Royal Fail

Tonight I am going to delight and entertain you with an angry rant about the national postal service that we are subjected to in this country; Royal Mail

There's a big debate going on in government at the minute over plans to reform the NHS. One of the things that the big wig tory toffs keep regurgitating is "competition will be good for the NHS!". Now, what they need to do is stop sniffing their own farts and apply this logic to the Royal Mail. Royal Mail is in fact one of the national establishments that actually could heavily benefit from having to fend off some competition.


My husband and I live many hundreds of miles away from our families and so when it comes to birthdays and mothers and (in the imminent future) fathers day etc that we can't make in person we have to fall back on using the post to send our lovely greetings cards and gifts. But it's hit and miss as to whether or not what we put in the post will get there. I mean, you could quote statistics for lost post if you wanted and I would snort at you. We use the mail so infrequently that the ammount of times cards and gifts haven't shown up at the other end means that if you used me as the sole example, the Royal Mail would probably have a 20% failure to deliver rate. That might look small, but I can bet that if this was a national statistic there would be hell to pay. This is also not taking into account the things that haven't reached us from other senders, even when special or recorded delivery is used.

Above: the jolly British postman. Perhaps if he stopped meddling with the concerns of the local townsfolk and actually did his job then Royal Mail wouldn't be the national disgrace that it is.

There are other couriers available. Businesses will use TNT for example, who will come and collect their mail and send it off on its way....but who delivers it at the end? Royal Mail. This means that we've recieved bills too late and had to pay charges for late payment, even though Royal Mail didn't even have to bother collecting and sorting it. They just had to deliver it.


Some of the frustrations we've suffered from this horrendously managed company:

1. We're still waiting for a parcel that my mum sent me 2 and a half years ago
2. My mum, brother and sister are still waiting for their birthday cards from 2 years ago
3. My in laws are waiting for various cards to arrive. I believe my mother in law is still awaiting a birthday card my mum sent her for her birthday this year in fact
4. When we were up to our eyeballs in student debt, we recieved final demands sometimes months after they expected a response
5. Job application forms have failed to show up
6. A letter from British Gas threatening to break into our property to switch our electricity meter to a pre paid meter arrived the day before they said they would be breaking in - the date on the letter was two weeks previously and we were going away to visit family the next day (in this instance British Gas weren't even supplying our electricity so we called up and gave them what for, but had the letter arrived a day later? We'd have been, frankly, fucked.)
7. A sympathy card from my husbands work colleagues which was posted three days after his father died didn't show up until 3 months later. They posted it from a mile away from our home.
8. Train Tickets sent to us via special delivery arrived but the post man decided he couldn't be bothered to ring the door bell and get me to sign for them. What followed was a game of cat and mouse in which we never actually got our hands on the tickets until the day before we were supposed to travel. In fact, for rcorded or special deliveries, or parcels that are sent via Royal Mail, this has become the norm for us, something which hasn't been helped by the fact that the sorting office from which we have to collect it now has been moved from somewhere quite central to an out of the way backwater which we can only get to by bussing into town then getting a train out to it.

And now yes my fathers day card has apparently failed to turn up. This has pissed me off to no end because it was posted with an application to ChildLine who emailed me to acknowlege reciept of my application. I know ChildLine are in the same city, but then again that doesn't necissarily mean jack shit going by number seven above. In the great scheme of things a fathers day card is absoloutely nothing, it's a mere trinket really, but I paid for a service and that service was not provided. And it is getting to the point where it is all too frequently not provided, I must have chucked so much money down the black hole which is Royal Mail over the years. It's not like we have a choice...I mean, we could in theory use a courrier for big parcels but that's expensive, and what other choice have we for things like cards or application forms? There is no other way of doing it.

What makes me laugh is that post men like a good strike but every time they do I kind of get a bit bitter and even more cynical. If the post is delayed for a few days then so what, boo hoo. But the fact that their service for the rest of the year is so abysmaly poor, I just can't get behind them when they do. You know, perhaps it's true, perhaps the conditions in which they work is what shits them up and fucks the service up. So why can't the higher ups just sort it out? I for one would gladly pay up to a pound, if I can be honest with you, if I knew it would definitely arrive. You could say well that's special delivery for you but you shouldn't have to buy special delivery every frigging time. That should be saved for special occasions. And you shouldn't have to buy special so that your cards get there in a timely fashion. Royal Mail, seriously, I implore you, hire some more staff, modernize, do whatever the hell you have to do to get your service up to scratch. I'm sure paying a few pennies more isn't going to piss us off.

What pisses me off more is, like I said earlier, whatever I pay I have to because I haven't a choice, there's no other option.

I don't know how the system could be shaken up to promote competition or anything like that, but someone needs to look into it, someone trained up in logistics or some such thing. Because at the minute it's disgraceful, and I'm sick of buying cards and stamps only to, essentially, throw them into a giant red trash can.