Trading update

[cobrakai]

I’m hoping things pick up soon. It’s been shocking lately instead of arguing with us the management should be trying to encourage business.

[LouBarlow]

If you don’t see that mail and parcel volumes have dropped considerably I don’t believe you work for RM. It is the quietest January I’ve known in 20 years of being with the company. Worrying is right.

Not sure what planet you live on but my rural duty is not completed most days of the week, Monday and Tuesday i can sometimes complete but every other day is a failure. There's lapsing every day as well and they are about to implement the revisions, i also only work to time so things aint going to get better.

Planet earth. If you don’t see the decline in mail you are blind.

So with the decline in mail "apparently" you think what should happen? Are you suggesting there's not enough work and we are all about to lose our jobs or are you trying to justify the company's position. I am interested in your opinion as you seem to have your finger on the pulse of RM.

There is no apparently about it. I looked at my frame yesterday morning and I still have 50% of the D2Ds sitting there. On a Thursday. I have been doing this job for 20 years. I am not making things up or trying to justify anything. January in previous years, would see mountains of flats, be it catalogues or holiday brochures, whereas now, we are barely seeing a tray a day. My round is in a pretty affluent area, and sure, you get the same eBay addicts getting parcels every day, but otherwise packets are also down on what I would expect.

You can continue to ignore the fact, or throw sly insults my way, but I have no reason to lie, and I am being backed up by other people above, so my office is obviously not an outlier. People and businesses have no money right now. We are heading for recession. It doesn’t take a lot of guessing to work out why less mail is being sent.

If i have hurt your feelings i will have to apologise, but seeing as how i had a lovely bulk posting today hitting every address on my rural duty plus a bulk posting of national trust magazines at the same time i am going to call Bull S**t on your lack of mail. You are either getting it lucky in which case do the lottery or i am getting it unlucky either way your office is a different planet to mine.

You are literally the only person in this thread saying you are busy. I’d say it is more you being unlucky than us being lucky. What bulk posting was it, out of interest?

[Kenfandango]

Our DO is quiet, however they've let a bunch of people leave and not replaced them so 10-15 walks are only being done every 2-3 days (they want to make them absorption but due to not calling PTs in early and removing SA some days, people are finishing close to time anyway...)

Has nobody pointed out that the mail decline could also be due to Simon greedily whacking the price of stamps up? Plenty of people on my Xmas route told me they had cut right back on cards this year, not because of the strikes, but because of the cost

[SpacePhoenix]

Flats and letters are so quiet that you could easily get away with just 1 person on them through the night, until the last push at the end, and still have plenty of time to sort the RTS which got rejected by the machines

[Edward Hunter]

Agree its been quiet last couple of days.I managed to clear my delivery for the first time in many months.D2Ds will still fail as normal on most rounds at our place

[scotchy1962]

If you don’t see that mail and parcel volumes have dropped considerably I don’t believe you work for RM. It is the quietest January I’ve known in 20 years of being with the company. Worrying is right.

Not sure what planet you live on but my rural duty is not completed most days of the week, Monday and Tuesday i can sometimes complete but every other day is a failure. There's lapsing every day as well and they are about to implement the revisions, i also only work to time so things aint going to get better.

Planet earth. If you don’t see the decline in mail you are blind.

So with the decline in mail "apparently" you think what should happen? Are you suggesting there's not enough work and we are all about to lose our jobs or are you trying to justify the company's position. I am interested in your opinion as you seem to have your finger on the pulse of RM.

There is no apparently about it. I looked at my frame yesterday morning and I still have 50% of the D2Ds sitting there. On a Thursday. I have been doing this job for 20 years. I am not making things up or trying to justify anything. January in previous years, would see mountains of flats, be it catalogues or holiday brochures, whereas now, we are barely seeing a tray a day. My round is in a pretty affluent area, and sure, you get the same eBay addicts getting parcels every day, but otherwise packets are also down on what I would expect.

You can continue to ignore the fact, or throw sly insults my way, but I have no reason to lie, and I am being backed up by other people above, so my office is obviously not an outlier. People and businesses have no money right now. We are heading for recession. It doesn’t take a lot of guessing to work out why less mail is being sent.

If i have hurt your feelings i will have to apologise, but seeing as how i had a lovely bulk posting today hitting every address on my rural duty plus a bulk posting of national trust magazines at the same time i am going to call Bull S**t on your lack of mail. You are either getting it lucky in which case do the lottery or i am getting it unlucky either way your office is a different planet to mine.

You are literally the only person in this thread saying you are busy. I’d say it is more you being unlucky than us being lucky. What bulk posting was it, out of interest?

Broadband crap by a company i have never heard of before. Maybe i am unlucky but the new revisions will require the sort of mail you are getting to have any chance of being delivered on a regular basis. Christ people why would you even put a thread up claiming you are getting it handy, either not that smart or propaganda for the Slyman i will leave it at that.

[LouBarlow]

Yes, we have all been knocking around this place for years, posting collectively thousands of posts, all for the long game of providing propaganda for the CEO. You have lost your mind.

[Barnacle]

Not sure why anyone is surprised that January is light for mail. It always is. After the madness of Christmas, mail and parcels drop like a stone.

