Alternative to Royal Mail?

[walker1010]

. Are there any alternatives to royal mail? Not couries, they are just too expensive.

This is what i hate about Royal Mail, because they control nearly all of the post and there are no other companies that can offer the same service, royal mail can do what ever they like and get away with it because theres no other companies to go to. If there was an alternative to royal mail everybody would have turned to them and then royal mail would die quickly.

[Funked!]

You're coming at it from the wrong angle.
RM is a service we should all be able to afford & rely on, NOT an aggressive business which is only interested in profits & bonuses for it's managers/executives - which it has become.
Support your Postmen/women.

[rhino49]

Royal Mail spent several hundred years and a lot of blood and sweat building the business that you regard as an unfair monopoly - that cannot be done by anyone else within your or my working lifetime. It's guardians, your humble postal staff, have no intention of letting it die from the constant draining of it's revenue by the parasites that the government refer to as the "competition" or from mismanagement by a missing management. You only complain when there is a hiccup, but like everything else in life you will have to put up with that. No one (or very few people) have any reason to complain when they are getting the cheap, efficient and friendly service they have been used to and which we are trying to bring back. If there was an alternative - do you honestly think you would get a better service? Outside of this unfortunate but very necessary industrial dispute we believe that you certainly would not because, to quote a recent and strangely very true, publicity campaign from Royal Mail "With us - it's personal"

With anyone else - you would be a statistic.

[rhino49]

You're coming at it from the wrong angle.
RM is a service we should all be able to afford & rely on, NOT an aggressive business which is only interested in profits & bonuses for it's managers/executives - which it has become.
Support your Postmen/women.

[DirtyHarry]

Are there any alternatives to Royal Mail, who do exactly what Royal Mail does, and are as cheap?
NO.

[DGP1]

Why don't you contact TNT or DHL (or any of the other competitors) and ask them to deliver your mail, afterall they ARE official competition and all have licences to collect, sort and deliver mail
http://www.psc.gov.uk/competition.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Competition

The UK's mail market was fully liberalised – that is, opened up for competition - on 1 January 2006. This means Royal Mail no longer enjoys the statutory monopoly it held for 350 years. New operators licensed by Postcomm can now collect and deliver any mail, from any customer.

We believe that effective, sustainable competition will have been achieved if there is:

* a range of credible choices for customers;
* a "level playing field” for competitors, with all key barriers to entry removed;
* no abuse of market power by Royal Mail;
* real (not just threatened) competition that helps drive efficiency, cost-reflective pricing and innovation in products and processes;
* competition that is based on credible, long-term business propositions.

[ldsposti]

hi i saw on world business news the other day what the dutch & germans have done they have bought up private currior firms so they still have a manopoly

[Lincox]

Just take Royal Mail out of the equation and you will have an industry that just cherry picks the profitable business. The rest will be left to small outfits charging extortianate prices. Royal Mail is there to provide a courier service for everyone at a low cost to all. Take it away and you will have hikes in the prices of goods due to the huge increase in delivery charges added. Having said that the price of stamps are going up. Who will benefit from this price hike. Not the postie, not Joe Public, but the parasites at the top of Royal Mail who have seen salary increases of nearly 100% over the last year, together with huge bonuses for changing a company that provided a great service to the public with deliveries before midday, now declined to the later hours of the afternoon. This is the current managements idea of modernisation. The only modernisation happening are their pay awards. Next year we will see the implementation of walk sequencing machines, which will take a lot of the indoor work away from delivery persons. This can only mean two things. One is that a postie will be expected to do his walk 7 hours a day. We have already seen the signs of fatigue that post persons have had to endure this summer, with deliveries later in the day, when the temperatures are at their highest. The other scenario is that all of the contracts will be reduced to part time hours as we all know it is physically impossible to walk for seven hours with a mailbag, especially at the 4 mile per hour Royal Mail think we should be walking at. Are you all thinking like me. Is there anything we have to look forward to in this job, if we do not fight for our rights now. I hope the person who opened this thread has much more consideration for what the true picture in Royal Mail is and what we are striking for.

[DemonDiva]

We had a parcel delivered to our unit yesterday by UK Mail. (We're a mailing house).

