Royal Mail staff to strike.

The trouble with Royal Mail is that every one thinks it’s a next day delivery, and you’ll be very lucky if you get that. It’s normally up to a week, and quite a high percentage never gets there.
Our post people are fantastic, but they are a horrible company to deal with, probably because they don’t really have any competition in the small packets and letters.
But I must emphasise, I think the post men and women do a really great job.

We haven't had any post for 4 days now - nor have the neighbours,

I did try to phone the sorting office, but no answer there.

Poor service, and getting worse.?

DiamondLily
It seems that if your regular postman/lady
Is on leave, or ill, there will be no one to cover.
I don’t know is that’s a nationwide policy, but it’s what happens in our area.

I'm not one for looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses, but I think I'm right that a first class stamp meant that post got there the next day, and second class was 2-3 days. Parcels could be sent with confidence that they would arrive, and if you weren't there to take them in they would go to the sorting office. And all of this cost a lot less than it does now, even allowing for inflation.

Postmen have never been well paid, but they had a job for life, and got really good pensions and conditions. No more - these are also under being eroded, so of course there will be a higher turnover of staff. If it worked then, with less technology, why can't it work now? The only difference I can see (apart from legislation against unions) is that what used to be a nationalised industry is now responsible to shareholders.

I'm not saying that nationalisation is a byword for efficiency, as we all know it wasn't; but there is no denying that things were a whole lot better when millions wasn't being creamed off to pay dividends.