It's a little bit busy!

[scotchy1962]

No idea if this is everywhere or just in my part of the world, this week in general has been very busy for parcels and packets, and the last two days have seen the heaviest mail since last xmas.
The dim/dom says it wasn't forecast to be this bad and yet again you have to ask who the feck does these forecasts or maybe they just pluck a number out of the air and go with it.
I got asked today by a punter " does royal mail not have a legal obligation to deliver the mail everyday"
My reply " yes"
"Do they not do that then"
"Not for the last few years"
" Do they not get fined for that"
" You would like to think so"
Sometimes i wonder if Joe public really kicked off it might bring this bunch to task.

[Kenfandango]

Since maybe Saturday even our "quiet" duties have been utterly smashed, mech crates stuffed (and not actually in frame order) and mis/unlabelled buddies still coming in after 8am, had mail for every single drop every day this week which is unheard of on the "rural plus new builds" delivery I've been on, plus at least a york and a half of packets every day. Managers seem thoroughly bewildered by the sudden increase in mail, despite it being prime time for companies to pester the public with pre Christmas offers

[SpacePhoenix]

mech crates stuffed (and not actually in frame order)

Sounds like your DO hasn't updated the data for your walk on Route Planner, until that happens the mech won't be in order

mis/unlabelled buddies still coming in after 8am,

Possibly the local MC has been taking all the flat sorters off sorting flats and over to Tracked and normal packets.

Locally apart from a lot of advertising stuff going through the mech it's not really been any busier this week

[Mr Rush]

The dim/dom says it wasn't forecast to be this bad and yet again you have to ask who the feck does these forecasts or maybe they just pluck a number out of the air and go with it.

When they use the word 'forecast' they'd like you to believe their teams of experts in deliverology are buying computing time on a giant mainframe to crunch the numbers to predict how many packets will turn up next week. In reality I'm convinced they simply look at last year's figures and assume that'll happen again. If Christmas wasn't a fixed date I have no confidence the super-scientific forecast would predict it. It already takes them by surprise annually.

[aiden01]

mech crates stuffed (and not actually in frame order)

Sounds like your DO hasn't updated the data for your walk on Route Planner, until that happens the mech won't be in order

mis/unlabelled buddies still coming in after 8am,

Possibly the local MC has been taking all the flat sorters off sorting flats and over to Tracked and normal packets.

Locally apart from a lot of advertising stuff going through the mech it's not really been any busier this week

Nimc has been absolutely hammered with packets last few weeks.maybe people ordering early for christmas to make sure it arrives in good time.

[2chorizon]

My MC got hammered mon & tues
Failed both days, which is pretty rare.
Packets & tracked off the scale.

[LouBarlow]

Parcels are ticking up. More Amazon this last few weeks, which is odd as their couriers are everywhere round here. The most mail I’ve had for weeks yesterday.

A good sign for us all.

[Basildon Bond]

For packets... there was an Amazon Prime Day "event" from October 10 - 11 (Tues and Wed this week). I'd hazard a guess that people got all excited before during and after that time and it may have stirred up online shopping and spread to people buying across multiple sites (eBay, John Lewis, M&S, Boots, etc.). Perhaps it'll relax again before Christmas. However, separately the letters side seems to come in irregular bursts of quantity - very light one day, pretty heavy the next.

Yes it is job security to be busy but it's also added stress to those that like to complete. Sure "work your hours" etc. and don't stress it but it's nice to feel you can clear it. RM could help by predicting these things better and having temporary DPRs spring into action as required. Of course that requires extra people, PDAs, and vans so probably no chance of that outside of Christmas etc.

[ArthurPewty]

Chances of any extra PDA's for Christmas? Absolutely zero in my DO.
Last Christmas (anyone heard it on the radio yet!) some bright spark scanned all the tracked as delivered and sent a chap out delivering them all with no PDA. He came back a nervous wreck as 50% of the calls gave him a bollocking as they got an email 3 hours earlier saying their parcel had been delivered and they'd been on to M&S/John Lewis/you name it - about the missing parcel! You couldn't make it up

[funkflex55]

Last year in our office they had a shortage of pdas. Some were writing down the tracked codes on bits of paper. Some van shares had one pdas between them so had to do some of the tracked separate from loops!

[postslippete]

Could certainly do with more staff and vans at our depot. The number of tracked items being scanned are regularly hitting treble figures on a daily basis and many of them are larger items which don't fit too well in a small Combi van when stuffed with medium parcels, pouches, trays of mail and golf trolleys. There was talk of us even accepting parcel force parcels as well. Added to this is Royal Mail's auto-redelivery which means items from the previous day are now automatically added on to today's workload.

As usual mail is not being delivered and/or brought back and the bonkers revisions have made everything worse.

Yet Royal Mail want to bring in myperformance now just before "peak"... Are the senior managers braindead??

[Basildon Bond]

Chances of any extra PDA's for Christmas? Absolutely zero in my DO.

Just get a handful of P4550 cards (pda contingency sheets).

[postslippete]

Chances of any extra PDA's for Christmas? Absolutely zero in my DO.

Just get a handful of P4550 cards (pda contingency sheets).

They are like gold dust. Can't see them anywhere.

[Shadedpostie]

Every Friday/Saturday since the last few weeks seems like the office gets completely battered for some reason. Yet, have less amount of time to do it Oh well, just more stuff to leave it I guess?

[SpacePhoenix]

Every Friday/Saturday since the last few weeks seems like the office gets completely battered for some reason. Yet, have less amount of time to do it Oh well, just more stuff to leave it I guess?

If it's mech mail it could be the DTS system releasing a load of mail on Friday nights