Hubby asked the driver if they were busy. He replied that he didn't have enough hours in the day.

UK Mail were collecting and delivering letters for £3 a time: TNT were reportedly charging £4.50 per letter.

We're set up to send mail out with UK Mail and TNT, and bloody hate it! If the clients hadn't insisted, we wouldn't have allowed their equipment in.
But the clients are blinded by their sales people expounding on the savings they can make, and our biggest clients moved to UK Mail at the beginning of this year.

Now our second biggest are looking to send mailsorted with TNT. And despite us working out for them that after they pay us more for the extra work involved in mailsorting for my staff, they will be less than 0.02p per item cheaper than sending by Cleanmail Advance as we've been doing for over a year now!

Last Monday, I had two clients phoning me asking me about sending their mail out with other companies because of the strikes taking place. I had to explain in words of one syllable and less that the RM are the only ones doing doorstep deliveries because it just won't make money for the others. Having collections made by anyone else won't make the slightest difference to deliveries.

[rmdriver]

UK Mail were collecting and delivering letters for £3 a time: TNT were reportedly charging £4.50 per letter.


1st class metered 36p.......not much of a difference.

Thanks for your support Demon.

[POSTMAN]

Hey,nice one Demon,thanks for the info.
If you've got anymore stuff let us know.
Cheers

[moanmoanmoan]

You're coming at it from the wrong angle.
RM is a service we should all be able to afford & rely on, NOT an aggressive business which is only interested in profits & bonuses for it's managers/executives - which it has become.
Support your Postmen/women.

There is no real alternative. Sure TNT will happily take on the likes of the credit card companies - and then get RM to deliver door to door. This was a great idea by the someone!!! RM are forced to deliver mail at lower rates so TNT can make a profit! Then everyone complains that RM are making losses when the lucrative volume business is being taken by the likes of TNT - subsidised by RM doing the delivery!!

For most people/companies the standard post system can not be matched by any other company. Ok on parcels there is competition but who else will take a letter from one end of the country to the other -and deliver in most cases next day for 36p. It is excellent value and in most cases a good and reliable service.

The moaners about RM also forget the committment to standard prices for all - the likes of TNT would not support those in rural areas as RM does.

[Gathering Darkness]

While I admit that Royal Mail DO have a commitment to standard prices for all, I also believe that you get what you pay for.

In the past year, I have had my passport "lost" by Royal Mail - the envelope was delivered opened, and the passport was missing. I have had to wait six weeks for new fridge seal to be delivered. I have sent letters that have not arrived at their destination, and I have had to chase letters that have been sent to me. I have ordered items from Ebay and Amazon that have turned up damaged. However, when I order items and pay more for postage to have courier deliveries, my orders turn up in perfect condition the next day.

I also question Royal Mail's commitment to their customers. My elderly parents who live in a village, can no longer walk to the post office. They have to drive to the nearest town, which is fifteen minutes away - My mother is blind in one eye, and my father has Parkinsons. They also can't get letters to arrive at their destinations, or receive letters that have been sent to them. I tested this by sending them a letter six months ago. It never arrived.

I live on the outskirts in Cambridge, and I have to go into town and queue for an hour just to send a parcel. I don't drive, so doing this costs me £3.30 a time on the bus, as well as the cost of the postage.

I freely admit that Courier Companies WOULD charge considerably more than Royal Mail. But I think it would be worth paying to get the service Royal Mail can no longer deliver.

[kanuuuuuu]

anyone who honestly believes items wouldnt go missing under any postal system is on another planet. there are bad seeds in any business and also mistakes when handling millions of items everyday. Even so, way over 99.5% of items are delivered properly. If you saw the amount of badly addressed items we receive everyday you can probably make the amount actual errors / thefts very small indeed.
The best way to guarantee your item will get somewhere is to use the premium services such as special delivery. Youd at least get a refund and up to £500 (i think) insurance if the item was to somehow get lost. Of course a service like this costs more money, which is why most people wont use it for general post because deep down they know their item will get where its addressed under the regular post no matter how much they like to complain about the service.
regarding your issue in Cambridge, its really worth complaining every time you do have a problem. You may have some kind of local issue there where the quality of service isnt what it should be.