Are the Post Office serious?

I am not one of our Post Offices fans, their service has become increasingly poor in my view. The days of your post being on your door mat first thing in the morning ended years ago. For the last decade the service has become very ‘second class’ in quality.

Whether this was due to unhappy staff, or poor management is now rather irrelevant – the announcement that first class postage is to increase to 60p (and even second class to 50p) is the beginning of the end for our once great post office.

Perhaps I don’t get it, but I was under the impression that it was only sensible to increase prices when your product is in demand? Not when you are in a shrinking market! With the increasing use of email and document exchanges via the cloud the Post Office are in no position to charge more!

I am sure at work the use of electronic documents will increase because of this – and hand deliveries in town will be even more common.

RIP the Post Office.

 

Our ‘wonderful’ Post Office

At this time of the year we all become beholden to the man in the red van – not the man in the red suit (that joy leaves us at an early age). I am of course referring to Postman Pat – or whatever name you local postman goes by.

a common view for us all by the end of Christmas

I will hold my hand up here and confirm that I am not a fan of our once wonderful post office – I believe that the service they provide is poor and they need a good ‘kick up the arse’ to get things back on track. Unfortunately this is unlikely with the current dynamic between employer and unions so I would not be at all surprised to see the demise of the Post Office in the UK in the form that we all currently know over the next few years.

The reason for my current rant is related to their inability to manage when things get busy at this time of the year. I have had to make a number of visits to the Incinerator Road sorting office over the last few weeks to collect parcels. Now this is not something I have a particular problem with, both my wife and I work, so there is no one at home to receive these packages (although we have had ‘you weren’t at home’ cards through the door when we have been at home – but that is another story).

The changing face of retailing has had a direct impact upon the Post Office – or more precisely it would appear Amazon have. Everyone orders a massive amount of stuff on-line now and the Post Office appear to ‘deliver’ the lions share for these retailers. Now on the basis that many households are not at home when the mail is now delivered (later and later in the day by my experience), then most of the packages will need to be collected – and this is where the system starts to fail – badly!

Incinerator Road is a fairly small industrial unit – a sorting office with a small yard and many surrounding small businesses. But, it is also a pickup point for most of Nottingham’s  parcels that have not been delivered (certainly for south of the river). Consequently when busy (and even when it’s not) parking is a total nightmare – we are talking maybe 4 spaces for pickup – at this time of year it is a war zone!

I can see this having two effects;

Firstly people will become even less enchanted by the Post Office (difficult to believe I know) and this can have only one long-term effect!

Secondly this poor service will make the likes of Amazon more to an alternative delivery system ( they threatened it when the post office workers were on strike)

The upshot? The end of the post office parcels service as we know it.

So come on Post Office, sort your lives out or you really are going to become a thing of the past. Perhaps a bit of flexibility from your staff might go a long way?

 

Has email had its day?

Interesting times we live in – the web has become an integral part of our existence. We all have email addresses and even the least “IT savvy” among us have mastered this form of interaction – ask the Post Office!

So when the founder of Facebook announces that “email is dead” should we be worried? Or is he right?

Obviously Facebook have a vested interest in how we all relate to each other via the web, there are a staggeringly large number of Facebook users worldwide. And they can interact without using email!

Google also want us to use their conduit – Google+, but so far this doesn’t appear to be happening. We also have LinkedIn, twitter and other social networks we can use. So does Mr Zuckerburg have a point?

I think he does, only to a point and more because email has become abused so badly. The level of spam in the ether has devalued emails to the point that they have become a daily deluge that has to be filtered by the user. Our office spam filter removes around 97% of our incoming email – a frightening statistic!

But if we ditch email and move to another form of contact there are some issues that need to be dealt with;

How are we to limit its abuse so that it doesn’t go the same way as email?

In business some form of paper trail would still be necessary.

And surely the cycle will turn full circle again and we will find whatever we adopt next becoming ‘flooded’ after a period?

Perhaps what we need are far stronger controls on our current system to prevent spam and put the value back into email?

 

Nice bit of marketing – not!

I am always receiving ‘interesting offers’ through the post, its the price we pay for having our details held by so many companies around the globe. Much of it can be stopped by adding yourself to the mail preference scheme – this stops unsolicited mailings (quite successfully in my experience), but does not stop people you deal with on a regular basis mailing you – such as your bank or credit card company.

I have to admit to having enjoyed the period of a year or more that it took my bank to catch up with me when I moved house a few years ago. The mailing department are obviously behind the main bank in getting the information as I got my statements (before I went paperless) but saw no ‘bank junk’ for ages – bliss.

Well this week I have received a letter from my bank offering me a loan ‘at competitive rates’ – but only if I apply before a certain date. Sounds fine apart from the fact that the relevant date is two days before I even got the letter! Also it was only 2 days after the letter was sent – not much time to make a decision!

So, it has taken the Post Office 4 days to deliver a letter from Birmingham – no real surprise there I am afraid! But the bank were working in a very narrow window – what a waste of paper, mailing cost and time!

 

The UK Post Office – again!

I have vented my spleen on here on a number of occasions in the past regarding our ‘great’ Post Office. It has without doubt rather lost its way and now provides in my opinion a very second-rate service, and one that cannot be relied on in my experience.

