A huge Royal Mail exposè is coming...

[Skimm]

I saw my postie today after not seeing one for weeks and asked whats been happening with the mail recently. He took out his ear phones and wouldn't stop talking.

He said that its chaos at the depot, they are being giving thousand of letter to post and when you complain they say ai don't care what you do with them, dont bring them back.

They are also being told to prioritize parcels and that letters aren't important. People are quiting or going off sick so the RM are having to hire agency workers who are dumping letters in bushes and quiting within days.

I haven't had post in over 3 week. I have only noticed as I'm waiting to recieve 2 v.important letters that were sent 3 and 2 weeks ago. So who knows how long its been going on.

I have phoned the help line and been told that 50% off the staff in my local depot are either sick or absent and that they have shut down certain postcodes to deliveries. They said after the complaint I will recieve post within 72hr. It never happened and I've had to complain again.

If you search online you will see I'm not the only one. It seems to be happening nationwide in cities and rural areas. The issue is that RM are denying that there is an issue.

They are suppose to deliver post to every postcode Monday to Saturday and now I've been told that they are closing down certain postcodes over the phone but then denying it on social media.

I still didn't get my mail today so I'm starting to wonder if I'm one if the people whobhave had their letters dumped.

There’s no profit in letters. Royal Mail delivers on behalf of Evri, Amazon and many parcel businesses. It’s cheaper for them to pay royal mail
instead of their own network. They are overwhelmed and hampered by lack of investment in distribution centres. The distribution is separate from post mam delivering to your door. The two are poorly aligned. Unions are not always helpful with their role ‘protecting’ their workers jobs but frequently they are adversarial at the detriment of future proofing jobs. Letters are a thing of the past but Royal Mail people culturally are not ready to be a parcel hub. Parcel logistics is heavy, fast paced and demanding and it’s not been addressed apart from dictating that the people should just work better! Changing leader every couple of years just makes it more of a mess. It’s not really a big expose but more of a bumbling shambles that only carriers on due to the legal and regulatory obligations to deliver letters - any other truely commercial business operating this way would go under.

@RiverCartwright those little carts are pretty heavy and need locking up when go in flats etc . My son also had one of them. He said job would of been ok if they were not cutting corners and getting staff to deliver two or three peoples rounds in one day. Even at 18 he recognised it was in a mess and left

My Postie driver is incredible but visibly stressed and works ridiculous hours 12hr shifts, 6days a week and it was like this before the Christmas period.

They've privatised RM and now it's ridiculous and they are working posties to the bone!

Ahh, no flats in these parts, just a relatively flat estate so probably why they use them here.

I’ve noticed this too, and wondered if it was just our area. We get Royal Mail-delivered post (with red van, in uniform) about once every two weeks now. Otherwise it’s nothing or people
in non-uniform who deliver letters to the wrong addresses. The other week my partner was expecting a credit card. Someone “intercepted” it in transit, set it up and spent over £1,000 on it. We both only assume it’s one of the contracted posties in non uniform.

Our service is still very good. We’re getting Christmas cards and other letters every day. And yesterday morning our postman collected a Click and Drop parcel which was delivered today - SW London to East Yorkshire!

We must be very lucky.

We’re actually better than we were lately. Post is arriving, it’s a few days a week but nothing major. It all gets here and no more than a few days out.
last year was way worse

My postie sounded like he had been given management of his round and had control over a couple of staff and their hours/how they work. It was only a snatched conversation but included ‘if only they had given us control in the first place we would have told them what they needed to do and they wouldn’t be in this mess’.

I get sent a set of time sensitive documents once a month. They are sent first class but so far have yet to arrive on time -always taking at least a week. I was initially querying their mailroom procedures but it is Royal Mail that is at fault.

It seems unbelievable to me the 'service' that a lot of you on this thread are experiencing. The only time we have issue is when our regular postie is on holiday! We even got a Christmas card this year which has our old address on it (moved 7 years ago! Redirect long since stopped).
Received a letter this morning which was posted by the hospital only yesterday.

