Royal Mail delivery

[JohnL]

I got 3 birthday cards for 20th December - Today was obviously delivery day.

[FredCasa]

Third attempt at having a small package delivered from a bike shop near King?s Cross, this time by tracked delivery. Item went to Croydon Mail Centre, from there to Gatwick, where it?s been stuck since 29th December. I give up. The complaints system is a complete joke.

Meanwhile a red mail delivery trolley has been chained to a fence in Stuart Road since before Christmas. Wonder what?s in there.

[beansprout]

Went to Highshore Road this pm to try and find out where a track & trace parcel had got to - was told they have large cages full of parcels, packets etc - I assume that there is no way they can find anything at the moment! Guess we will all have to just sit back and wait for them to sort it out. Was quite envious of folk that had a card and were collecting packets etc.

I am assuming that even if one wanted to claim compensation there is no way as they simply have no idea where things are.

[tomskip]

It's probably been linked before in this long, long thread but here's a thread started over 3 years ago about Royal Mail problems in SE22. Like others, I wonder what the heck people are supposed to do now after numerous complaints and interventions. Is it time for someone to do a sad face photo shoot in the Daily Mail?

https://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?5,1984285,1984285#msg-1984285

[Del in ED]

If this was DPD, FedEx, UPL, etc. they?d be out of business. For good !

[jamesmcash]

Hi all,

I'm really sorry to hear about everyone's terrible experiences with the Royal Mail service over Christmas, and more generally. When I've raised concerns on behalf of constituents with the Royal Mail, it tends to result in short-term improvements but the problems soon re-emerge.

They try to excuse the recent problems with 'covid' but frankly, this has been an issue for longer than the pandemic and it's not as though they could not have anticipated this being an issue over Christmas. We are now almost two years into the pandemic, after all. Instead, the real cause is the closure of East Dulwich sorting office and other cost-cutting schemes.

I met with Helen Hayes MP today to discuss this issue. As mentioned above, she has done a lot of work on this, including raising the issue in parliament. We're looking to escalate the issue further so please watch this space.

As always, if you're a Goose Green resident and you have anything to raise (on this issue or others!) please do drop me an email: [email protected]

Best wishes

James

[Rockets]

Cllr McAsh, Helen Hayes has been escalating this since Oct 2018 and it isn?t getting sorted out, it?s getting worse.

Could you come back to us all with something tangible on what action is being taken to resolve? What are the next steps following your meeting with her today? We don?t want to hear about more ?escalation? we want resolution. Having no post for a month is utterly inexcusable - people rely on the postal service and it is failing people across Dulwich.

Can you explain to us why you think they are using covid as an excuse - we keep hearing from postal workers that many are off sick with covid so is that not correct? Are postal workers actually being kept from doing their usual rounds to prioritise parcels? What is actually going on?

I think it is time we hear what the real issues are and what is being done to resolve it because we have had over three years of the service getting worse and worse. After this debacle over Christmas it?s time for action.

[sandyman]

It might be possible that Covid is a contributary factor right now, but it absolute must not be used to exonerate RM over this issue - it's clearly on record that the problem existed before the pandemic.

I suspect one can pretty accurately date the issue from the closure of the Silvester Road sorting office,

[malumbu]

Going back a few posts there were some generalisations about privitising state utilities and services. Personally I was, and am, against this. But there is always two sides to the story. Royal Mail was always loss making, which is why I expect the GPO was broken up, and then the post office made into a separate business as telecoms and the high street were profitable. Comments about lack of investment are simplistic too. Even in the heady days of the 50s and 60s where the UK led, say on telecoms and rail technology, the organisations were no doubt very inefficient. Society decided decades ago that the state should not be sponsoring potentially inefficient and loss making businesses, not throwing big money at R&D. The latter may have been a shame, and many including people more left wing than me, were happy to make a quick buck when sectors were privitised.

But even now many fail to understand that the UK made massive investment in connectivity of supply with the continent, particularly gas, and that it is the international wholesale cost, not supply, that is an issue. Whether we should be better insulated from this, with state intervention, is a separate issue.

