I received a card through my door from Royal Mail last week, not the usual ‘you weren’t in’ card that I love so much, but one relating to that service. Now correct me if I am wrong, but the Post Office is supposed to be a trustworthy service – part of the backbone of British Society. If you can’t trust your postman, who can you trust – or words to that effect.
I have been noting a decline in the post office over the last few years and have blogged to that effect on many occasions. Most recently it related to the failure to deliver a package and then losing it at the sorting office when I went to claim it! So, anything purporting to improve this service is a good thing in my opinion. This however is nothing of the sort…..
Their proposal – the delivery to neighbour service – is to get your agreement to allow the postman to leave your package with any of your neighbours if you aren’t in. Now in my view this allows the post office to side step one of their main responsibilities, and something we pay for – ensuring the post gets to the correct address. As a scheme it also has various large holes in it and appears poorly thought out;
- You can’t state which neighbour to be used.
- You can’t ask them to avoid troubling an old neighbour – we have one who is in her late 80′s
- There is an option to opt out – but to do this you have to put up a sticker (they provide) which might as well say ‘I don’t trust my neighbours’!
We are forced to opt out due to the age of our neighbour, it would be wrong to have her disturbed for our post. I cannot believe we are alone in this and find it amazing that this hasn’t occured to the Post Office when they came up with this daft scheme. I believe this is yet another step towards the demise of our postal system as there is now no way of guaranteeing the delivery of ‘normal’ mail once this system starts.
If I was cynical I might think that they are just trying to force us to use the more expensive premium services that guarantee delivery? If so the couriers will step in and out price them.
Time for a re-think Royal Mail?
Brian daugherty
January 2, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Why don’t you just leave a note of your own indicating which addresses to try if you are not in?