to think royail maail workers are idiots

[carriedababi]

so sick of royail mail.

what other options are there for sending thigs off inthe post?

is parcel force royail mail?

anyone else that and deliver letters post?

[Nancy66]

If a letter is vital then special delivery will still operate through a strike - it's just an expensive option.

[WeeHalfPint]

Parcel force is part of Royal Mail. Sorry but I disagree with you..not all royal mail workers are idiots.

Some go well above and beyond the call of duty and yes...there are some idiots but it is unfair to tarnish all with the same brush.

There is a lot of unrest in RM at the mo...some justified, some just sublimely ridiculous, but that is a whole other topic.

I feel that to send a letter over 400 miles (to my parents) for the price of a stamp is bl**dy good value.

[PuffFluffLovesApplePearSnapps]

You spelt Royal Mail wrong in your title lovie

[ilovemydogandmrobama]

Why does special delivery operate through a strike?

[carriedababi]

i spell everyfing wrong

[McSnail]

I couldn't agree more with WeeHalfPint. Hear hear.

[carriedababi]

it would be good value if it f'ing well got there!

[PuffFluffLovesApplePearSnapps]

Oh dear, did you have a bad education?

[bigchris]

it's the same as any other workforce - some are good workers, some are not
I'm glad i dont work their hours
i think its a bit much to accuse people of being stupid whilst spelling their profession wrong

[carriedababi]

i had a shockingly bad education.

BC

[Morloth]

I wouldn't say they are idiots, but I am not sure now is exactly the right time to be striking.

Having a job at all at the moment is a blessing. I think many people feel this way and so the "public" are less inclined to be sympathetic towards the strikers. Dangerous decision, what is their plan if Royal Mail is pushed to the wall and there are no jobs to come back to?

Also a lot of businesses are already under quite a bit of stress and this is going to exacerbate it.

[WeeHalfPint]

It is inevitable (sp?) that out of the millions of letters that get processed, a few get lost or mislaid along the way.

Sometimes it's because of incorrectly addressed mail but not always. A good postie knows his round and his customers and can usually deliver an incorrectly addressed letter to it's rightful owner.

Please don't "dis" your postie, they do a hard job and the majority do it well, despite some of the ridiculous "rules & regs" that royal mail insist on.

[Rhubarb]

My letters are getting through ok.

You get good and bad in RM like in any other institution. I once rescued a letter that the postie had dropped in the middle of the road. I've also had DVDs returned to me by neighbours who've found them in the street. One postie was nicking money sent in to the Red Cross by children as part of a competition. We tried to complain but they never took our complaint seriously. He/she was cutting a small hole in the side of the envelopes and getting the money (pound coins) out.

I've also had things delivered to us by mistake that I've had to return and I'm sick to death of the bloody adverts the RM insist on delivering every day.

On the plus side, our postie now shoves our parcels behind the house so we don't have to go to the PO to collect them.
And once when I was a teenager, I didn't receive a birthday card with voucher in it from a friend, I complained and got a lovely gift set by way of recompense.

So actually, reading that back, I've had more bad experiences with RM than good! Ah well.

No excuse for sloppy spelling though!

[Sourdough]

I don't think they're idiots.

I just wish they'd bring me more cheques. My cashflow is shocking at the moment.

[JackBauWooohooohoowaaer]

I love my postie. He makes sure that parcels are left so we don't have to go get them, he knocks on all teh doors to find someone to take them, he always stops for a chat.
If anything he is a bit too nosy
I don't like that my post comes between 11 and 1 now but I see him out and about from about 8am at least and well into the afternoon as he has such a massive round.
My local post office is brilliant as well, very helpful and friendly, always tells me different price otpions etc
Strikign not good PR for them at the moment but for the price of a stamp royal mail is a bargain.

[FakePlasticTrees]

Well, not all royal mail workers are idiots - but then they don't seem to have quite grasped the seriousness of their situation (this is making competition more likely - this is helping those who want to dismantle the monopoly win the argument) coupled with not quite getting how bad the timing looks...

OP - alternatives, what size and how many packages and what distance? Courier services such as TNT/Fedex aren't that much more pricy than parcel force. There may be smaller couriers in your area if it's not too far away delivery, check yell.com

Oh, and I was told as the strikes are set to continue, Christmas Cards should be in the post next week if you want to make sure they'll be there for Christmas. I'm just going to do either hand delivery or e-cards this year instead...

[mollythetortoise]

i was talking to my lovely postie this morning about their upcoming strike. A female one too.
I think Royal Mail miss a trick in promoting what they do do well. No private company can compete with their infrastructure of local PO's and sorting offices. If you miss a RM parcel, at worst you have to nip 2 mins down the road to local PO and pick it up.