I was therefore somewhat bemused the other day when the news reported local demonstrations by Post Office workers who were worried that cuts would impact on their service provision to us all – frankly I fail to see how it could get any worse!

The issue was further enforced for me this week. My wife has been ordering some cosmetics from the Philosophy website in the USA for delivery to some friends in California. Now the US is a big place, so one would be willing to allow a bit of a delay in delivery – right?

Well, having ordered the package from Phoenix, Arizona (apparently this is their distribution hub) it arrived in rural California two days later – and this was a free delivery! According to Google Maps that is 461 miles. Just to reinforce how much better the US Mail is they managed to deliver a second identical parcel in an identical timescale as well

The UK Post Office seem to need more than that to deliver letters across Nottingham these days – something is wrong here!

 

Stamps from my childhood!

It’s not often that a set of stamps can get me excited (well actually never), but a set released this last week takes me back to my favourite TV programs from the 60′s and 70′s when I was a small child!

This was a time when we didn’t have hours of kids programming on TV, so anything that was good was watched by everyone! That is probably why people my age remember Gerry Anderson’s programs so fondly. He made numerous series of fantastic puppet programs; including Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and my favourite – Thunderbirds! (I am not old enough to remember Supercar or Fireball XL5).

The stamps celebrate the five decades of work by iconic Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson, Royal Mail’s first stamp issue of 2011 features some of the most recognisable ‘marionettes’.

The stamp series, is titled FAB: The Genius of Gerry Anderson, featuring Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Joe 90.

I am not a stamp collector but I may just have to buy a set!

 

There is good service….. and then there is the Post Office!

I have commented on here previously about my problems with the Post Office, the fact that as they have a monopoly they really don’t have to try – and consequently don’t!

I and some fellow local bloggers, notably Tim Garratt  have all been the beneficiaries of some excellent customer service in recent weeks. I was beginning to believe that perhaps the UK was on the way to providing good service as a matter of course.

They don't really move this fast.....

Well today the Post Office have again secured their position in my eyes as one of the worst services we have in the UK at the moment!

A parcel was unable to be delivered to my home on Saturday (we missed it by 10 minutes) a ‘you were out’ form was left stating that the parcel would be available after 24 hours at the sorting office on Furnace Rd in Nottingham. So this morning I went to this hateful place where you are unable to park because the staff use all the spaces meant for people collecting items, but with plenty of ID this time (we fell out last time over my ID).

Amazingly I got a space to park my car, presumably because the Postmen had left to start their rounds (it was late morning so most of them may well have started by then). However, this was as good as it got – on offering up my ‘you were out ‘ card the postman after a long search confirmed my worst fears – the package was still out!

They had over 48 hours to get from West Bridgford to London Road, and had failed - a new record for our glorious Post Office!

Thanks guys, I will endeavour to use you as little as possible in the future as you are all obviously overworked. Bring on privatisation!

 

What ever happened to our Post Office?

This morning I have suffered at the hands of what is left of our once great British Post Office. I am sure when I was a child the postman was a pillar of society who could be relied upon. Unfortunately we now seem to have a bunch of jobsworths who really have no interest in delivering mail or providing a service of any note.

My lack of faith has been building for some time;

Recorded delivery items that fail to arrive – I have had lots of these over the last few years. I could not begin to suggest why they don’t arrive – although they by their nature suggest some value to any light-fingered people! I don’t use recorded anymore, if its a package of less than say £20 I send it normal mail – and it normally gets there – funny that!

Business mail – at work we don’t get our post until lunchtime. Yes, we could pay for earlier delivery, but why should we need to? The upshot of this is that we send a huge amount of correspondence by email. And hand deliver reports to the city (these would earn the Post Office a good fee being large and heavy).

And finally today’s experience!

A package was unable to fit through my letterbox at the weekend, so a ‘we tried to deliver’ card was left by the posty for me telling me I could collect it from Incinerator Road depot in Nottingham. I have been here before and generally hate it with a passion (I am particularly grumpy at the moment), but needs must, so off I went this morning.

On arrival it was the usual disaster area – the only parking is all taken up by the staff (even that next to the ‘public counter’), so I drove into the main yard to be told ‘you can’t park there mate’, (strange because I definitely was not his mate). So my only option was to park in the main entrance – which they didn’t appear to find funny!

On trying to get my package which was not recorded or any other exotic form of post I was told I needed a form of ID – err…. how about this card you put through my letter box? No that was not adequate – so outside we go to get some ID from the car – only to be put to the back of the queue again!

It appears to me that the Post Office is still intent on self-destruction, it’s staff have no desire to work through this recession and provide a decent service (no doubt we owe them a living), so I will do my best to use alternate forms of ‘postage’ from now on.

The sell off can’t come quick enough for me!

 

Beaten to it!

I tried the app ‘postcard’ on my iPhone last week. The idea of being able to post a very personal postcard from my phone appealed to me – I am hopeless when it comes to writing cards normally!

It works very well and I had fully intended to blog about it here, but I have been beaten to it by a colleague (who is on holiday already).

So rather than repeat everything here is a link to Tim Garratt’s blog about the app!

Suffice to say, I can happily recommend it having rather sadly sent myself a card to test it! It arrived in two days (by second class post) which I thought was excellent. Plus the quality was also fine.

Go on – give it a try!