Letter on letters: 'Decidedly second-class service from Royal Mail'

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/187 ... oyal-mail/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I DIDN’T get any letters three times in the last ten days. Not because no one writes to me but because Royal Mail didn’t deliver.

There was a time when Royal Mail delivered – no pun intended – a service claiming that first class post was delivered next working day. But since privatisation it has focused on delivering profits for shareholders regardless of its obligation to provide a universal postal service to every UK address six days per week.

As a result, over the past week, with my usual post lady on holiday, local managers decided not to cover the round for letters every second day, sending out only time-critical parcel deliveries on behalf of the likes of Amazon to meet their ‘Prime’ next-day delivery targets. This occasional and unexpected gap in service is no longer exceptional but the norm.


Ofcom levied a £1.5m fine on Royal Mail for missed delivery target of 93% of first class mail delivered next working day during the year 2018/19 having only managed 91.5%. It is clear the 7% acceptable failure and, increasingly the 1.5% unacceptable failure, falls disproportionately on the rural community.

These same rural customers, already limited in their access to transport, and health services, who rely on Royal Mail both for the certainty of delivery and for the opportunity to post letters into ‘access points’ (post boxes to most of us) are wondering where this thin end of the wedge will leave us in future. Withdrawal of rural post boxes, and five-days-a-week deliveries?

Add to that the plight of Mr Roberts and the community of Isel who cannot rely on a reliable digital service (Times & Star, September 24), and while the nouveau rich in the Home Counties might aspire to country living, maybe the only chance we have of securing services on a par with our urban neighbours will be for those chattering classes to add their voice to ours.

I shall, of course, send this letter via email as to expect Royal Mail to deliver it next day would be a step too far, I fear.


ASHLEY TIFFEN

Aspatria

[2yearpostie]

I hope someone wrote back to him and pointed out a global pandemic where many millions of people have already died.

[richietns]

And working through the whole thing.

[POSTMAN]

Oh yes the pandemic, the Royal Mail get out clause.

[postieblueshirt]

Pandemic or not we all know hes right and there running the service down.

[enskied]

I hope someone wrote back to him and pointed out a global pandemic where many millions of people have already died.

Twaddle of an excuse:
Leave reserves sent out to other offices. Duties just left abandoned for days at a time, only Sd's and Tracked being delivered.

Managemet is a disgrace.

[Celgar]

With no van sharing due to Covid restrictions that only RM are observing this has been the state of play for months now. Soon posties get to choose if they wish to go back to sharing vans. Given that infection & death rates are about to explode in numbers this may be the point that van sharing should have begun and not back in April or whenever it was.
The larger the delivery office the higher the number of walks will be not delivered. In our delivery office it tends to be one walk that is left and it usually varies so one walk doesn't get penalised for days. In another nearby delivery office to us they routinely have ten walks 'on the deck' but they are much larger. It is not a case of rural versus metropolitan though and postboxes are not being removed except for occasional thefts of postboxes which it takes a RM a while to replace.