10/10 for Draper......

[The Wanderer]

Ordered a new battery from Draper's on-line store for my high power torch Monday afternoon. It was in the porch Tuesday morning when I got up....

Now *that's* good service!

[geoff]

In message , The Wanderer writes

but as much due to the courier's delivery route as anything else

I offer next day delivery as standard, collected from me at some time after 3pm. From then on, its out of my hands and in the hands of the courier

[Grunff]

Exactly - some parcels will get there at 8.05am, others at 6pm, and a few (about 2%) won't make it at all, and will take an extra day. All of it is entirely beyond the control of the company which shipped it (choice of courier not withstanding).

[hoilday]

talk about two f***in killjoys :)

bloody hell !

see these two when they win the lottery - well , its only a million . . .

good for draper in using decent couriers

Exactly - some parcels will get there at 8.05am, others at 6pm, and a few (about 2%) won't make it at all, and will take an extra day. All of it is entirely beyond the control of the company which shipped it (choice of courier not withstanding).

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I regularly get stuff *posted* just the day before. And if by any chance I'm not in and can't arrange for a suitable delivery day, the local sorting office is close - unlike most courier's places.

[manatbandq]

Indeed. The Royal Mail is much, and unfairly, maligned these days. The millions who get their post on time every day just accept it. The other few % would probably moan even if it did arrive on time.

MBQ

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've got nothing but praise for RM - even although my delivery is now later than it used to be. Luck of the draw - someone else locally will be getting theirs early. But I've got nothing but scorn for ParcelForce. How one side can be so good and the other so bad I've no idea. Especially since it's the near monopoly one which is good. Thought competition was meant to improve all businesses.

[Andy Hall]

It's entirely fair to malign it. The organisation is a shambles with staff who still seem to believe that they can withdraw their labour in order to improve their lot when their employer is a fundamentally broken business.

What is especially sad is that they seem not to realise that the business model of the organisation for which they work will lead to its demise in relatively short order. A decade ago, email communication exceeded paper mail communication by a factor of ten to one, yet these dinosaurs still seem to think that the world owes them a living.

This would be the case if it were true.

Good service - i.e. delivered to the specification, should be an expectation of the customer and the deliverer should not expect praise for that. Outstanding service, way beyond what is promised, is worthy of praise. Anything less than good service is worthy of condemnation. It isn't a case of moaning, but a case of whether or not the deliverer of the service does what they say they will do. If they do deliver that, they should expect nothing apart from payment. If they excel then they should be pleased if they receive accolades. If they underdeliver, then they should not expect to get away with excuses because there are none.

[Steve Firth]

And even when they are at work they CBA to work properly. The local one simply dumps the mail if he's feeling a bit lazy, or sticks through any old letterbox.

He doesn't deliver anything on Mondays, ever.

First post nowadays is usually about 2pm.

[Grunff]

I seem to spend far too much of my life these days comparing delivery statistics of different carriers...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

'Improve' their lot? Usually these days just trying to stand still.

I can't see any private firm wanting to take over RM's responsibilities - providing post boxes etc and delivering to far flung locations. Plenty will want the high volume stuff - and if they're allowed to have it simply make the unprofitable bits of RM even more so.

[Andy Hall]

Exactly. They almost certainly wouldn't, and it's yet another indication that the present position itself is untenable. If a business is untenable, then so is that of its employees - they can't expect even to stand still.

It indicates that it is really time to have a rethink about this so called "responsibility" and to alter that.

The first point is that while there has been a proportional shift to various kinds of electronic messaging, there is still much more that could be moved to it. There is really no need to have paper versions of utility bills, bank statements and all of that. People who emotionally "need" a piece of paper for this can receive a PDF file and print the result. So called "important" documents such as legal documents and the like can go via a courier service. If they are

*that* important, they are not sensitive to a £5-10 delivery charge.

A significant proportion of material delivered by post is various kinds of marketing material and junk mail. If the senders of that really find it so important to send it, then again having a higher charge will sort out how essential that really is.

