OT: Royal Mail

I surmise that they have discovered that they can compete in the home PARCEL delivery market (which they do well) and the letter mail service is suffering as a result. I am prepared to bet that you do not have that problem with such things as Council Tax letters, when everybody in your street gets one.

Whenever I get a genuine letter addressed to me, I get a ton of paper spam as well

I surmise that they don't bother to collect my mail at the sorting office until it contains something important

In message snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org>, AnthonyL snipped-for-privacy@please.invalid writes

Very similar. Three weeks isn't unknown. One magazine due Mid January still hasn't arrived, although the replacement sent as a 24 hour parcel did arrive promptly, the publisher told me that they'd had a lot of copies that edition go missing. I've had days with half a dozen items delivered.

Talking to one of the local posties, he said that post is being delayed in favour of parcels. The cost savings are greater than the resulting OFCOM fines.

Adrian

Have they not been relieved of their obligation to deliver second class post every day?

Nothing of this nature but my impression is that mail is delivered twice a week here.

A postman told me that he was instructed by his supervisor to leave all the second class mail at the delivery office to speed up the round. He just ignored the supervisor on the basis that if they were not taken out that day, he would be left to take them another day.

I was told that too. I wonder: if they take a parcel out, do they check whether there are letters for the same address?

Mine are delivered by Outlook.

A local MP posted to a local social media group about a public meeting he had called with the RM representative.

So far every post has been commenting on the same things as in this thread.

I'm still having delays with small Jiffy bag type packages and a few weeks back some requested financial information that was posted first class took weeks to arrive. "24" and "48" appear to be somewhat meaningless as an indication of hour taken to deliver.

Still getting " your package will be delivered today" from RM tracking and the item turning up 1 to 2 days later.

Surprises happen though. I was on a Zoom call at about 8.45 pm at Halloween, having closed the outer door and turned off the hall light. There was a lot of banging on the door and shouting 'trick or treat'. This turned to be the postman with a parcel having a laugh.

I believe that the entire postal service in Denmark was discontinued at the end of 2025 - and I am certain that it will not be the last

In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Scott snipped-for-privacy@gefion.myzen.co.uk> writes

The day I was told that was when I was talking to the postie who delivered a parcel. By coincidence, I also had a parcel delivered the following day, and was handed a stack (of 7 iirc) letters. So, yes it sometimes happens. I got the impression that the letters arrived because I'd asked the previous day, so the postie checked. Around here, parcels and letters are generally on different delivery rounds.

This morning I had what is probably this week's delivery. 3 items, only one of which was franked with the posting date. That was 9 days ago, and had travelled 5 miles. Of the other two, one was a monthly, that used to arrive on the 16/17th.

Adrian

I believe it was January 2026 to allow the Christmas post to be delivered.

Fair enough, and its nice to know that I wasnt imagining things - but I am sure you get the general point

I do. I was only being picky because I have Danish relatives and visit the country. On the same theme, I also have Canadian relatives, who think Canada Post may be next to go.

It's the same here, they seem to concentrate on parcels, and deliver 1st and 2nd class mail, when they have a pile to deliver. It does seem to be the posties holding it back, because we got our reliable old one back on our round, and we now get our mail when it is due.

As I mentioned elsewhere, my postie said he was told by his supervisor not to take out any second class letters for delivery but he overruled the supervisor.

Today, the replacement copy arrived. The original, as well as today's, is out there somewhere.

My post has been delivered reliably for a while now, a couple of years possibly. Of course, I don't get daily deliveries like I used to, because my personal mail volume is much less that it was, partly, but not only, because I take the email option for utility bills.

(A few weeks ago, one afternoon I heard something being pushed through the letterbox, a letter. This was strange because the post had already been. Thinking that it might have been misdelivered locally I opened the door to see who had delivered it. It was the postman, who explained that it had arrived too late at the sorting office for his normal delivery so he delivered it on his way home, which had required only a slight detour. Think it was a tracked item that would have missed its delivery target if he had not done that.)

That seems to be happening to me too. The last first class letter I received was postmarked 3 days earlier.

Royal Mail parcels are a bit hit and miss too. My regular postie delivers to my house. Substitute posties seem to deliver to the same number in another street with a similar name instead. Given that Postcodes were introduced to make postal sorting easier, you would think the sorting office would know that my postcode isn't for the address where deliveries occur.

Well, I have had FedEx deliver, several years apart, a package for one adjacent village (raw frozen meat) to my house, and a package for me delivered to a sort-of similar address in a different village. If either of the drivers had checked the Postcodes, they would have realised they were in the wrong area.

Oh well, it was a good idea!