Grumble Thread

[oddoneout]

The PO managed it before - why not now??

It wasn't competing with companies able to cherry pick the easy bits.

[Serial_Apologist]

It wasn't competing with companies able to cherry pick the easy bits.

[subcontrabass]

Royal Mail still has the expensive service obligations to fulfill as well - it has to deliver to all households and a certain number of times/days per week. It may have managed to reduce the number of deliveries(no second post).

During my time as an undergraduate the number of daily deliveries to Oxford colleges was reduced from four to three on the grounds that there was insufficient mail being delivered in the fourth (late afternoon) delivery for it to be viable.

[smittims]

We get no mail all week and then a stack of stuff on a Friday.

[oddoneout]

We get no mail all week and then a stack of stuff on a Friday.

Some of which may be down to bulk mailings delivered by Royal Mail for/through other companies?

[Dave2002]

Apparently in days gone by in Sheffield it was possible for someone to go to work in the morning, then write a letter or short note informing others in their family when they would return home later in the day, and it would be delivered to the not too far outer reaches - Dore - Totley etc. by the second or third posts, having been transported by rail.

Different times!

[cria]

Different times? Yes.

You can get a Santa bobbly tea cosy all the way from the Amazon in time to use it for breakfast tomorrow

[Pulcinella]

We need an Utter Madness thread.

Just had a letter from Royal Mail.
Inside was an unopened letter we had sent to the correct address as given on the form we filled in (Stamp Swap, Freepost), together with a brand-new preprinted envelope to put the returned letter in, to send to:

You guessed!
Stamp Swap
Freepost

admittedly with a full address in Edinburgh too.

No wonder the organisation is losing money hand over fist!

[french frank]

I'm still waiting for letter to arrive, posted to me on 8 December. (No, I haven't replied yet because I haven't had the letter).

[smittims]

I treasure two postcards , posted in the early 1960s, which I found inside the sleeve of a second-hand Lp of Sibelius' Violin Concerto. The former owner was a compulsive achivist who kept everything and noted it in charts and lists.

He had replied to a 'for sale' advert in Gramophone. His letter would have gone from Liverpool to a box number in Kenton, Harrow. The first card (from the vendor in Crewe) replied to this. The second replied to his next letter agreeing to buy the disc, which was sent to him trusting he would send the money. All this happened in a week! Halcyon days...

[LMcD]

I'm still waiting for letter to arrive, posted to me on 8 December. (No, I haven't replied yet because I haven't had the letter).

One of the residents in the local care home received a Christmas card today, posted in Sydney on the 10th of December.

[Serial_Apologist]

One of the residents in the local care home received a Christmas card today, posted in Sydney on the 10th of December.

I never realised that pigeons migrate...

[kernelbogey]

Apparently in days gone by in Sheffield it was possible for someone to go to work in the morning, then write a letter or short note informing others in their family when they would return home later in the day, and it would be delivered to the not too far outer reaches - Dore - Totley etc. by the second or third posts, having been transported by rail.

Different times!

A former neighbour in Hampshire told me should could post a letter in the morning to her sister in Putney, who would receive it in the afternoon. I can't be sure now, but I think this was probably the 1940s, postwar.

[Serial_Apologist]

A former neighbour in Hampshire told me should could post a letter in the morning to her sister in Putney, who would receive it in the afternoon. I can't be sure now, but I think this was probably the 1940s, postwar.

Post persons must have been kept exceptionally busy back in Edwardian times. After my grandfather died we discovered numerous endearing "letter cards" exchanged between him and my grandmother-to-be while they were courting. Sometimes up to four a day in both directions! My father explained that people would spend large parts of their otherwise unoccupied time (at weekends) communicating by writing letters to one another - this was before telephones became a regular domestic fixture - and the postman - it was always a "he" - would spend all day walking or cycling between the post boxes under his aegis and the distribution depot, of which there was usually at least one within a mile in most urban and suburban contexts.

[Cockney Sparrow]

In the Sunday Times yesterday, an article detailing of their investigation (reporters sent to work in delivery offices as postpersons) into the many, many complaints of sporadic delivery of letters - including court notices and hospital appointments received after the relevant dates.
Staff are briefed that the commercial future for the loss making Royal Mail is the delivery of parcels - predominantly small parcels from important large and regular customers. And when a postman has been unable to deliver all of the items in their round they are to ask what to do - and the manager invariably will say to prioritise the parcels.

Senior management staunchly hold the line that there is no such policy and the legal requirement to deliver mail 6 days a week to reach the set targets is the operational reality on the ground. Senior management either out of touch, wilfully ensuring they are ignorant of the reality, or are duplicitous actors to which the truth is a stranger. Given the postmaster scandal, who would have thought it possible... ?

I asked our postman about the delayed delivery of an important letter, eventually in a big batch of mail, and he regretfully explained that when he was on holiday, most days his round wasn't covered, or only partially and he faced the backlog when he returned. He encouraged me to complain - he seemed heartily sick of the situation.