers get royally shafted...

back on topic, the post has never arrived before 9am in the village where I've lived for 10 years, so there seems little point in paying 1st class post as I won't see the damn thing until 6pm when most business is closed anyway...

Our postie is pretty good and often leaves parcels in the shed etc, or has started to leave at the nearby PO in the next village, which is better than the 20 mile round trip to the main parcel sorting office.

However, evening deliveries would probably be more efficient use of their delivery network - if I'm not going to see the 11:30 post until I get home in the evening, then they might as well do that delivery whilst taking parcels around....

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by kuki9591

Remember the days when there were two deliveries by Royal Mail everyday, if there was an item that required a signature, chances were you had not left the house for work before the postman knocked on your door. Now days your lucky if the post arrives late morning or early afternoon.

So it was quite refreshing Wednesday evening when I returned from the gym at about 7pm to see somebody knocking on my door, it was an agent from the Home Delivery Network attempting to deliver a package from Amazon. With service like this, no wonder Royal Mail are losing out to other commercial operators.

So a big well done for the Home Delivery Network.

Mike

I don't know what you mean. Our postman signs for us Oh such scope for causing trouble there.

[The Cherub]

Would that be the same Home Delivery Network that before Christmas kindly left a package of books from Amazon out of sight on top of the wheelie bin in the pouring rain? Once the cardboard packaging had soaked through the books look more like papier-mâché.
When I got through to Amazons helpline the poor Irish women put her hands up and said I was not the first person to complain about the HDN and rain that morning.
The Post office on the other hand will take the package back to the Post office and allow me to collect it on a Saturday morning try that with the HDN!

[Scuby]

All the delivery companies are a bit funny really though, for anything that needs a signature or where there's nowhere to leave it if you're out.

Pretty much all will try to deliver 9-5 hours, when most people are at work - so chances of you successfully receiving your parcel first time is rather slim.

Royal Mail: nice close sorting office usually, but they close at 1pm! So you've got no option but to wait until the following day - although at least they're close and open early, so not too bad.

DHL / Citylink etc: usually much further to their base, but usually open late into the evening (8pm I think) so you can pick it up same day.

What i'd really like, and common sense would suggest *must* happen in the next year or two, would be for the Royal Mail sorting offices to be open late afternoon / evening. Then all the probably hundreds of people from each office who weren't in can pick up their parcel easily that evening.

Even better would be a system where you could register the fact that you are not at home, and instead they send you an email / text message or something early that morning (when the parcel would usually be out for delivery) saying "your parcel is at the sorting office, collect it whenever you like". Far better than me (when I need a parcel same day) trapsing home at lunchtime, collecting the card, and then going back to the sorting office before heading back to work again.

I remember reading a few years ago a thing where you could have parcels delivered to a local newsagents or postoffice or something, but it needed the sender to support using that method - which very few seem to. They also charge for it. If they could approach it from the other direction, and allow me as the *recipient* to chose what they do with my mail, that'd be a much better system. Would no doubt need a new computer system to track it all, which I can't see happening any time soon

David