IME, if you miss a private delivery firm parcel (say City Wide or HDN) you have to ring a premium rate number and rearrange delivery which won't happen on a Saturday. They won't give you a delivery time and if you miss 2nd delivery, parcel goes back to supplier.
If you want to collect (in my case with City Wide) I have to drive 6 miles to their sorting depot which is only open set hours, plus bring ID, to get parcel.

I actually won't use companies that use some private delivery companies as it is such a nuisance actually getting parcel if I am not in when delivery arrives. I MUCH prefer Royal Mail.

The pension thing is a red herring too as NO private company would take on Royal Mail's pension commitments so that would have to remain with government.
Private companies would just cherry pick the more lucrative contracts (say with Amazon) leaving all us customers worse off and the less profitable service to us small people will get worse with less investment.

We should support the Royal Mail. We'll all miss when it's gone!

anyway, rant over..

[TheDevilEatsBabies]

they're not idiots.
it's the bosses that are.

it's a sad story that a company runs things so badly that its staff has to strike just to get themselves heard.
that's all.

it's happening everywhere at the moment, it's just that RM has come to a head.

[TheDevilEatsBabies]

well put molly

[HeadFairy]

Our house move has been delayed and delayed and delayed by the postal strike... we've been homeless for 9 weeks, and only four weeks of that was our own doing! That said, I think the management have failed the Royal Mail massively, and I think stamps need to go up a lot... I would happily pay 50 - 60p for a first class stamp. It's ridiculously cheap considering they have to cover the entire country from John O'Groats to Lands End for the same price.

[paisleyleaf]

tbh I don't know a lot about the reasons for the strike
But I did think it was a bit off that they were asking for overtime to deal with the backlog that built up while striking.

[JustAnotherManicMummy]

In London they are generally morons. But that is because there are lots of temporary staff (never see the same postie twice) and the good ones are stretched to the limit. There are also some who steal (not all but some who seem to make a living out of it).

We've had 3 cheque books intercepted in the post and other bits not arrive. And when I worked in a bank we loads of problems with post being intercepted (Mount Pleasant sorting office you know who you are) including cheques being razored out and then the cheque book being put in a new envelope and sent on. Too many times to be co-incidence. We also had lots of posties wanting to open bonds for several hundred thousand pounds... when they were declaring income of £14,000-£19,000

Every time we expect a parcel in the post I dig out a bill and go down to the parcel-collection place because they rarely deliver them. And almost never put a card through.

I once sent DH down to collect a package (was ebay delivery so wanted to make sure we'd done everything before blaming poor seller). We had no missed delivery card, so just got them to check the address and he came back with 7 parcels! Two of which were over 6 weeks old.

They always try and blame me "You must have thought the red card was junk mail madam"

Having said all that when I lived out in the sticks the service was very good - even if it did seem to take an extra day

[fiercebadrabbit]

Of course most individual posties are not idiots, but their collective behaviour is idiotic - as is that of their bosses. Badly worded OP, but I still understand her frustrations.

So far most postal strikes have been regional. If you haven't been affected - then great. If, like us, youre in SW London, its been a nightmare. I'd estimate about half the letters we're sent (from people in other areas unaware of how unreliable our post is) are not arriving. This includes a work contract posted on 28th Sept and still not here, meaning my entire pay for next year is in limbo and my cash flow is a mess. An important letter regarding a medical appointment never showed. The DVDs I order online haven't arrived for two months now, and now I have to complete a police report - except that hasn't come either.

On a smaller level, things like the card my mum made to celebrate my dd1's first day at school showed up three weeks late. I've stopped ordering anything by mail, which - when you multiply it by the thousands of other people who'll be behaving the same way - must be having a terrible effect on small businesses. Yesterday someone had to courier me a document from High Wycombe which cost £££ as there was no alternative we could trust. It makes me we are paying for a service and not receiving it - and why should we pay more for services like guaranteed delivery? Surely guaranteed delivery should be implied in the RM's mission statement?

[BadgersPaws]

It's sad to see a union seemingly so willing to self-destruct.

Unions are important and unionised workplaces are a great protection of workers rights.

However look at some of the issues behind this strike that will throw the country into chaos:

• Being able to go home at the end of your round no matter how much work is left at the depot
  
• Claiming overtime in two hour blocks even if only 10 minutes extra were worked
  
• Automatic guaranteed overtime when there might well be nothing to do.
  
  The Mail Unions seem to be making the same mistake as the miners in thinking that the Government won't let them go to the wall.
  
  Given the hard times that many of us are facing with redundancies, pay cuts, crashing pensions and a complete lack of job security then the public is seemingly going to be lacking in sympathy for this strike and might well support the break up of the Royal Mail.
  
  So another valuable public service dies, unions loose more power and the price of stamps goes up. All bad things.