Friday, November 07, 2008

Royal Mail - Where is My Parcel?!

I am a firm supporter of Post Offices, particularly in rural areas. Royal Mail as a delivery service, however, I am less convinced about. I order something from Amazon at the beginning of the week, and with Super Saver post, it arrived today. Except it didn't, as the postie didn't ring the buzzer. Instead, he (she?) did what he always does, not even trying to deliver and simply leaving a red card somewhat tauntingly claiming that "While you were out, we tried to deliver.. etc". So, I do what I always have to do, and rush down to the sorting office before 1pm to collect it.



Now, the card states that you're supposed to leave 24 hours before collection, but usually that's okay, the posties deliver early so it'll be back by 1pm. Except when I get there, Mr Jobsworth tells me that they've rejigged deliveries and now none of the posties are back before 1:30pm. Well that would explain why the post rarely arrives before mid-day these days (so much for a morning delivery). So no parcel. Of course, what was the original logic of the sorting office being open till 1pm for parcel collection? Because by then most of the posties would be back, so you stood a fair chance of collecting same day. I doubt this occurs to Mr Jobsworth or his manager Mr Cutcosts.



All of this is not a major inconvenience for me, after all, I'm not working. But my friend won't get his birthday gift on time, and more importantly, when I start work, how on earth do I collect a parcel? Frankly, what would be far more useful for me is for there to be a central collection point for parcels - could be anywhere in London really - presumably one of the main sorting stations would be the logical place to host it - how about Paddington or Mount Pleasant? Once centralised it could be open 24 hours, and I could collect my mail myself. Which would be far more useful. Heck, let's use some modern technology - how about emails or texts to tell me that something is waiting?

Sorry Postman Pat, you're FIRED!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi
As a Postman I must point out that your postman would either have to be an idiot. It takes more work on our part to write out a " while you were out card then carry the item round the rest of our delivery than it does to deliver it. Could it be possible you didn't hear the door. I recently had a complaint made against me by someone such as yourself. As the item was a special delivery item my manager came found me and attempted the redelivery to the irrate customer. He stood on her doorstep for 5 minutes banging the door as loud as possibe ringing the bell etc etc, he was just going to give up when a Sky engineer emerged from the rear of the property and said she was in. he continued banging on the door, eventually she answered saying she hadn't heard the door as the washing machine was on !!! Sometimes it's not your postman to blame there is only so much we can do.

Sam Crawley said...

Fair comments, although my real complaint is against the system which hasn't been thought out - now they've extended the rounds, they should also extend the sorting office hours to match.