**Shameless Rant** Royal Mail - What a bunch of t055ers!!

[Bane]

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.  

[Saintsteve]

^^^^
Crikey! My original pic has now been repeated 4 times - You'll get me into trouble. 

Lol, ive caused enough tonight already 

[maxload]

Maxload ..... Don't think Simons arse is that good

Yes Royal Mail are crap. I work for UPS and hear many complaints about Royal Mail's poor service. If you are willing to pay the little bit more you will recieve a top class service , and not lose your package.
She could hold my package if she wants ^^  

[stealthwolf]

I've never had straightforward service from UPS. In my book, they're worse than RM.

[maxload]

I've never had straightforward service from UPS. In my book, they're worse than RM.

I'm sorry to hear you had a poor experience 

[RedRobin]

I've never had straightforward service from UPS. In my book, they're worse than RM.

....You're just bitching because that UPS delivery babe in the pic hasn't knocked on your door 

[stealthwolf]

In all honesty, no. UPS either don't bother ringing, or more often than not, hand it to the neighbours. FedEx seem to be okay. Parcelforce dump it at the local post office which is open 9-5 and I work 8-6. Never had issues with CityLink. Royal Mail - couple of times, they've failed to post the card through notifying me of attempted delivery, but other than that, I've never had issues with them.

[Thor]

Bane,  you make some good point re, service to rural areas.

However Parcel farce must be a total shower of Sh*t as they managed to mess up so badly that they lost the Amazon contract due to failure to achieve the agreed KPI's.  Now that kind of contract has got to be a sweet deal, christ it only has one pick up point.

[craigy123]

Robbin, where do you get all these images?  google images?

[Tamiyoman]

In all honesty, no. UPS either don't bother ringing, or more often than not, hand it to the neighbours. FedEx seem to be okay. Parcelforce dump it at the local post office which is open 9-5 and I work 8-6. Never had issues with CityLink. Royal Mail - couple of times, they've failed to post the card through notifying me of attempted delivery, but other than that, I've never had issues with them.

I am in a rural location myself and have a business account with Royal Mail, Parcelforce, Fedex, UPS and DHL.

Royal mail we probably ship 350 packages per week with them and every 3 months I fill out around 10 lost item forms, bearing in mind we shop over 4000 in that time, its not that bad, plus our postie takes all the crap out of my mail for me so I only get letters with my name on them, we also have a P.O. box for package returns to the local sorting office (its about 2 miles  each way to there) but as we are good/regular customers they actually deliver the P.O. box returns to us with our general mail, they dont charge us to do this, so I am happy with them, if im not in tey also sign recorded and specials for me and put in our safeplace save me going collecting!. As was said to Stu before we probably ship 4 or 5 special delivery packages per week the ones that dont get delivered next day over the space of a year can be counted on one hand and we get refunded for them, if a customer has paid for shipping we refund them, if we offered free shipping we keep it!.

Parcelforce have been excellent with us and never had any issues with them, we have the same driver every day (Top bloke, lives 2 villages over) and he always comes at same time and knows if im not in to leave it in the agreed place or at local sub-post office (about 400yds away) and not the main post office in town (2 miles away and hard to park for flamin tourists!), when we pay customs charges on incoming parcels we let him know and he always makes sure that we get items delivered on saturdays if we pay on friday and we dont pay for it (They want £12 for saturday delivery when the van is coming anyway!, cheeky buggers).

Fedex are a professional outfit, other than having 1 box crushed in 5 years I cant fault them (The box travelled from Norfolk to Perth, OZ so fair enuff its likely to get some abuse!).

UPS, never had any issue in using them for 3 years for both delivery or collection.

DHL, good service but I have to go out to the van as they Guy is too fat to get through the gate (Its a big gate, but he is a VERY fat man 

Citylink, good service but they do have a habit of delivering my items to the local golf club for some reason (as it happens i'm a member so its not a huge issue)

[RedRobin]

Robbin, where do you get all these images?   google images?

....I just collect them when I come across them and I also create some. I've had the UPS Babe (I wish!!) for a couple of years and keep meaning to use the image within one of my own RED INK creations.

Others I steal from God.

[gazon69]

I've never had straightforward service from UPS. In my book, they're worse than RM.

....You're just bitching because that UPS delivery babe in the pic hasn't knocked on your door 

I wouldnt mind giving her a knock on her back door.

[maxload]

In all honesty, no. UPS either don't bother ringing, or more often than not, hand it to the neighbours.

Unlike royal mail who will either lose your package , door step it or stick a card through your door asking for you to collect at a inconvenient time it is ups policy to leave it with a neibour for the customers convienience

[sub39h]

In all honesty, no. UPS either don't bother ringing, or more often than not, hand it to the neighbours. FedEx seem to be okay. Parcelforce dump it at the local post office which is open 9-5 and I work 8-6. Never had issues with CityLink. Royal Mail - couple of times, they've failed to post the card through notifying me of attempted delivery, but other than that, I've never had issues with them.

What, your 3hr lunch break every day isn't enough time to go get it?

[stealthwolf]

What, your 3hr lunch break every day isn't enough time to go get it?

You mean the three hour period where I do my referrals, home visits, review blood results, review incoming mail, (assess, review and) sign prescriptions? The one where I have maybe 15-30 mins to myself for food? Given it takes me 40 mins to drive home, 30 mins really isn't enough.