What is happening to the Post office?

Our post office closed, as did the four banks in our small market town, the hub for several villages with no shops. The P.O. is now open again in a separate shop. There are three counters but only one is open usually. They also sell stationery, greetings cards and gifts, but you can’t get in to see them as the queue blocks the way and is out onto the pavement.
There is no ATM outside, though Co-op and Sainsbury’s have one. The nearest bank is a 20 minute bus ride away.

We have a post office in the shop down the road and there are rarely queues. We also have a main one in town.

We’re lucky to have a village post office but Royal Mail’s delivery service is atrocious, we’re lucky to get a delivery every 7-10 days 😵‍💫 Collections from the post box are now once a day at 7 am instead of twice a day.
The Post Office scandal is heartbreaking and appalling, heads should roll for the abominable treatment so many people had.

Ilovecheese

Callistemon21

After the dreadful scandal when post office operators were wrongly prosecuted, some committing suicide, others going to prison and not all receiving compensation as yet, I'm surprised anyone wants to do the job.

The most dreadful miscarriage of justice and no-one yet held accountable. The wrong people went to prison.

Quite so, would you really want to work for the post office now, knowing what the management did.

I’m just bumping this up so people don’t forget!
“The Post Office” set up a flawed IT system, committed, purgery and maliciously prosecuted their staff. People were made bankrupt, went to prison and many died. Some taking their own lives.
Is it any surprise that we are finding it hard to have have a thriving local post office in every community.
This is a huge scandal and “heads should roll”( metaphoricaly speaking) but they won’t. The people in charge got huge bonuses and ordinary people suffered. Including us, the customers

I totally understand what you mean. It costs me £12 return to get a taxi to a post office which is in a general store. We don't even have an ATM machine nearby so when drawing cash out everyone in the shopping queue knows how much money I have now got in my bag so I never feel safe until the taxi collects me.

All the banks have been closed so I am now having to pay by card and so do online banking but I need the cash for taxi fares and they add quite a lot of money to the fare because of card payments. I thought having to pay extra to use your card was illegal but apparently it isn't.

We are living in a world of technology first, second and third, thank goodness I am computer literate at 81 years of age.

Our post office used to be in the back of Heron Foods. Well, before christmas I carried a heavy parcel from the car park only to learn that it had closed down! I had to carry it back to the car and head for a small village post office. I would also like to know what is happening to these post offices as well. No post office in our local town centre is ridiculous !

I have recently discovered a local post office in Praze-an- Beeble, in Cornwall in a newsagents/ shop. The staff are lovely, the service is efficient and they are open all hours. They deserve to do well, with Post Offices closing and restricting hours. We used to travel miles to find one open then find they were shut for lunch or the service was bad. The good ones seem to have closed long ago.
The hours the staff put in in this Post Office / shop is remarkable now a days, long may they continue.

It is the very senior managers who are; an immoral, lying, vindictive outfit which wrecked the lives of hundreds of post masters and have resisted justice for them for years.

not the rank and file posties and sorting office management.

P.S. Post office don't have anything to do with your mail beyond receiving it. Royal Mail are responsible for delivery (or not) and the pricing.

I worked in a post office for a few years. The remuneration from Post Office Ltd, who postmasters are at the mercy of, is minimal, pennies per transaction. Every office is subsidising the post office with their retail offering. If people don't use the retail side, then the post office will close. POL have lost contract after contract to provide government services and are shifting towards a primarily PUDO, pick up drop off, service using Amazon and Evri etc.
The upshot is use the shop or lose the post office.

You wouldn’t expect decent service from an immoral, lying, vindictive outfit which wrecked the lives of hundreds of post masters and have resisted justice for them for years.
The Horizon affair is the worst injustice in this country’s history. An absolute disgrace.

I live in a medium sized, northern, market town. There's a post office near me with a lovely big sign saying it's open 9.00 - 5.00 every day except Sundays.
The queue is always long, often out of the door, even outside of the obvious busy hours. The next nearest Post Office is a train ride away.
It actually opens at 10.00am and closes at 2.00pm most days. Sometimes it doesn't open at all. There's never a notice to warn you. Sometimes the assistant just has to close leaving the queue outside as her shift is over for the day.
There's generally only one person on the counter and there's a very high turn over of staff. Most don't last more than a week or two.
There's a permanent notice up asking for applicants to work there. The owner, if in, is never on the counter and generally very loud and rude to customers and staff. He really seems to enjoy looking over the assistant's shoulder and loudly repeating personal details when customers collect benefits, withdraw cash or apply for passports etc.
The building itself is tiny, dirty and the shelves, which only contain a couple of packets of envelopes and a few postal boxes, have sharp corners and quite dangerous.
It's not a good place to be.
And now all the local banks are closing, stating the post office is going to transact their "in person" business in future!

