To feel sad that the 'corner shop' is now the 'parcel shop'?

Yup, nail on the head. They need to do anything they can to increase footfall. Lots of people will go to a parcels shop instead of another nearby convenience store to buy a loaf of bread or pint of milk etc if they can drop off the parcel at the same time.

Goodness, I'm not sure it was "aggressive" enough to resurrect a three-month old thread about.

Is this your first time online?

I agree. Better still having a shop, even if it is mostly parcels, than no shop at all. Hundreds of thousands of small "corner" shops have closed down over the last few decades as people turned away from them to shop at supermarkets instead. The ones remaining have to do whatever they have to do to stay viable.

Our family had a traditional newsagents in the 70s and 80s. Always busy, we sold everything from Easter Eggs to fireworks, to cigarettes, greetings cards, toys & games, etc as well as newspapers and magazines (plus deliveries). A huge Asda opened up a mile away, and our turnover plummetted overnight by around 75%. Even news delivery customers stopped their orders as they just walked to Asda each morning instead as it was closer. Obviously, we couldn't survive such a drop in turnover, and had to close the following year. Now it's yet another semi-derelict shop and has been in that state for 30 years! We were on a parade of around a dozen shops including butcher, greengrocer, bakers, etc - all shut because of that Asda, and now all there is on that parade is a money laundering Turkish barbers and a dodgy kebab shop.

Our local post office used to be lovely, it was in the butchers which is incredibly random but it was nice and good service. The butcher sold up last year and it’s now a corner shop and post office and a complete shithole. Parcels everywhere, having to stand in a queue for ages due to all the dithering of people dropping off a million parcels, I’m sure the handwritten lists of peoples names on all the piles of parcels are some sort of data breach as well

Yes this.

I'm not even the OP but this is an unnecessarily aggressive line of questioning for an innocuous remark, particularly given the poster you were replying to wasn't even contradicting you - they said themselves they assumed shops would charge a fee!

Even if they weren't sure because, for example, they thought that some shops might use the parcel collecting in the way they do loss leader pricing - thinking that if someone pops in to collect their parcel they might also get some milk while they are there, it's hardly a ridiculous comment, definitely no need for the snarky response.

My understanding is that they get a very small fee for doing the parcels, but the main reason for doing it is increased footfall and the hope that it will lead to increased sales.

They clearly don’t have the room. Mine has a back room for all the parcels and appears as it’s normal corner shop self at the front

I always buy stuff when I’m collecting or sending a parcel.

I love it. So much more convenient than queuing at the post office (which aside from a couple of hours on Saturday morning, is very inconveniently closed at times when most people are not at work!).

As others have mentioned, the additional income will be helping keep these shops open.

Point blank refuse to get anything delivered to ours. I’ve done it by accident before and oh my god, it took them about fifteen minutes of faffing through piles and piles of parcels to find it. Absolutely useless. They don’t have any sort of system to organise them, there’s just huge piles of them all over.

All of my little corner shops take parcels, but they're not in the way. Sounds like your shop needs a better system.

They may be keeping an eye on the cameras, or just surreptitiously watching out for customers who may 'forget' to pay for goods; or scoping out anybody who may be armed, or give off signs of aggression or violence.

Shoplifting at Tesco hits their profits and puts prices up for honest customers; but theft can actually spell the end for little local shops, if they can't sustain the losses... and people already complain about their prices, so simply increasing them isn't quite as straightforward as it could be.

Moreover many little shops don't have the sophisticated computer systems that the big chains have, so they often need to monitor sales to see what needs restocking, what doesn't sell well and so won't be continued, as well as the lines that particularly seem to disappear from the shelves in large numbers without doing so via the till.

It may look like there's a person standing there doing nothing who could be serving instead, but in reality, that person is often covering the jobs that several people (and fancy computer programs) would be doing at Tesco.

Exactly. When people start lamenting change, I join in with “Isn’t it a shame about all the blacksmiths who are out of business. If only we hadnt started travelling everywhere by car.”
for the record, our local parcel shop is in an Asian supermarket. Yes, they dither about a bit finding your parcel among many, but it enabled me to send back my no longer needed Virgin Wi-Fi hub last week, and return a dress that didn’t fit. They print the label for you, give you a receipt etc. It’s a great service. (They also sell all the spices you can think of, wine, milk, bread etc.) And frankly, if they do all that for 20 measly pence, I take my hat off to them.
People need to adapt to change. If we are all shopping online, they need to find another way of encouraging us into their shop.

The likes of Tesco metro etc were the kiss of death for the corner and village shops. People won't pay the higher prices so parcels are the replacement. And as much as people don't like them so are vapes and booze.

Agree, they need to take parcels in to continue to make money.
OP would do the same if they were in business.

Your complaining, yet you are part of it. Yabu.

Your child picking sweets occasionally won’t keep the shop open though, will it!

Do you feel sad that 'cart tracks' are now 'roads'? I think it's inevitable that there will be winners and losers from progress, but it's how losers adapt that's important.

Yes @Bjorkdidit, our local shop told me that they hardly make any money from taking these parcels, but that they do it to bring customers into the shop in the hope that they might buy something. Obviously if the parcels are blocking access to their shelves this should be sorted out as it's self-defeating.

They also sell top-ups for travel cards but ask for cash payments as card payments costs completely obliterate any fees they might receive and each top-up would cost them money.
We all try to pay in cash if we can to help them as card payments are not great for them.

My Evri/Post Office/corner shop have 2 queues "shop only" and "parcels/post office" so if you're just popping in for milk/bread you're served quickly.