Member Info for OliGarch

Redceo, "surely a company is entitled to charge whatever it wishes. The customer is equally entitled to accept or not?"

In the normal world of business that would probably be correct but this is Royal Mail so there will be price caps and especially lowered tariffs for bulk customers, especially those who have walk sorted their perfectly prepared mail for injection straight to the delivery office and these prices will have been over seen by our wonderful regulator to ensure that RM aren't over charging.

Derek, "isn’t this what is already supposed to happen to machine sorted 2c and economy letters?"

It's called "Delivery to Specification (DtS)". RM no longer deliver 2C ahead of time as it used to, when capacity and capability allowed and now actively holds back 2C until it's due delivery date which requires extra time, space, planning, sequencing machinery and of course machine operators in mail centres. To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that it saves any cash for the UK operation at all?

"Under the new delivery rules posties will still pass every door on their round every business day, but half their round will receive only parcels, express and priority mail.

That half will alternate every business day, meaning parcels, express and priority mail will be delivered daily, while ordinary letters and unaddressed mail will be delivered every second business day.

The changes are based on trials co-designed by Australia Post and the Communications Workers Union.

The new rules would include allowing the post to charge a commercial rate for priority mail, which accounts for about 8% of addressed letters, within limits to be set by a statement of expectations in 2024.

Graham said the announcement “recognises we need greater flexibility to acknowledge the true cost of mail delivery”

I would imagine that some parts of the UK would consider the above business model as an upgrade to current service levels?.....lol

Given Sunak's current level of parliamentary woes and an upcoming election sometime over the next twelve months, I can't see anything happening until at least 2025 thought?

Redceo, JB, this is the link to the Guardian article on Tuesday.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/06/australia-post-daily-letter-deliveries-ending-company-losses#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17019414584456&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2023%2Fdec%2F06%2Faustralia-post-daily-letter-deliveries-ending-company-losses

Not a glowing report from the residents of Newhaven on the south coast? It looks like the issue isn't the nearest mail centre (Gatwick) but the delivery office. Let's hope that the COM gets to grips with the situation soon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-67615783.amp

A low volume of Christmas cards isn't good. Over the last decade, December letter box collection mail has accounted for around one third of that year's total letter box collection mail and at 75p (minimum) a pop that's an easy profit when processed in quantity.

JB, thank you for your comments. I too would like to see all items delivered to specification however I believe that it's a bit of a postcode lottery. The nine "small" mail centres do not have parcel machines and have been instructed to send their parcels to their nearest mail centre that does have a parcel machine. The issue is that the larger mail centre cannot always accommodate the surplus parcels that it has received and will send these back to the office of origin for sortation by hand but the smaller mail centres no longer have an early shift or the staff to do this so this causes failures especially with 1C/T24 items and T48 items become T24 items by default.

Of course, if you live in or close to London, Liverpool, Manchester, the south east or the midlands you probably wouldn't be affected and I do wonder if the business is trying to acclimatise the UK into accepting a lower quality of service by default?

Brendyboy recently posted that RM had won contracts with "body shop TK maxx jd sports to name a few plus that inpost".

I will take this information as true and I have no idea what volume of parcels/packets that are involved here but I'm willing to bet that they have signed up to the belief that their goods will be delivered within the contract specifications and as the UK operation is currently struggling to deliver to specification then these companies could be clawing back rebates? On the plus side there is the January returns market to take into consideration which could be a bonus.

To get the SP on an upwards trajectory the UK operation needs to be doing the basics correctly. Delivery to specification at a reasonable price? Is that really too much to ask?

Mike, "and no other postal service has such an onerous obligation to deliver 6 days a week to every address for the same price, most others deliver no more than 3 days a week".

Given the above information, would the latest quality of service results have exceeded the targets set out below by OFCOM under a three day USO?

Obviously we will never know but it would be interesting to see if anyone has crunched the numbers on this?

