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Royal Mail, Post Offices and attitudes to the public
Not for the first time I’m pretty cross with my local Royal Mail delivery office, expecting a parcel I made sure I would be in for the postman but when today’s delivery finally came I found he’d brought a ‘you were out card’ instead of my package.
As I live in a flat I waited for the postman to come back down from the floor above and asked for my parcel. Of course, as many of you will have guessed, he didn’t have it.
Despite what was printed on the card there was no delivery attempt, the sorting office had simply decided not to send the item out so that they could fit more items in the deliverer’s bundle. They wrongly gambled I’d be out that they’d get away with their deceit.
Tying to get through to their complaints team is frustrating beyond belief, after listening to endless adverts for their website you just get told the lines are too busy and you’ll need to call back.
As I’m not in London tomorrow, chances are I’m going to have to wait until Monday for my parcel when I do the postman’s job for him and collect the item from the sorting office.
Yesterday I popped to my local Post Office, there was a bit of a queue which a notice explained was due to staff sickness. Fair enough, but with only four counter staff available surely not staffing both ‘priority’ Bureau de Change positions and freeing someone to deali with the 30 strong queue of ‘ordinary’ customers might have been more sensible?
The Royal Mail is a publicly owned company but between heavily opposed Post Office closures and shoddy delivery practices it’s increasingly clear that the entire organisation has nothing but contempt for the public.
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It must be a city thing. I used to experience the same when I lived in London. Now I’ve moved away, and live in the backend-of-nowhere, our postlady is one of the friendliest people I’ve met. Never had a cause for complaint since moving here in regards to the postal service!
This is standard practice for most delivery offices. As you say they bet the householder will be out and no-one will notice. When you complain they normally deny it every happened, if you have proof as you do they resort to blaming new staff.
I have spent almost 2 hours on the phone trying to make my complaint.
After initially hitting the wall of ‘all our advisers are busy, please call back’ I got through to someone who logged the complaint but said there was no way I’d get the item re-delivered today.
I didn’t think that was good enough and I don;t care if that makes me sound like a prima donna - Royal Mail were paid to deliver an item and instead they tried to deceive me and the sender.
It’s because people roll over and take it that these sharp practices occur.
Anyhow I’m pleased to say that after I escalated my complaint to the executive complaints team the depot manager, who previously refused to send it out this afternoon, personally delivered the item.
Now I’m impressed at the power the executive complaints team obviously wield but why the hell should I have to complain and, I confess, shout, for almost 2 hours just to get RM to their job? This is a company which asks for huge public subsidy yet has almost no public service ethos.
It’s also pretty frustrating that you have to go through RM’s torturous internal complaints procedure before you can get someone like postwatch involved.
in answer to mr hoscik comment all i can say as Rm employee is sorry.
gone are the days of being a public company, as an employee of 30 years in the past 10 i have been bombbarded at work and via letters from management that we are no longer a service but now a business (something i do not agree with). we are there to make money and profit.
look around you, hm govt are closing post offices, at present they are talking about closing nearly 10 mail centres in the north of england alone.
they are offering long service staff money to leave ( i know this because although i didnt request it i was taken aside just last night and made an offer to go)only to replace them with “less than full time employees”
please talk to your postie you will probably learn a lot more than you expected,
people in uk see the wee red boxes the vans and think nothing has changed, but it has.
under this gvt and new management we are now doing
less collections
less deliveries
less post offices
this is not the fault of your local postie but senior management in london
remember it wasnt your postie that got paid 2.3 million pounds last year it was mr crozier
thanking you
It is this change in attitude imposed by management that has caused a lot of posties who care about the job to leave. If we make an error, then fine we take the criticism. However a lot Of today’s complaints are as a result of higher reforms and management instruction.
For instance if you finish early then Royal Mail expect those minutes back, almost immediately. On the other hand if the work load is heavy causing you extend your attendance time, those hours disappear into some black hole, and should your dare to try and take some of that time back then…..
Quite frankly the abuse from managers means you only try this a couple of times.
I hate to think how much work Royal Mail is getting for no payment!
Our Village post office is great as is our post lady if I’m out we have a prearranged “drop off place” yet these really good country services are the ones in threat.
Can’t say i’m suprised by the contempt you were on the receiving end of Martin
Well done Labour another public service completely messed up!
I have noticed this too - I thought it was just me.
On a number of occassions I have been in, I’ve heard the leter box go, run to the door and found a ’sorry you were out’ note.
Usually the postman has done a runner by that stage (my flat is the last one on the way out) so I didn’t know that they actually don’t bring the parcel at all!
I also have to make regular trips to the sorting office to collect the parcel.
The question is - what to do about it. Does anyone have any ideas?
Isn’t this the sort of thing my government should be sorting out? What are they playing at? Are they too busy clearing their banker friends debts?
My mother is housebound but still the Postie insists that no one is at home when any parcels are to be delivered. Last week he actually handed her one of the dreaded red cards as she opened the door to him - I must add he burried it in the plie of birthday cards she got and it wasn’t until about 10 minutes later that she discovered that she wasn’t infact at home (according to the Royal mail). I also notice tt the published mandela way sorting office telephone number is now dead. When will a new number be published?
I nearly always have to collect parcels from the sorting office as I am ‘not at home’ when they are being delivered. The other day it was a ’signed for letter’ I missed, but was told on the card not to collect it for 48 hrs! This is because, rather than return undelivered mail to depot, the post-person is allowed to ‘pouch off’ - meaning he can dump it in a post box or nearby counter point. This means it may take another few days to pass back through the system, at which point they may try to deliver it again at the same time as before - when you are out………….what can be done about this non service? The chap I eventually spoke to at the complaints department (dont ask me how long and how many calls) was obviously especially chosen to merely fend off any critisism I found his manner nothi8ng short of bullying and he did not seem to realise that I wanted my complaints to be conveyed to the people who make the frustratingly daft policies. In the event I went to the sorting office after 24 hrs and the letter was sitting on the shelf.
I should add that I eventually got a letter from Royal Mail confirming this was a deliberate act. Mind, they initially tried to palm me off with a letter which referred to an unstated ‘error’ - the first time I’ve had a letter of apology which managed not to say what it was apologising for!
I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, so every other day my postman has to deliver several books, often quite big ones. He does this without fail (and without a you were out card). I live in a 3rd floor flat in a block with no lift in Dagenham.
Credit where Credit’s due.