However, I honestly can’t say it has been frighteningly light enough to scare the horses. It’s not THAT light. Only on a couple of days, which has indicated to me that there may be staffing issues further back in the chain.

I’m still receiving shed loads of direct mailings, catalogues and other crap.

Parcels are the thing everyone ought to be watching because that’s where all the investment has gone. To make things right, Simon needs to take around 400 million parcels off our competitors. Doesn’t take a genius to calculate that that’s not happening.

[pieoftheday]

Not sure why anyone is surprised that January is light for mail. It always is. After the madness of Christmas, mail and parcels drop like a stone.

However, I honestly can’t say it has been frighteningly light enough to scare the horses. It’s not THAT light. Only on a couple of days, which has indicated to me that there may be staffing issues further back in the chain.

I’m still receiving shed loads of direct mailings, catalogues and other crap.

Parcels are the thing everyone ought to be watching because that’s where all the investment has gone. To make things right, Simon needs to take around 400 million parcels off our competitors. Doesn’t take a genius to calculate that that’s not happening.

Do you reckon RM may have started to put too many of their eggs into the parcel basket? That would be funny if it wasn't our jobs been buggered about

[2chorizon]

My MC is totally dead, has been all week, never seen it so quiet.
I don't think it is the result of the strikes either, i think the lag in interest rate rises and cost of living increases has finally filtered through to the man in the street, the engines were spluttering before xmas........now they have completely cut out.

We are regressing to 2019 mail levels (albeit with a 5% increase in parcel volumes)

Just like Amazon over-exuberance with hiring during the pandemic boom will now force mass redundancies.

Hate to say it but ST is correct when he says we now need to "Rightsize" the business.

[pieoftheday]

If we're going back to 2019 levels of mail then I might just be able to complete

[chrisj]

Yes, we have all been knocking around this place for years, posting collectively thousands of posts, all for the long game of providing propaganda for the CEO. You have lost your mind.

No point being honest or realistic because no one knows what is going... They only have to take the word of the vocal few on forums like this - the managers are too stupid to notice a drop in items and the volume stats are actually not being collated...

Everything is propaganda these days but not from the CWU - they are a honest straightforward bunch.

Just like an MP taking the word of a whistle blower over the phone - no point investigating or corroborating or getting real evidence; just blurt out PVA and expect the CEO to help you out.

Simon already got slated for thinking 'fire and replace' should have been 'fire and rehire' - the rude MP made him feel small even though Royal Mail rarely ever fire people or go for compulsory redundancy.

* I am still waiting to know precisely what the CWU want out of the talks or how they want the dispute resolved?

[taurus88]

I think the biggest issue RM are going to face is that there’s no way to solve the issues that are arising. The nature of the job is that walks naturally reach a maximum point, where either the dead-walking between houses means they can’t be profitable, or the accumulated fatigue and subsequent high turnover of staff leads to ridiculous levels of inefficiency.

Basically, the more letter volumes drop, the less profitable they become because each letter on average takes more man hours to deliver. This is true when your call-rate remains the same (fewer letters per house equals less money per delivery point), or if you increase the size of the walks (more miles will cause the first set of problems I outlined).

The solutions to the current business model are few in number, and desperate in nature. And they all represent a very bleak outcome if you’re on delivery (your poor knees are going to have to do many more miles to satisfy the great machine). I guess that RM considered all this when working towards a lower pay-rate for new entrants, and an owner-driver model going forward.

Where that leaves us, I don’t know. Even the modest pay rise we may eventually get doesn’t really change the reality that, over the last decade, the job on delivery has been getting harder and harder. The number of long-term joint issues among posties is growing, and none of us are getting any younger. It’s less and less a job for the long-term, if you want to be painless in your dotage.

[SpacePhoenix]

My MC is totally dead, has been all week, never seen it so quiet.
I don't think it is the result of the strikes either, i think the lag in interest rate rises and cost of living increases has finally filtered through to the man in the street, the engines were spluttering before xmas........now they have completely cut out.

We are regressing to 2019 mail levels (albeit with a 5% increase in parcel volumes)

Just like Amazon over-exuberance with hiring during the pandemic boom will now force mass redundancies.

Hate to say it but ST is correct when he says we now need to "Rightsize" the business.

Even parcels and Tracked are noticeably down atm

[stevejm]

If you don’t see that mail and parcel volumes have dropped considerably I don’t believe you work for RM. It is the quietest January I’ve known in 20 years of being with the company. Worrying is right.

Not sure what planet you live on but my rural duty is not completed most days of the week, Monday and Tuesday i can sometimes complete but every other day is a failure. There's lapsing every day as well and they are about to implement the revisions, i also only work to time so things aint going to get better.

Planet earth. If you don’t see the decline in mail you are blind.

So with the decline in mail "apparently" you think what should happen? Are you suggesting there's not enough work and we are all about to lose our jobs or are you trying to justify the company's position. I am interested in your opinion as you seem to have your finger on the pulse of RM.

All of the language around letters is negative because they want rid of the USO obligation. There are still 8 billion letters to be delivered every year. That’s a vast number of letters in anyone’s language.

not really - by my maths its about 320 letters per postie per day if there are 100,000 posties {if not, adjust slightly up or down]