I am writing with a couple of complaints regarding the postal service to my house over the last couple of months. When the decision was announced to reduce the “second delivery”, I didn’t bat an eyelid. For as long as I can remember I have never received a second post, so therefore thought that it wouldn’t affect me.
How wrong I was. Within the space of a week, my post stopped arriving at roughly 7:30am and instead now arrives around 3 hours later. It’s annoying enough to no longer get my mail before I leave for work in the morning, but the problem is made vastly worse by the number of items I buy via the internet, over the phone and so forth which I then have to collect from a “local” sorting office. Note those quotes. I’ll get back to them later.
It’s getting intensely annoying to come home a couple of times a week to little cards that say “Sorry, we weren’t able to deliver this item because…” when the actual reason you weren’t able to deliver the item is that delivery times are now all after 9am when the vast majority of working people are not at home.
Putting an advert on TV with Elton John saying how good it is to buy things through the mail is all fine and dandy. I’m sure Elton has someone looking after his house 24/7 to sign for any packages. Sadly, as I don’t earn his kind of money, I don’t.
To add insult to injury I apparently live on a postcode border between BD8 and BD13. This means that even though there is a sorting office around 200 yards from my front door, all my packages are delivered from (and returned to) one in central Bradford (classed as Bradford North), nearer 3 miles away and a traffic nightmare on weekday mornings. This office is only open from 6:45 to 12:30 Monday to Saturday, making it very difficult and inconvenient to get to.
It’s taking an enormous amount of my own time to collect packages that I should be able to receive at a reasonable time in the morning, or failing that from a sorting office I actually drive past on the way to work. While I have no problem at all with your delivery and sorting staff – they have all been very understanding and polite when I have raised my concerns – I appreciate that there is nothing they can do, and the issues have been caused by managerial types much further up the chain who haven’t given a thought to the consequences and degradation of service as a result of their decisions. Seriously – what is the point of deciding that deliveries start at 9am when most people are at work from 9-5?
You are supposed to be offering a postal delivery service. Not acting as an inconvenient and illogically placed holding store for me to waste my time journeying to during a small timeframe that suits you. If there is a way of getting my packages sent to the nearer sorting office (obviously at no extra charge and with no additional delay and without having to move house to the other side of the main road which I think would be a little extreme) then I’d be delighted to hear it. Alternatively, if there was a way of getting back to the postal service I actually valued and appreciated I’d be even more interested.
[let’s see if that gets a response]
I bet it gets lost in the post :p
I was worried about that. Tempted to send it recorded delivery, but that didn’t save one of the DVDs I sent recently.
Sod it. It’s Freepost. If it doesn’t get a reply in 4 weeks I’ll send it again.
And again. etc.
Sent to Post Office customer services for the reasons stated in the post. I’m just sick of having to traipse all the way into town to pick up packages that should be delivered when I’m still at home anyway.
I don’t know when you get your post, Chris, but mine used to arrive by 7:30 most mornings. As of about 5-6 months ago, it’s now arriving nearer 10:30 when I’m at work.
Where and why did you send that to?