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Well my post arrived eventually - just before 4.00pm today. Different postmen day after day.

Does anyone know what is going on?

Mine comes around 13:00 - 14:00 now, used to be about 10:00 - 11:00. Had a letter the other day explaining that they are re-organising the rounds to increase efficiency, and as a result postal delivery times will change.

It's not the end of the world, RM still offer various options for guaranteed delivery services, if something is that important.

Of course it is not the end of the world Matt.

Not that long ago we used to have two deliveries at day, one early morning and the second around noon.

Until this recent latest change in deliveries we got mail between 1 and 2 pm.

The erosion of the Post Office and its services goes on to produce figures that will make it interesting to private buyers of the whole system.

I keep hoping that as my life starts towards its end the young will pick up the baton and fight for standards of service. If not you will end up with what scraps are thrown for you to scavange.

So who gets my previous delivery slot of 8.30am-10.00am? If it's all getting delivered still, I can't see the benefit!

Whoever is first on the route. I'd hazard a guess they are using less agency postman to reduce costs, and perhaps rotating existing postmen when one round is busier than usual (hence the different postmen).

As I said previously, there is no loss of standards, the standards are met, so long as you're willing to pay for it. We're living in the modern world, and imho, it's about time the Royal Mail had some competition in the industry. The same thing happened whilst BT still had the monopoly, but since they lost complete control of the network, internet in the UK has improved ten-fold, alongside massive price reductions.

I can order from ebuyer at 23:00 and have it delivered before 09:00 the following day. Now that is service.

I dont care what time it comes. Nothing that important ever comes in it anyway. I only ever see my postman during periods of unemployment so i dont know the regular patten. I get more charity bags and fast food leaflets than mail anyway.

What I don't really understand is how Royal Mail's competitors can take on mail from the big companies but the normal postman ends up delivering it. How does that make sense? Virtually every day our postie brings stuff from DHL, TNT etc.Clearly those companies are creaming off the easy stuff and leaving Royal Mail with the non or low profit ordinary mail.Hardly seems like fair competition to me.

It's similar to BT's gradually eroding monopoly on the telephony system - they have control over the "last mile". It's cheaper for companies like Sky etc, to send letters by UK Mail for instance, but at some point, they end up in RM's sorting office, where UK Mail have to pay them to deliver the mail.

Currently, RM's control over the last mile for regular mail deliveries, is protected by law; when there are postal strikes, if you want a letter delivering, UK Mail, TNT etc can all deliver it for you, but it has to be delivered in the form of a parcel and thus costs considerably more (though the likes of TNT were running special promotions at the last postal strike, for businesses wishing to send letters [as parcels] in order to drum up future business relationships thus gaining business from RM - something RM's workers don't give a shit about, and then have the audacity moan about job cuts, hellooooo??).

RM don't have any protection for final point of delivery, any of the competition can start doing this but it would take a massive investment in a somewhat volatile market.

I'm pretty sure BT haven't any protection any longer either.

Why were the competing companies telling customers they couldn't to deliver mail to businesses, unless in the form of parcels, at the last mail strike then?

BT's protection has been eroded, but no matter how much BT Group want to argue, the fact remains that Openreach and BT Retail/Wholesale are sister companies, and since Openreach have tried everything in their power to network restrict access to the likes of Easynet etc, to prevent competitors being able to offer cheaper services, and slowdown the installation of competitors customer broadband services, there is still foul play taking place. It's not the first time I have heard of people having murder waiting on Openreach to enable x providers connection, only to phone BT up and enquire, and to be told that if they go with BT Broadband, it would be up and running in 48 hours...

If it were a fair market, the BT Group should be forced to relinquish/sell either control of Openreach, or the BT Retail/Wholesale divisions.

On a sidenote, I see Openreach got a bit of a battering from Ofcom today, which will hopefully go towards cheaper prices for our services.

Ah I see, it is a legal restriction, though subtle enough for the government and RM bosses to argue there is "nothing stopping them":


One rule for one, and a different rule for everyone else, hardly makes for a fair playing field.

Source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8327863.stm

I was talking to my regular postman the other day and he told me he mightn't be on this round much longer because the RM were giving the longest serving postmen a choice of which round they wanted to do and since then it's been a different postman and later deliveries

Probably in an attempt to stop them spitting their dummies out and going on strike again, thus leading to more loss of business and further job cuts.

It's the long-serving ones who tend to strike, as they think the company should revolve and evolve around their needs, rather than the needs of the business or the customer.

It's very easy to bash Royal Mail and yes prices have increased as the years have moved on. Leaving that aside and thinking about what you get for your 46 pence - IMHO Royal Mail really is exceptional value for money

TNT did a trial in Liverpool in 2009 of delivering to letterboxes.

How on earth do you define the difference between a letter delivery and a parcel delivery?