Our rules require Royal Mail to meet specified quality of service performance targets in the provision of universal service products. Among other targets, Royal Mail must:

Complete 99.9% of delivery routes on each day that a delivery is required;

Deliver 93% of First Class mail within one working day of collection;

Deliver 98.5% of Second Class mail within three working days of collection;

and in respect of stamped and metered mail, deliver 91.5% of First Class products within one working day in each postcode area of the UK (apart from three excluded postcode areas).

Good to hear Brendyboy, however can it be busier than Christmas 2020 or 2021?

Christmas Pressure 2023 is going to be a difficult one to call in my opinion. Will the public post early to avoid any potential delays? Will they post as much as last year due to the cost of living crisis and increased postage costs?

I guess that we won't have a decent picture regarding volumes until mid December but what I do know is that my local mail centre hired an outbuilding at the beginning of November but has yet to make use of it. Perhaps the volume will pick up this weekend?

going to be a

Redceo, "I am assuming fines received by Ofcom end up in the treasury coffers, nice little earner?"

I have no idea where the fines go but I would imagine that they work their way back to the Treasury?

Before privatisation, the UK Government used to skim the profits from RM as it was a Government agency so it's probably a win win for them either way?

Cash if you own the company and cash if you regulate the company...... kerchinggggg.....

Given the recent problems with parcel delivery recently I thought that it would be a good idea to get some items ordered and delivered early for the festive season and also a couple of December birtdays. The past four weeks have been busy however what is noticeable is that Evri and Yodel have been very good with all items being delivered on time as per tracking. UPS even managed the impossible by delivering an item at 1pm which was ordered at 8:29pm the previous evening.

Our local postie of several years is very good and has been around six days a week with his sidekick who has also been delivering on Sundays but the issue seems to be that almost all of the T24 and T48 items are already failed and several days late when they arrive at my local delivery office in most instances. As for letters....they arrive whenever they arrive..... except for Moonpig which arrive within 48 hours?

The issue doesn't appear to be local staff absenteeism (as verified by the postie) so I suspect that the issue lies with the large parcel offices and/or super hubs not having suitable capacity and/or staffing problems?

I have been reliably informed that Evri and Yodel only have basic parcel conveyors and I realise that they don't deal with the same volume of parcels as RM but how are they able to provide a better service than a company who has mail centres and super hubs bristling with technology and multi selection parcel machines?

This really needs to improve or the Q3 Quality of Service figures could be worse than the Q2 figures.

Changing the subject back to Royal Mail.....

Redceo, Rural, I may have the wrong end of the stick here but my understanding was that the AngerSharkz account was deleted and all posts removed except for the last one on the grounds that another forum user was trying to obtain personal details from lse after several particularly nasty posts were made, hence the "all tracks covered" comment from myself?

I have never filtered anyone on here but it might be the best option going forward. I don't mind having a decent disagreement with others on here or even being put straight on a fact or two (as Redceo will attest 😉) but when the vindictive name calling starts it's time to filter.

AngerSharkz, typical of you to turn the conversation around to something else in order to deflect?

I posted "come come TMS, you of all people with YOUR massive interlect will know that every post that we make, whether on here or elsewhere on the internet is stored across various servers?’

What I didn't post was that I knew how to find this information however I'm pretty sure that someone with the right skills could.....

You're quite correct that I won't be wasting my time looking for your old posts tonight as I'm going for a pint with my mates.....the ones that I have known since school.

Do you have any friends? I doubt it.

Cheers.......

TMS, "Redceo - What else have you got saved on your personal devices?"

Come come TMS, you of all people with your massive interlect will know that every post that we make, whether on here or elsewhere on the internet is stored across various servers? Even when you think that you have deleted things they are still lurking somewhere.....

TMS, .....a person in their "thirties" spending all day on this forum and taking the time to message us coffin dodgers while you rake in your millions......lol

Presumably you tell your "significant other" about your charity work?....... lololol

By the way, anyone over fifty will tell you that they spent a couple of decades "in their thirties"..... lololol

TMS, "and no, I won’t be having children, we made that decision a long time ago. Lol".

That's definitely a good thing for the human race.

When you say "we" presumably you mean you and your invisible friend?.....lololol

Redceo, for heaven's sake, don't mention the Bolsheviks....it could reignite the arguments from earlier in the week.....🤣