Charge for collection from sorting office

[Misterangry]

My small business has been collecting our post from the local sorting office for the past few years, usually every morning at about 8am - the reason for this is that our post never used to be delivered before about 11am at the earliest, and very often it was mis-delivered to other businesses on our trading estate. I've now been informed by the sorting office staff that they have received an internal memo saying that from 4th April we will have to pay £252 per year for the priviledge of collecting our mail from the sorting office - this is our own property, and we are saving the Royal Mail the trouble of delivering it, and it will have already been sorted! I've seen no publicity about this impending charge, and was informed by Customer Services that I would have been written to early in April about this. I can't believe it! Only a public body could get away with this way of treating their customers. Anyway, I doubt whether they can legally refuse to give us our mail when we turn up and ask for it at the sorting office, after all it is our property and postage will have been paid for by the senders. I would suggest that they were commmiting a criminal offence by refusing to give us our property. Of course it would save us trouble if our post was delivered to us reliably and promptly every morning, but in our experience this seems to be impossible - we often had cheques for thousands of pounds going astray - and now we are going to be penalised further because of the Royal Mail's inability to provide a reasonable service!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

We agree - just check out the posts in various thread on our Forums - don't forget though we are an unoffical site.

http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... ct#p351328" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As to the mail being your property - I would not be too sure on this as in the rare cases RM prosecute posties who steal or delay mail the charge seems to indicate that the property belongs to Royal Mail - not saying that to be argumentative just highlighting that you would need to take legal advice before you think of taking any "Direct Action".

I would also like to point out that the 11.00 am delivery time is actually quiet good under the present system that Royal Mail use. As posties we would love to start at 4am (like we used to do) and start deliveries at 7am and be finsihed before midday (still 8 hours work).

But Royal Mail changed the start times, and are in the process of changing the whole process yet again. We now on average start at 6am - leave the office at 10am and finish around 2pm. So receiving your mail at 11am whilst not good for you as a customer - it is actually pretty early in the round.

We know people don't like us striking but the 2007 strikes were partially based on later starts and the disruption to our customers, and to our own private lives as well of course. The 2007 strikes were not over pay and spanish practices as they were portrayed in various media outlets. The strikes of 2009 were also based partially on the same principles but again the media foucsed on the pay claim as is usual.

[wolfie citizen smith]

the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted during the early to mid morning sorting times, therefore your mail is ready for you to collect, unfortunately to you Royal Mail are only asking a reasonable request that from April if any customer require this form of service then a small payment would be required.
as times change so does Royal Mail and not knowing which delivery office you currently collect from I cant say whether that office has gone through its own changes yet and would no know whether they have agreed a new start time of 07.00am.
have a bit of repect for these postal workers as abuse doesn't get you any where

[BT2010]

the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted during the early to mid morning sorting times, therefore your mail is ready for you to collect, unfortunately to you Royal Mail are only asking a reasonable request that from April if any customer require this form of service then a small payment would be required.
as times change so does Royal Mail and not knowing which delivery office you currently collect from I cant say whether that office has gone through its own changes yet and would no know whether they have agreed a new start time of 07.00am.
have a bit of repect for these postal workers as abuse doesn't get you any where

i would dissagree with "the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted".
how can it possibly have priority over other incoming mail?
the last wave of mechsort comes in and is thrown into the frame, so all address's are prepped together.
the only priority would be that mail would be ready for collection as the postie is bagging up.
aslo, there was no abuse for postal workers just RM as a whole (and my guess is most employees would agree with the point the OP is making).

[wolfie citizen smith]

the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted during the early to mid morning sorting times, therefore your mail is ready for you to collect, unfortunately to you Royal Mail are only asking a reasonable request that from April if any customer require this form of service then a small payment would be required.
as times change so does Royal Mail and not knowing which delivery office you currently collect from I cant say whether that office has gone through its own changes yet and would no know whether they have agreed a new start time of 07.00am.
have a bit of repect for these postal workers as abuse doesn't get you any where

i would dissagree with "the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted".
how can it possibly have priority over other incoming mail?
the last wave of mechsort comes in and is thrown into the frame, so all address's are prepped together.
the only priority would be that mail would be ready for collection as the postie is bagging up.
aslo, there was no abuse for postal workers just RM as a whole (and my guess is most employees would agree with the point the OP is making).

what a load of tosh.......................normal operations within delivery offices is that a firm who has time sensative attached to it will have its own pigeon hole assigned to it therefore giving it priority over any other mail of which is assigned to that perticular walk........this is also the case for the DBF....therefore Royal Mail would now like paying for this service

[TrueBlueTerrier]

the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted during the early to mid morning sorting times, therefore your mail is ready for you to collect, unfortunately to you Royal Mail are only asking a reasonable request that from April if any customer require this form of service then a small payment would be required.
as times change so does Royal Mail and not knowing which delivery office you currently collect from I cant say whether that office has gone through its own changes yet and would no know whether they have agreed a new start time of 07.00am.
have a bit of repect for these postal workers as abuse doesn't get you any where

i would dissagree with "the charge for your call and collect is that it has priority over other mail sorted".
how can it possibly have priority over other incoming mail?
the last wave of mechsort comes in and is thrown into the frame, so all address's are prepped together.
the only priority would be that mail would be ready for collection as the postie is bagging up.
aslo, there was no abuse for postal workers just RM as a whole (and my guess is most employees would agree with the point the OP is making).

If you notice the customer does say that he collects it at 0800 - if he wants to do this is an official way then yes his post is handled seperately. In fact he can arrange (at a cost unfortunately) for a timed delivery, or he can continue the collection process and still collect it at that time but to get all the mail, not just that sorted by that time, then the MC can arrange for it to be sperated from the other mail.

