To think a Royal Mail post box shouldn't have a last collection time of 9am?

[AyeAmarok]

My nearest post box has changed its collection time from 530pm, to 9am.

Seriously, what is the point of that? Who does that help? They're effectively buying themselves an extra day to deliver first class post.

So you put something in the box at lunchtime on Thursday, postman collects Friday morning, delivers (maybe) on Saturday, but probably Monday.

Royal Mail are getting increasingly shite, aren't they? What is the point of a 9am collection? You're not collecting (probably) any of the post that people put in that day with the intention of RM delivering it the following day, when they think it's being delivered, it's actually just being collected.

AIBU to think 9am is unreasonable? mum probably won't get her mother's day card now, hence my pissedoffedness

Very annoying for you, but for people like me, who can't get to a post box easily until after 5pm, a 9am pick up is ideal!

There's one in my mum's village that is 7:30am last collection!!!

In my villiage nearly all of the smaller postboxes have a 9am collection but a short walk away are two that have later ones (5pm) so I suppose it comes down to convenience - either you post it nearby to your home and wait the extra day or go the extra distance for a quicker delivery.

In my villiage nearly all of the smaller postboxes have a 9am collection but a short walk away are two that have later ones (5pm) so I suppose it comes down to convenience - either you post it nearby to your home and wait the extra day or go the extra distance for a quicker delivery.

One near us is 6.45am. Think of it this way: if you put mail in the box in the evening, it's half way to its destination by 5.30pm the next day.

YANBU. The one at the end of our road has changed from 4.45pm to 9am too but the Postman told me he now empties it after he's delivered the letters in our road which is usually sometime between 11am and 12. Maybe this is the case for you too? I'm old enough to remember when we used to get 2 deliveries a day and agree that Royal Mail are increasingly shite.

Ours is at 7am. In fact, I've got to go out now to post the mothers' day card. Would be much easier if I could just do it on the way to school in the morning. Complete ballache.

But for people like me who work long hours, a 9am collection is great because I could post something in the evening and know it will be collected first thing instead of 5pm!

To be fair Royal mail have a rough deal out of the privatisation of mail services. They are still expected to deliver everything to people's door in the allocated time frame but a lot of the really profitable work from large companies like sorting/franking etc has been largely picked up by firms like TNT.

This has left them with a small budget to maintain services and try to keep up with the new innovations. Inevitably this has led to widely publicised job losses and regional managers trying to work magic with their rota and area allocations.

It's inconvenient for us as end users but sadly the service will probably keep being diluted. There's no magic pot of money to make it better and let's face it, getting a letter from Lands End to John O'Groats in one business day for 60p (or so) is amazing!

By all means write to the regional manager for your area enquiring as to the rationale behind the early pick up time. They might find the letter useful as customer evidence to improve the services in their area. At the very least they should get back to you with a reasonable response.

Nothing urgent goes by post nowadays. The volume of post (and hence income) is much smaller, but they have the same costs. only way to reduce is number of collections/deliveries. I wouldn't care if they moved to weekly collections/deliveries.
YABU as Mother's day is hardly a surprise.

I generally post letters at home in the evening or first thing in the morning on my way to work so if the pickup is once daily then 9am is about the ideal time for me. If I'm posting something in the middle of the day I'd be more likely to have time to take it to a postbox in town with an evening pickup too.

I'm in a relatively large town most of ours are now early but one or two still do a late collection think it's 16.30 and the boxes say on them the nearest late collection box. It's still a major pain and doesn't help you right now so YANBU but might help out in the future.

But for people like me who work long hours, a 9am collection is great because I could post something in the evening and know it will be collected first thing instead of 5pm!

Maybe I'm being dense but why does it matter to you if it's collected first thing or at 5pm? It won't be delivered till the day after either way surely?

I thought the same sonyaya, surely it just delays everything by a day anyway, or you need to be organised a day earlier.

Which, I could have been, but I thought Thursday afternoon was plenty of time and a few weeks ago it was 530pm.

Agree that Royal Mail did get the raw end of the stick and other companies are able to pick off all the easier, more profitable services. But it is getting worse and worse. I asked once for guaranteed delivery the following day for a birthday card, and they said it would be £12

(so I tried to be more organised this time and post it a day earlier and then they changed the post box times. Sometimes life just doesn't go your way! )

I got caught out trying to get the 4:30 collection from the end of my street last week only to find it's now 09:00.

Things just change with the times I guess.

When individuals used to post letters day in, day out, as their main means of communication, there was a morning and evening post. That went by the wayside and probably felt like a loss at the time but now we are just accustomed to one post a day.

Similarly now the majority of Royal Mail's business probably comes from companies posting things to customers, not individuals, streamlining post collections is probably an easy area to make cuts in to keep the service affordable.

Sounds like a lot of boxes have changed to 9am or earlier collections very recently.

Sneaky little mass-change.

Royal Mail are rubbish, very unreliable. The amount of first class post that actually arrives next day is minimal. Most first class post I come across takes two days.

It would be better if they said it was a 2 day service and sometimes deliver in 1.

As long as there is an accessible post box, I am happy. 9am collection means I can post letters on my way to work or to school.

A local post office has the box inside, so you can only access it during their opening hours. What's the point of that? It's not open when you go to work, and it's already shut when you come back. How stupid.

Ours says 7am the postman seems to empty it whenever he feels like it though

Ours changed a couple of year ago. The postie's empty the boxes while they do their rounds.

The advantage of a post box inside a post office is that you know that the stuff you put in there will stay clean and safe.

I'm perfectly content that our nearest postbox has a posted collection time of 9am. Since fewer and fewer people post fewer and fewer letters, I'm just glad they're able to keep the box in use.

I always assumed the 9am time probably meant they empty it daily, and guarantee not to do it before 9am. Displaying a time of 9am means they can empty it at any convenient time in the late morning or afternoon that fits in with other rounds etc.

I’m not sure why it’s cheaper to collect mail at 9am rather than later in the day. The annoyance is that the change wasn’t announced in advance - I would have posted letter the day before had I known!

Seven years later .........