Anyway as a numpty with no understanding of economics I've re-educated myself over recent times. Not that I am a fan, and still waiting the Minister of Energy's apology for some awful decisions made under the Thatcher Government, in particular burning much of our national gas supplies to make electricity. He hasn't responded yet....

Back to the topic, I was quite excited to get late Xmas cards.

[Pugwash]

Received post both Weds and Thursday. Bank statements due December, plus a letter from bank sent early December stating that they will close one of our accounts by 14th January as we had not replied to previous letters (We had been in contact several times by phone and email) One card with a voucher to use by 31st December. NHS letter sent 7th December sending forms to be completed and taken to appointment on 14th December. Phone bill, another 2 NHS letters.

[Sue]

malumbu Wrote:

----------------------------------------------------

> Royal Mail was always loss making, which is why I

> expect the GPO was broken up, and then the post

> office made into a separate business as telecoms

> and the high street were profitable.

Actually Royal Mail was not "always loss making".

I can't remember the exact details, but if memory serves, certainly in the late seventies/early eighties Royal Mail was required to pay a large amount of money from its profits to the government, and therefore did not have that money to invest in - for example - mechanisation.

Prior to that, when the Post Office (I have no idea if it was still called the GPO at that time) split off from BT, it still comprised Royal Mail, Counters and Parcels.

It was later on in the eighties that those three were separated into separate businesses.

Subsequently Royal Mail had at least one major reorganisation, aka "Business Development", circa 1990.

Unless my memory is completely wrong.

[Penguin68]

BT separated from The Post Office in 1981 and was privatised in late 1984. Prior to the separation the Post Office had a 'negative' PSBR (Public Sector Borrowing Requirement) which meant it had to lend the government money. Much of that derived from BT profitability. I don't think the Mail side was especially loss making, but it was telecoms that drove value in The Post Office. BT's negative PSBR continued to privatisation, after which BT was able to start investing in the network.

[mrwb]

Got a Christmas card yesterday, was sent second class on 13/12!

[intexasatthe moment]

Really interesting posts Sue and Penguin ,thank you .

I fear,as Rockets has said ,that much post will simply get lost and never reappear.

And hear hear to same poster's comments to Cllr Mcash.

[Penguin68]

In the 1980s (and previously) Business Mail had been a very important part of the Royal Mail Business - as such things as email and later web transactions took off (but not really until the late 1990s early 2000s) a lot of Royal Mail's lucrative business fell-away - hence both the increases in postage prices and the reduction in Royal Mail profitability. Competition in the carriage business (parcels) did not help matters either. When Royal Mail was eventually part-privatised it was already a business in difficulties, with an increasingly un-robust business model. BT's privatisation (and subsequent actions of competition) led to a huge increase in service quality and range of services, together with a decrease in prices (driven by Oftel's RPI-% pricing policy imposed on BT for the areas in which it still had effective monopoly powers). The same was not true for the Mail.

[sandyman]

I'm no fan of privatisation but anyone who remembers the 1970s will recall that getting a phone line in the UK back then was often a nightmare. You could wait months for a line and could only choose one style of phone until they went all modern and brought in the trim phone - raising the number of choices to two.

I'm certainly not saying privatisation was the answer but maybe if they had had some competition they would have been a touch more dynamic.

Penguin68 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> BT separated from The Post Office in 1981 and was

> privatised in late 1984. Prior to the separation

> the Post Office had a 'negative' PSBR (Public

> Sector Borrowing Requirement) which meant it had

> to lend the government money. Much of that derived

> from BT profitability. I don't think the Mail side

> was especially loss making, but it was telecoms

> that drove value in The Post Office. BT's negative

> PSBR continued to privatisation, after which BT

> was able to start investing in the network.

[Rockets]

What annoys me is that we, the consumer, are the ones who suffer.

Management and unions, seemingly, supported the closure of the Silvester Road office and we are the ones who are feeling the pain - who was looking after our interests?