I do not trust any IT system to be secure. I especially do not trust a system that sends an interceptable SMS with a link to medical special category data, a link that can be sent to anyone in the world and the contents of the link downloaded, saved, and published by anyone in the world.

If your team uploaded correspondence about me to such system, I would formally complain.

Unsurprisingly, I opted out of Spine.

My postie said they’re lucky to do a letter round once a week. Parcels are given priority and as usual dreadful management and under staffing.
He apologised to me bless him.
This goddam government

In the past Royal Mail always took on extra staff over the Christmas Period. It used to be a good temp job for students.
However, the numbers of letters being sent has fallen (especially given the cost of stamps). But then people are now doing more buying over the internet, requiring parcel deliveries.
To me, it seems that RM have not planned for the extra post/deliveries over Christmas, as they used to do.

You have 162 replies so my reply may just get lost in this but I spoke to my cousin who is a postie about this literally on Sunday and he echoed exactly what you said. They are being given more and more on top of their already heavy workload loads of them are working overtime by hours and they can't even finish the rounds then. They are getting told to prioritise parcels and letters aren't getting delivered for weeks. I sent my nephew a birthday card on 1st December and he only just received it today. It's utter madness right now apparently and it's not going to get any better.

I'm not in the UK, but mail delivery here (other than parcels) is three days a week. Depending where you live it's either Mon, Wed, Fri or Tues, Thurs, Sat (other than tiny towns where I think it's delivered six days). As there is so little mail these days it works well. It's a wonder they don't try that in the UK, might lessen the load a bit?

Standards have been slipping for a long time. Three post offices in my area have been closed down in the last few years. The remaining one has had its opening hours cut.

The last post collection in nearly every nearby post box has changed from 4 or 5 pm to 9am so you effectively need an extra day to get stuff posted.

Recently I sent a card for a special anniversary that fell on a Monday. The last collection that would get a first-class delivery there in time was 9am on Friday. I actually posted it on the Wednesday to be on the safe side... It arrived the following Tuesday.

But they keep putting prices up. People won't pay inflated rates for a substandard service, so profits will drop and standards will slip even more as they try to cut costs. I don't see the Royal Mail surviving much longer without a radical shake-up.

As a former postie, the posties are lions led by donkeys.

You would expect an RM manager to have some qualifications or at least to have been on relevant courses, but no, some of them are inept, lazy posties who have the most appalling disciplinary records.

Royal Mail is a shambles here too, south london. The local postbox has changed the collection time from 5pm mon - fri to before 8am. Very helpful.

Also don't get post for ages, then a load in one delivery.

Why don't they just give up the pretence and say one day a week for letter deliveries. Make it easier on us and themselves.

That's interesting. I sent a card to a friend in the UK (from NZ), posted here on December 4th and she received it on the 14th, which I thought was pretty fast for this time of year. However, I guess it depends on where you live. Things here can be slow too at times. The price goes up yearly, so it's no wonder people don't send much now.

We are the same. Our postie lives locally and is lovely.
He even knocked today to check about a card. It was addressed to our house but not our names and he asked if it was OK to take it to another house locally with that surname
...and no, we are not in a little village or remote island, etc

@ithinkthatmaybeimdreaming that's amazing. I might have to move to NZ so my letters will arrive to my family faster than from the south to north of England 😂😭

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/terry-pullinger/royal-mail-post-office_b_9166652.html

Fairly accurate prediction in the last paragraph there!

Offer a decent salary and reasonable terms so they retain staff? It’s not difficult

Our local posties and office are amazing. Always friendly. Have delivered letters with the completely wrong address because they know us. Reminds me I should tip them.

Why would you order a parcel to be delivered when you know it’ll be delivered at a certain time, and thus you won’t be in to receive it?

I've had excellent service and regular postie is great. Always cheerful and friendly.