Very little is left after that. Perhaps a few magazines on subscription, not much more.

For the remote areas, there are already services such as postbuses. Already well developed in other countries, they could be extended in scope and address at least two issues at once. RM doesn't need to operate those particularly either.

So the reality of the situation is that there isn't a need at all for this imagined responsibility. Until that is realised, RM will continue to decline into the inevitable abyss.

[geoffr]

I do agree with your comments generally, but there are still many people who do not use a computer, or do but dont trust them, so unfortunately there is going to be demand for paper post for some time.

[Andy Hall]

For the dwindling number of those, it would be cheaper to simply supply a computer. This is being managed with inexpensive notebooks for kids in the 3rd world after all.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You may think this but I'd say most still want an important letter delivered to their letterbox. Email etc is so full of junk and simply not reliable enough for important stuff. It also relies on the user taking action to receive that post. And then printing it out themselves if they want hard copy.

But bulk mail is very profitable. You may not like it - and few do - but it's a different argument totally.

RM doesn't need to exist at all. Leave it to private operators. With water, railways, electricity, gas, telecoms etc they have proved to be beyond any criticism and are only out to provide a service to the public. Or in your dreams.

There's no way you'll get a choice of private operators giving the same sort of delivery or collection service as RM. It would be split up into districts so you'll end up with effectively a private monopoly replacing a state one area by area. And this has proved in other areas to be simply no better overall - after the initial flush of enthusiasm. Private firms can be equally as badly managed as state ones and rely on their profits by getting the staff in a labour intensive industry to work for less. Of course this is great for those who don't see beyond the end of their nose

- but come a few years time when this workforce retires just who is going to support them, since they'll not have had any company pension or the spare money to provide for themselves. Etc.

[Bob Eager]

Intent on your crusade, you didn't read what he said. People who don't trust a computer (and, I'd add, those who are too old or unable in other ways to use one) are not going to be helped by supplying what, to them, is a useless heap of junk. Not that your elitist approach entirely surprises me...!

There are many relatively low value items that would be uneconomic to send by courier.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Great. And get all their bank account etc details from them at a stroke for the phishers.

Email and the net is a prime example of free unregulated communication.

Absolutely chock full of villains from all over the world trying to part the unwary and their money. Because it costs nothing to mount a scam and little is done to stop it.

You and I might see through such things. Those forced into using it probably not.

[Owain]

Unfortunately there is an increasing demand for these to be produced as 'evidence of identity'.

And the French did it with Minitel decades ago.

Owain

[Derek Geldard]

They can and do go under.

Whereas our local Health Authority is effectively bankrupt, has been for two years. The CEO had to leave his job and simply moved to head up another Health Authority somewhere else.

You are living in the past. Ca. 1955 I think.

Ach, away and don't talk pish.

For most people in this country the reason there is no such thing as "spare money" is because being of sound mind it just gets spent on a bigger car, a car for the wife, a more expensive holiday, a second holiday etc etc. If a married couple have less than 190k (110k for a single individual) in a pension fund then they are not better off one iota for foregoing that spending when they would have been young enough to enjoy it. This is because of this governments idiotic "Pension Credits" scheme.

DG

[Derek Geldard]

Just this week noticed a small label attached to our local postbox. "As of first of October collections on Sundays and Bank Holidays will be discontinued". Well, thanks for telling us.

Not, I suspect that they did anything with the letters they collected on Sundays anyway.

All the postboxes in Leeds used to bear a notice which said that a later collection was made from the postbox at the sorting office in Stourton. One Sunday evening I had an urgent letter to post (a sprog wanted a cheque to put a deposit down on a flat) and drove out there, it was a large crinkly tin factory type building. The postbox didn't show any collection times so I asked the security guard, he said he'd never heard of late collections from the box and the "factory" was empty - nobody working. :-((

Wife's cousin was a postie in Glasgow. He used to shove them all back in the postbox if it looked as if his round was likely to impinge on his drinking time.

DG