To get really annoyed at Monday morning post office queues?

[wizardora]

Our local post office always has a queue round the block of elderly people drawing their pensions, it takes over an hour to get to the front & drives me bonkers so I always avoid it if possible.

I am genuinly curious, is there a reason why pensioners can't get it direct debited into their bank and use a cash point to withdraw the money?

Ooh, that's good :).

I'd like a self-service machine that weighs your parcel and prints a postage label (and you press buttons to say if you want 1st class etc)- would they trust us with one?

I would generally avoid monday mornings for anythnig like that. It's always going to be busy on a monday morning.

I work so I only have my lunch hour to sort things out that I cannot or didn't have time to sort out on the weekend.

I have from 1pm-2pm and that is it! Imagine how pissed off i get when I go into a bank or a post office on my lunch break, the ONLY time I have to go, to find them filled with pensioners, mothers with babies and kids, and people who clearly don't work..... These are all people who don't have only one hour to do things during the day and who could go at another time to give those who work a chance.

But, it's a free country, you can't start having off peak times for such things.

Runs away LOL!

Also I saw GP appointments mentioned earlier. I once needed urgent blood tests. The first available appointment they had was 10am acouple of days later. That does NOT work for me as I work a long distance from my home and GP surgery. I will miss nearly a whole morning of work if I take a 10am GP appt. I need to go first thing in the morning or last thing at night and it is in my contract that we are obliged to do this to cause minimum disruption to working hours.

But this time I had no choice as it was urgent and I took the 10am appt and work understood that time but said not to make a habit of it. When I get in to the appointment, the nurse says to me that she got an email from reception telling her the person who didn't bother to turn up to their appointment at 8:30am wants to be seen now......

WHY book an 8:30am appointment when you can't be arsed to turn up for it and you clearly don't work if you can saunter in whenever and ask to be seen?! Take a later f-ing appointment and leave the early morning ones to people who don't have a choice but to go very early.

Using ATM makes a lot of elderly people nervous, plus they have shaky hands etc to contend with. Its the post office's fault anyway, they know Monday mornings are busy why dont they have every single counter open? Problem would be solved then. Very bad service - Im gonna send Mary after them.

The issue is not only closing PO branches, but combining financial services with post & expecting everyone to queue up together. There are often huge queues at banks anyhow! It would be fairer if they had a counter or two for post only with a separate queue, which could be used for banking overspill when there were no post customers. Sometimes all I've needed is a single stamp, but the queue out the door means i end up buying a book of six from Superdrug or somewhere like that.

Online postage is good but only if you have access to a printer.

The newly renovated big post office in central Manchester has brilliant self service machines, and an Argos style ticket queueing system so there isn't a depressing queue, just lots of seats. But sadly I've found that most standard Post Offices don't even have a coin operated stamp vending machine!

YABU

My mum's friend has her pension and any other benefits paid into a post office account. She is very slow to put her number into a cash machine so that is dangerous as anyone watching is going to get her pin easily. The only time she uses a cashpoint is when my mum is there to get the money out for her.

Does no-one have one of those Postboxes Etc shops near them? There is one right next to the post office from hell. It opens at the same time. There are no queues. They do the postage for you and take it to the post office in one batch later in the day. It's brilliant.