THIS is happening to the Royal Mail/ Post Office It is true they are prioritising parcels over the actual mail I am sure there is a legal obligation to deliver the mail/letters but they are not doing it ! I am waiting for some quite serious mail and wondering if it will arrive ever? www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d30227ea-bbe1-407f-a98d-081ab1bdd075?shareToken=87be1d37280890a473426f7dcab3cbaa

Not much use having a PO counter in next village if you have no personal transport. When everything started to go wrong several years ago I searched the internet to discover that once fragmented, different parts of the former public postal service were long scattered. What most people mean by the post office is a place with counter service that also takes parcels. This deteriorating "service" is a company with one shareholder - ONE! connected probably to a government department. The main objective is to reduce costs, not provide a public service. This is why the policy is to allow formerly independently run post office when the owners retire to close, unless a local business will provide premises to house a new one. In villages, this is often not possible, and even, now in small town centres.

The United States Postal Service used to be run by the government and they were losing millions, if not billions of dollars annually. It eventually went to a PRIVATE agency within the executive branch of our govt.

It seems to be hanging on by their nails, with plenty of price increases for postage. With electronic and social media, the old fashioned snail mail is struggling everywhere. At least we have employees working the windows. It’s still a trusted service.

Although it goes to show you that the government cannot always run an enormous agency like that efficiently. Had to turn it over to private buccaneers. 🤞🏼
USA Gundy

I live in a v small town in N Derbyshire. We used to have two POs but the main one closed. However, the other "took over" and offers a fantastic service 6 days a week, most helpful staff. I am treasurer of several local organisations and use them a lot since the last bank for miles closed. The main organisation is our u3a where many members still use cash for transactions, even though I do most other things like paying bills online. I recently had a u3a member pay her annual sub with a postal order!! There are also POs in neighbouring small towns and villages, some inside local grocery shops, and they perform a vital service in an area with dire public transport.

Long live the post office!!

The PO in our local market town has closed, leaving us with a branch in the supermarket and a tiny branch in the Spar at the petrol station which closes whenever they have a delivery to deal with. A far cry from the days when my grandfather was a sub-postmaster and we had two deliveries a day and one on Christmas morning.

Posts like this makes me realise how lucky we are in our small Somerset village/town. Our local post office is spot on, the postmaster and staff are brilliant and they also run an incredibly well priced gift shop on the premises. We try to use the additional services they provide as it makes the branch a viable business for them. I genuinely appreciate how lucky we are.

When I lived in Scotland the post office was in WH Smith until the shop closed down. The P.O then transferred to a totally unsuitable shop that was cramped, cold and miserable. The staff were miserable too and I don't blame them.
Where I live now we have a P.O. inside a Londis store at a nearby petrol station. It is open from 7am- 8pm 7 days a week and I honestly cannot fault it

Granless

Our post now comes on an average every 3 days. I had a hospital appointment 5th December - the hospital letter, which was dated 30th November, arrived 6th December!
Christmas cards have arrived in bunches - no time to send one if you’ve forgotten. A neighbour went in person to our local sorting office to complain, did it make any difference, not a jot. Short-staffed was the excuse.
Credit card statements arriving a week later than usual. Twice now I’ve had to phone the company and request a duplicate.

According to a postman I know the aim is to become a parcels only delivery service which is why they are prioritising parcels over mail. Letters etc are put to one side with no distinction between first and second class hence the delays and delivery in batches. There doesn’t seem to be any plan for who will deliver mail in the future. Probably another privatised company. There doesn’t seem to be any point in buying first class stamps anymore.

What is a post office, I have not seen one since they started closing them down a few years ago. I now buy stamps online and if I order goods online and need to return them if they are faulty, I organise a collection, it is cheaper than paying for a taxi to take me to the nearest parcel drop off centre. Same when I need cash, if I am in an area where there is a supermarket, I pop in and use their ATM machine apart from that I always do online banking and grocery shopping.

Our post now comes on an average every 3 days. I had a hospital appointment 5th December - the hospital letter, which was dated 30th November, arrived 6th December!
Christmas cards have arrived in bunches - no time to send one if you’ve forgotten. A neighbour went in person to our local sorting office to complain, did it make any difference, not a jot. Short-staffed was the excuse.
Credit card statements arriving a week later than usual. Twice now I’ve had to phone the company and request a duplicate.

I haven't used a post office for years, what do people use them for?
Usually for sending post but it could also be for passports, foreign money etc
We have a main one in WHSmith with two ‘do it yourself’ machines and two counter staff seems to work ok There are also three or four other p o s dotted around the town in Spar shops etc

Ours in Coop and other wee local shops. Only 1 main PO now in our large town too. Im in Scotland

I also live up north and our post office is in Asda I think post offices started to disappear after the post office scandal that was the start of them disappearing. I’ve just had a couple of parcels picked up from home for the post office. They even brought the labels to stick on parcels. Didn’t have to leave my house lol