Sorry guys,but I feel that I need to defend the Royal mail a bit here.
Firstly,I dont work for,nor do I have any affiliaition with the Royal mail,other than as a customer.
They are this countries largest delivery company dealing with over 8.5 million items of post per day.Yes,they will miss a few parcels in that amount,but they have been underfunded by the government for years(who,incidentally,take around 2 million quid out of thier profits every year as well) who also want to privatise the Royal mail service(see how well that worked out for the Trains system) and sell it to various companies who will cherry pick the most profitable areas i.e. large urban and well populated centres and deliver on behalf of large companies and conglomerates.
Next time you recieve a letter or a piece of business post,study the postmark and see who actually sent it.If it says DHL or UKmail or somesuch,chances are they have the contract from the business(by undercutting the RM) and then subcontract the royal mail to deliver it anyway and pay them 20p per letter,instead of RM getting the business in the first place.
I live in a rural area and it frightens me as to what some unscrupulous individuals and companies want to charge for delivery because they have a courier contract who wont have a depot nearby and will subcontract to a small delivery company who add thier bit on.If I agree to pay,then I've found myself waiting for up to a month for something to arrive from,say, central England,by Courier,when I've had stuff delivered from the same area by Royal Mail and it's been here within two days!! All for the same price as if someone in Cornwall had ordered it.
The Royal Mail charter stes that all mail delivered in the UK would be the same price-no matter if you live in Shetland or Penzance-a letter would cost you the price of a first class stamp.
RoyaL Mail needs to be funded,which the Government won't do as they want to wash their hands of it, and also needs to modernise to cope with what it has to do=hence the recent announcement on the rise of the cost of stamps, but without it,we would be at the mercy of a system that would be charging an arm and a leg and then someone elses ear to deliver a parcel,with one company covering one area and a rival covering the next.