The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

[Merlin]

OK,

Today I have a reason to use AmiRant; I sent a postal order to imnogeek for a PCMCIA network card nearly a week ago. Today I get a PM from him saying it hasn't arrived. :x
This isn't the first time this has happened either; I have had this happen several times recently and it doesn't seem to matter if it's sent recorded delivery or not; in one case, recorded delivery made no difference as it still didn't arrive (even more :x ).

Now I have to cancel the postal order and sort it all out again..... :roll: :evil:

The Royal Fail lives up to it's name, as does Parcel Farce.

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[r0jaws]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

I must say I have noticed a lot more items seem to go missing.

I suppose, it may have something to do with a massive increase in volume due to more internet based transactions.

I certainly post a lot more than I ever used to.

The only good thing, is with proof of posting/ recorded delivery you're covered upto £36. This can take upto a couple of months to get sorted though.

If its worth more, then special delivery or a courier is the way forward.

I'm certainly more careful about what and how I post stuff these days.

 

[Harrison]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

As some of you already know I've involved with Royal Mail and therefore know the inner workings of the company. The actual volume of parcels has dropped badly in the past year and I estimate we probably get about half the traffic per night that we were getting 2 years ago.

The reason? Simple. Our beloved government. They stopped Royal Mail being the only mail service in the UK and opened it up to tender, even though the idiots who are the government failed to realise the fact that Royal Mail is a government owned company, so they basically shot themselves in the foot with that one as they have needed to constantly pump more money back into the company to keep it going.

And why th drop in mail volume? Opening the mail service up to tender means other companies came in and pounced on the business side of the market place. Taking all of the business to business and bulk mailing business to customer accounts from RM by undercutting their prices, but offering a better service (in theory).

The problem here, and this is something most don't know, is that post collected by the other postal services is them delivered by them to the RM delivery offices, and so it is still RM who are sorting the mail, but they are being paid half the price from the other company for doing it compared to if they handled it themselves.

Therefore RM is still sorting every letter posted, regardless of if it is a RM stamp on it or a TNT, business post or any other company. Less money earnt per letter means lower quality of service as staff levels need to be reduced to cover less money available. And this also helps to explain the closure of post offices. Although there is also a lot more to that too.

I could go on for a lot longer...

 

[imnogeek]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

I am afraid that sometime it is dishonest staff that are causing the problem...
About 8 years ago our local postman (where I lived at the time) was sacked for nicking the mail.
5 years ago at my then shop, I recieved a package from Royal Mail which contained various damaged letters/junk mail etc that had failed to reach me over the last few weeks - posty kept dumping it over a hedge and a member of the public found it all one day, (not just my mail but from the whole street) - all cheques had gone not that he could use them.

@ Merlin
Keep reporting any missing mail to the complaints dept, make a fuss, if there is a dodgy Royal Mail member of staff at a sorting office near you they will catch him/her - as long as they know about it.

 

[Harrison]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

That is very true. RM are very good at chasing up customer complaints and it is easy for them to track what has happened. Only one postman will normally be responsible for any given route on any specific day so it is very easy to work backwards from them to see what has actually happened to missing mail. If however it was posted but it was never traced beyond the collection point it makes it much harder to ever find out what happened.

Recorded and Special delivery are highly recommended for any post you wish to send that is worth anything. The extra you pay guaranteed some form of tracking for the item so it can be traced through the system if it never reaches the destination. It is impossible to trace anything that doesn't have tracking included.

Other parcel companies have recently introduced a new system where the label on every item now contains a microchip, and all offices and buildings a parcel might pass through has automated scanners, so the parcel is automatically logged as arriving and leaving as it passes though the system. This in my view is a brilliant update to tracking systems for parcels as it doesn't have any manual logging (scanning of barcodes) in the process, and with it being automated no human error can effect where the parcel was automatically scanned.

There are talks of a similar system for Royal Mail but it is currently only being evaluated.

 

[Kin Hell]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

OK,

The Royal Fail lives up to it's name, as does Parcel Farce.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Is the Pope a Nazi? :roll:

 

[ZeBeeDee]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

/me has no real problems with Royal Mail or Parcel Force. Let's face it though, these days the Royal Mail is nothing more than a glorified junk mail delivery service.

I tend to use parcel2go more these days for packages than rely on Parcel Force. I tend to send a lot more hardware overseas and I get constant updates from parcel2go about where the package is, time it arrived, copy of signatures, etc at the click of a mouse for total peace of mind.

 

[Brataccas]

Re: The Royal Fail - why has it gone downhill so much?

Yeah i have had this recently with a few parcels going through RM. One being my beloved C128 PSU`s to another member on here. He waited almost 3 weeks from me sending them out to him! He finally got them and was happy with his purchase but the communication i received from their customer services leaves alot to be desired. I always thought their tracking etc was up to par but even that has issues with online updates...

Also purchased a Cisco PIX 501 firewall for a test rig @ home, it took (and i am not kidding) just over 12 weeks to arrive! Appears to have been sent to two other address`s before finally making it to my local sorting office where i had to go and pick it up!!!!! Again no info on what happened!

I`m considering other methods to post items but unfortunately for my buyers this may mean higher postal costs if those better services cost more

That`s my 20c