Recently someone suggested Royal mail as a reliable alternative to some of the other carriers.
Within the last half hour I had three deliveries from Royal Mail. All were small jiffy bag type packages and all sent second class. One was dispatched Monday, one was dispatched 8 working days ago and the other was dispatched on 3 December!
Weird. Today I received two small packages, on ordered from an Amazon trader on Wednesday at 5:40 pm and another ordered off eBay yesterday just before midday! Neither were special delivery.
Tim
Royal Mail is much less reliable at this time of year. I don't put anything in the post in the two weeks before Christmas. At least they all arrived.
Colin Bignell
My recent Amazon orders arrived next day, delivered between 8pm and 9pm. I believe they have a system where the package is delivered to local agent (domestic property nearby) if you are out and then the agent delivers at a time when you are likely to be in (evenings and weekends).
Argh! WAS!
Tim
I have dispatched two large parcels recently, both sent just the basic second class post. Hampshire to Devon , Posted Monday arrived Wednesday. Hampshire to Gloucester ,Posted Monday arrived Wednesday. Package to me from Devon ,Posted Monday arrived Wednesday. Small item ordered on ebay Wednesday evening this week from a supplier on Teeside by ordinary post and not expected to till next week arrived this Friday Morning. So my experiences are better. Sometimes wonder if sometimes if where you live in relation to a Hub and how many hops it has to do has a bearing on how well a particular address gets it's mail.
We almost always get a good service here.
G.Harman.
Yes I know, there is no sense in it is there. I notice now on Amazon when they use Royal mail standard they say that there is no tracking once its been despatched. I can believe it, we as a talking newspaper use the gov subsidised articles for the blind service for around a hundred of the blind locally, and though it says first class on the labels we have to use, one gets the feeling its more any old time or date will do, its only the blind and they get it for nothing. We have written two official letters to the named person for the area, and he has not answered either of them.
Brian
on 21/12/2012, alan supposed :
That is contrary to what I'm seeing here, RM seems much better at the moment, than it has been during the rest of the year. 2nd class packages, of which I have recently sent and received a few and all seem to be delivered within two days.
RM seem OK round here as a rule. But in the run-up to Christmas it often seems like the whole system runs LIFO rather than FIFO. All too often late-posted things do arrive very quickly and ahead of early-posted parcels.
I've heard that in some sorting offices only stuff off the top of the pile is getting delivered (making the service LIFO as you say). I think a lot depends on which sorting offices your mail has to pass through, they're not all equal.
Tim
Agreed - and that is, I'd guess, why we see some of the odd date/delivery patterns that do occur.
Despite traveling thousands of miles in less than a day, a package is currently sat in a Fedex depot since 5am this morning. They wil attempt delivery on Monday which will fail. It will then go back to the depot and probably end up being returned to the sender.
I'm having them delivered via Collect+, to the newsagent down the road.
They've probably not been delivered yet ;)
SteveW
O come on Tim - you know that either/neither/both means 3 or more!
AT this time of year almost anything can happen. Generally throughout the year I have found RM to be very reliable. If you want guaranteed delivery times these have to be paid for.
Amazon.es have the record for me so far. Ordered a vacuum cleaner 6pm one evening, went for standard delivery and it arrived at my Spanish address 9.30 the next morning. (Pity because we had decided to put off the cleaning until it arrived)
Royal Mail are apt at our UK address to leave packages under the car on the drive or throw them over our 8 feet high side gate and arch - even on wet days. Nothing destroyed so far but it is bound to happen.
I sent a package by RM, 2nd Class signed-for, on Monday this week. I wasn't really expecting it to be delivered until some time next week, but it was delivered on Wednesday morning.
Harry Bloomfield explained :
I have just received a 2nd class to be signed for envelope which was posted on the 16th - it wasn't signed for, just pushed through the letter box.
I had similar experiences when involved with a talking newspaper with sixty or so listeners. The local sorting office, only a couple of hundred yards from the village hall where we had our studio, often failed to collect the sack on a Friday morning, which meant our listeners wouldn't get their tapes until Monday at the earliest.
When I spoke to the manager, his attitude was "Well, what do you expect from a free service?"
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.