Rude post office staff, shall I complain?

[neverendingannoyingcold]

So I take my 15 or so Christmas cards to the local post office...

I?m the only customer, I go up to the desk and greet the lady with a cheerful ?hello?. She stares at me blankly.

I have a pile with UK cards, other half are to another EU country. I hand her first pile, tell her exactly what I want - "second class, these cards have letters in, these don't [re weight]" bla di bla... She starts huffing and puffing, making a big commotion of seeing if cards fit slot etc. Just generally looking/acting pissed off.

Then I hand her part of the pile (with same sized envelopes, as I have three different sizes) to EU country, more tutting and displays of annoyance. She starts sticking stamps on in random places!

I get nervous when I notice I have missed an English card (we are now on EU cards), I bring myself to ask her, could I please have another 2nd class stamp. She rolls eyes.

At this point my son grabs one of the toys, she IMMEDIATELY announces ?Put that back if you're not purchasing it!?.

By this time, I am sweating and really dreading to ask the next question, if I could please have a strip of selloptape as two of the remaining envelopes seemed to have come undone. She bangs the sellotape down on the counter in front of me.

I notice that there is another card that should go to the UK and not to the EU country but am too intimidated to point this out...

When paying, I put the card in the wrong way (no instructions on this machine though I usually put it in the wrong way anyway ) she barks "wrong way!"

When I get home and rant at tell DH about it, he says this behaviour is outrageous (I never notice at the time, only when I step out of the situations...), I should complain to her manager.

Went back to post office today to enquire. She?s not there but colleague tells me the grumpy bitch lady in question IS the manger.

I would love to write a crafty letter but what?s the point if SHE?s the manager...

So: Should I complain? And who to?

If you have to pay VAT or excise duty on something from abroad, there's an £8 (!) admin charge on top. You would think that if they charge that amount for the 'service' the least they'd do is let you pay with your debit card, wouldn't you? Nope.

All of the counter staff in my local post office are lovely. They are mostly very friendly, helpful and down to earth. This is quite a big post office and they are always busy. The only gripe I have is that you always have to wait ages to be served, there is always a queue.

i held the door open for one and the woman replied don't do that

what happened to manners

Post office staff are always miserable weirdos aren't they? where on earth do they recruit them from?

We have 2 local post offices, similar distance from each other. One is hard to park at (limited space) and the bloke there is AWFUL - the two other women are not much better but the bloke is particularly poisonous. Once I had done pre-paid postage online (where you print your own postage and its paid for) but it had to go through the post office window because it was recorded to get the "recorded" thing. He took one look at it and said "we don't deal with those, forget it!".

I was pretty riled about this because the website specifically said to take it to your local post office so I was pretty sure he was being a tit. So I complained on the post office website, got a free book of stamps and was assured he had been written to, to give him an "attitude readjustment" about what services his counter would offer. I tested this out a few weeks later with a big pile of pre paid postage packages that were recorded (was doing a lot of eBay at the time).

So needless to say, I use the "nice" post office now.

Except when I have pre-paid recorded packages, where I am sure to use him

He's not terribly horribly bad though. He once found out from my chatty son that his name is the same as his son's name. He got all animated about how he named his son after a neighbours son who died in a motorcycle accident the day before his son was born.

See there's a bit of good in everyone hey?

The subpostmaster where I live is rude, surly, unfriendly and unhelpful.

The woman he employs part time is nice in spite of being employed on a lower wage and grade than she's legally permitted to be for the responsibility she has. She isn't supposed to be left to carry out major transactions unsupervised or cash up but because she's got previous experience as a PO manager she's left to get on with it all day.

She always greets people with a smile.

ZOMBIE THREAD

Local post office - awful! really awful. Hiddeously overcharged me for a package a month or so ago - but needed to get it sent that night and wasn't in a position to check. Found out afterwards I could have saved £6.

BUT, just before Christmas, I sent my DC to PO to hand in a prepaid package. She, PO counter staff, insisted it was not pre-paid and humiliated my child in front of the queue and made him pay. I was so upset and £10 out of pocket so went back down to explain that maybe my DC hadn't got it right but the package was prepaid. She would not get the package out to check and called me a liar! After five minutes with her smugly sitting behind her glass wall refusing to budge and the inevitable queue I gave up. But I did complain because my Dc was so upset, so very upset that he'd wasted money and "done it wrong" that I complained to the post office about her. I rang up and they were brilliant and refunded my money.

I have never met a post office worker with good social skills.
The last one accused me of stealing envolopes (bastard - I had already paid)
And the new one always comments on my parcel wrapping technique. (She would prefer them flatter)
She always says 'we need to send you on a course' - not in a passive aggressive way, just purely aggressive.
I think they must be trained to be rude.

I know this a zombie thread but I would say to anyone with a problem with the post office, definitely complain.

I have to use the post office daily for a business service for my work. I recently moved offices, and so was using a different post office. When I first started going there they refused to supply the service, that they are obliged to do, and I am paying for anyway. I asked to speak to the person in charge but was hold that the manager was on holiday. The lady behind the counter, and the duty manager in charge who had come round to my side of the screen were so hideously horrible to me to the point of bullying, I was in tears, another lady in the queue who didn't know me at all came over to see if I was ok and comment that she thought they were acting atrociously. I'm not a delicate flower either, I'm pretty thick skinned and can handle most situations.

I immediately rang up their Central number when I left, and it took me speaking to a few people but my complaint was taken seriously, I didn't get any monetary compensation, but I wasn't asking for it, but I got a couple of phone apologies, and now when I go in the staff are so nice to me, to the point where it's ridiculous and almost laughable.

I'm so grateful for this thread, I've been convinced for months that the dragons in my village PO hate me (loads of internet shopping returned and eBay parcels), I've experienced actual eye rolling and muttering, even a bit of bosom hoicking from one particularly well endowed dragon.

Silly really but it actually started to get to me, made me a bit nervous and panicky and really dread the ordeal of going in there - now I know it's just the default setting for most of 'em, I shall face them with confidence in 2015.