[Penguin68]

I'm certainly not saying privatisation was the answer but maybe if they had had some competition they would have been a touch more dynamic.

BT had not been able to raise money in the markets whilst still a nationalised industry (and indeed, as I said, had to 'lend' its operating surplus to the government as a negative borrowing requirement). After privatisation it invested ?20bn over the next 10 years in the network (a non-trivial sum in those days) - certainly competition changed attitudes (over time) - but it was the ability to borrow and invest which was the key element at the start. The government could have opened the investment taps without privatising, but chose not to. I'd worked for BT for 10 years before privatisation, and then 20 years after.

It is unlikely, with its operating model, that Royal Mail could borrow as successfully as BT did, so investment in a new, state of the art, DO for East Dulwich was less possible - the revenue streams just aren't there to justify it. But recruiting and retaining staff for Highshore Road is a different order of commitment. Our problems are ones of poor management - the fact that most DOs across the country aren't in crisis mode simply reinforces that view.

Management and unions, seemingly, supported the closure of the Silvester Road office and we are the ones who are feeling the pain - who was looking after our interests?

The management were, and are, incompetent. The unions (quite properly) wanted their staff out of a DO which was not fit for purpose as far as staff well-being went, and were gaining for moving staff higher wages (inner London, not outer London weighting). This is what unions do (and are paid to do).

The Royal Mail has service level contracts which it is failing to meet. Its regulator should be penalising it for failure. This is a failure of management and of regulation.

[claresy]

Why could Royal Mail not inform people of what is happening and when we can expect post at the very least? I had no post at all for 3 weeks and am still getting barely anything. 3 Christmas presents for people have still not arrived; only 3 Christmas cards got here by post; I'm awaiting packaging to return equipment which I will be charged for if it's not received - and numerous other things that are needed and should have arrived long ago. Surely they could predict Christmas and the implications of Covid? My postman has said his manager had to fight to not have vans taken away at this time!

[tomskip]

Our postman knocked on the door and apologised today before handing over a large envelope posted on 10th Dec by my mother-in-law containing Christmas cards for all the family. So that was a complete waste of her money, not just the postage but the cards themselves as everything Christmassy was packed away here yesterday. About ?10 of her money and effort wasted. Infuriating. The postie said (and I quote) "It's mad down there, post piled up everywhere".

[Rockets]

Our postman just arrived and delivered the New Year Boden catalogue and a flyer for a retirement village in Surrey (are they trying to tell me something I wonder?!)

I do wonder whether all the December post will ever make it to us.

[sandyman]

I've been more active on this thread recently than I usually am on EDF and I'll explain why.

When I got a few Xmas cards earlier this week one of them, sent a month ago, contained some personal bad news about the sender. I'd spoken to them a number of times on email over Christmas but because I hadn't received the card I was unaware of their change of circumstances and had sent them a number of lighthearted messages and talked about numerous trivial things in my life not realising what was going on in their life.

I now feel very bad about this, while they presumably think I didn't care about what they were going through.

This is probably a minor issue in the global scheme of things, but it's just one of the consequences of the postal debacle. I'm sure there are a lot more stories like this out there. Probably plenty that are a lot, lot worse than mine.

[L_M]

Sorry to hear Sandyman.

Had x2 cards posted to me 14/15th Dec arrive on NYE.

Spoke to the postman this morning (I bumped into him as I was going out). He?s the semi regular one we have

He said they are currently prioritising lateral flow test boxes over everything else

He?s never seen it so bad in 20 odd years.

Only anecdotal but not ideal at all. We?re near Fenwick road/ P Rye park

It?s been 18m+ of poor service, worsened by covid.

[Reg Smeeton]

Eight Christmas cards arrived today - our first post this year.

[EDresidential]

I received 10 Christmas cards yesterday . The earliest franked was first class posted on 7th December! Quite a few unfranked so no idea when posted. I also received a copy of magazine subscription which should have arrived first week of December ... the current months copy arrived this morning. There are still a couple of items that were ordered well before Christmas including a replacement oyster card still to be delivered.