There are hidden costs to collection though for RM, the cost of staffing the Callers Office, the cost of the Duty Holder seperating the mail, the cost of the duty holder physically moving the mail to the callers office and the storage space of the mail before collection. Of course all these costs are quite small but when we were a service we could cover these costs, now we are a profit orientated business then the bean counters will count every second and every penny and then do their best to recoup those costs. Do I agree with it No - but since liberalisation this sort of thing has always been on the cards.

[wolfie citizen smith]

i do believe TBT I already covered that in my own roundabout way

[TrueBlueTerrier]

i do believe TBT I already covered that in my own roundabout way

Aye you did - just backing you up

[mazza111]

Aye but on the other hand, it's one less drop point for the postie on foot. I think to charge for it is ok, in essence, I do think however that it's a bit steep going from £0 to £250 p/a. Maybe if they had made this introduction gradually, then the customers wouldn't have felt it so hard.

[Spedley]

Several businesses collect mail at or before 8am from our office. The major ones do pay for the service but then they receive hundreds of letters per day and have their own sack etc.
The smaller businesses collect what mail is sorted when the collect it and the rest is delivered with the delivery.

I can see RM want to charge for collecting mail - anything which stops a postie standing there sorting at 25 items per minute potentially costs money.

And finally, I can't see the logic in "only a public body would ...". Surely "only a public body" gives you the right to contact your MP and Customer Services and Postwatch to express your dissatisfaction. Any private company will just say to go elsewhere ... and there is nowhere else. Privatisation will NOT bring any benefits to the customer.

[Misterangry]

The logic behind my assertion that only a public body could treat their customers thus is the fact that RM have a virtual monopoly and we as customers have no choice about who handles our mail. If a business was providing this service and suddenly whacked a whopping surcharge onto something which actually saved them money they would lose their customers in droves. By collecting our mail from the sorting office we reckon we are saving about 5 minutes per working day of our postie's time - this must equate to at least £1 per day; add that up for a year and that comes to about £250; we should be paid by RM for collecting our mail! Q.E.D.
As to the accusation of abuse of our postie, that is complete nonsense - we have nothing but respect and admiration for our postie; he was always cheerful and helpful and we miss him greatly, but we can't afford to wait for our post until the afternoon and run the risk of losing hard-won payments from our customers. The problem lies with the bean-counters in their ivory towers, and not the hard working guys at the front line.

[skull]

[quote="Misterangry"]. By collecting our mail from the sorting office we reckon we are saving about 5 minutes per working day of our postie's time - this must equate to at least £1 per day; add that up for a year and that comes to about £250; we should be paid by RM for collecting our mail! Q.E.D.




RM are carrying out a service for you above what other customers get so there should be a charge . £0.68 p a day is a bit over the top I agree . The 5 minutes posties time you are saving will be lost in the office by the postie having to put your mail to one side , then it's transfered up to the collection point and then dealing with you when you come in to collect . Times money I'm afraid and with you running your own business I thought you would understand this , maybe you can give me some examples of your business carrying out work for nothing and I will take everything I've said back .

I want to see Royal Mail run like John Lewis where it's run for the benefit of it's employees and customers with profit coming in third place but it's not going to happen . There's money to be made through the privatisation of Royal Mail and the pigs at the empty trough are getting hungry . If it's a choice between me having my wage and working conditions attacked or you paying the . 68p a day I'd rather you pay the .68p .

RM employees need to start being callous with their customers now , no favours , absolutely nothing , if customers ask why just tell them privatisation is just around the corner and this is how the powers that be want the company to run . The only chance we have got to stop privatisation is winding Royal Mail customers up and trying to mobilize them , tough love . You never know we might see Misterangry out on the next Royal Mail not for sale protest .

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

I cannot see how the call and collect service is saving the duty postie 5 minutes a day, in fact I'd say it costing the duty postie more time per day, separating out this "special" mail and getting it to the callers office...

When the duty postie could be prepping the rest of the walk at 0800ish, or taking a ~10 metre detour from their walking direction going between the delivery points before and after the business wanting the C&C service.

Given the extra time this is costing, Royal Mail is basically charging the customer for this time and the wages of the callers office staff, as the days of finishing long before contract time have all but vanished in depots that have gone through the "modernisation" process, less than £1 per day.

[theboropostie]

My DO is pretty massive compared to some and as such the callers office gets pretty hectic at peak times.

One of the busiest is around 8am when all the call and collects turn up - bedlam some days.

As a result we have up to 4 staff in there for peak times doing PO Boxes, Business Responce, Gas Boxes and CALL AND COLLECT! The last one on a 25hour contract - so picking up about £225ish a week??

If you took out the call and collects he wouldn't be needed so it's only fair that a charge be made - isn't it?

[not me]

The logic behind my assertion that only a public body could treat their customers thus is the fact that RM have a virtual monopoly and we as customers have no choice about who handles our mail. If a business was providing this service and suddenly whacked a whopping surcharge onto something which actually saved them money they would lose their customers in droves. By collecting our mail from the sorting office we reckon we are saving about 5 minutes per working day of our postie's time - this must equate to at least £1 per day; add that up for a year and that comes to about £250; we should be paid by RM for collecting our mail! Q.E.D.
As to the accusation of abuse of our postie, that is complete nonsense - we have nothing but respect and admiration for our postie; he was always cheerful and helpful and we miss him greatly, but we can't afford to wait for our post until the afternoon and run the risk of losing hard-won payments from our customers. The problem lies with the bean-counters in their ivory towers, and not the hard working guys at the front line.

where is the saving? you say you are in a business estate,so it is still getting a delivery to all other points
5 minutes per delivery point?
that would mean on a 3.5 hour delivery they would have 42 delivery addresses
do you think that sound feasible?