UKCasual

Just like everyone else right now, posties are overworked, underpaid and crippled by "targets".

Bloody terrible for me. I don't get deliveries for weeks at a time, and then I get a whole load all at once. Not fit for purpose.

Worked for royal mail as postie for nearly 15 years now, was an incredible job and a decent company to work for but now they are racing to become Amazon whilst also trying to ger rid of the uso ( government agreed 6 day a week mail service that hits targets) we are tracked and given more work than possible and they are now bringing in a new workforce on terrible contracts for less money. Our strikes did nothing because the company is rogue asf.

What I hate is that companies can pay to have posties deliver their junk mail to you, and you have to jump through a lot of hoops to ‘opt out’.

You’re ‘opted in’ by default, of course… 🤬

I don't really think it's possible to talk about the decline and asset stripping of Royal Mail without breaking the no politics rule. It's dimise has been caused by ideology.

That said, it sounds like I've been lucky to have a decent postie.

I sent a letter at 2pm from Belfast and it arrived in Durham the following morning first class numerous times, seems fair enough to me. Sounds like you just have a bad postie vs royal mail itself

We're rural, and often postman and couriers are the only people we see day to day, so we build a good relationship with them. It's a 20 minute trip to the closest postbox, so they often pick up our outgoing parcels too (I sell stuff through ebay so there's quite a few)

Two years ago our postie of 12 years said he was leaving because there wasn't enough staff, deadlines were too tight and management wasn't coping well. Local POs closing, even our regional sorting office closed and went elsewhere. Deliveries were missed, booked pickups too. The worst was when they came to collect a parcel, but it had been collected the day before. Instead they took one clearly marked "Hermes" from outside our house and only having the Hermes label, which was a £90 car heater I'd just sold. I immediately rang the number but despite the lady trying to trace him down, it vanished. If I hadn't had caught him on cctv I'd never have known where it had gone. I lost all that money, including the Hermes fee.

We had a few random postmen since then, changing every week, but now have settled down to a regular one and we're lucky in that he's one of the great ones who goes out of his way to be helpful. He's also a biker so we have have that in common too.

Never had the sort of shenanigans you’re talking about, but there’s definitely been a decline in service – late deliveries, posties racing the clock, and a general sense of perpetual crisis.

Homemade pizza is something else though. Love a nice thin and crispy margherita straight from the oven.

I definitely used to feel somewhat comforted when I knew a package I'd ordered online was being delivered by RM, cos I could usually trust that it would be on time and in one piece. The last, I don't know, five or six things I've ordered that have been delivered by RM have been delivered literally up to a week later than the timeline. Gimme DPD or DHL anyday.

I haven’t experienced too many issues with post being lost, but delivery times have definitely got a lot worse over the years.

Once upon a time you could post a local letter in the morning and it would be delivered that afternoon. Now it seems lucky if anything gets there the same week.

Now that you mention it, I have recently started occasionally getting next door's post through my letterbox although I'm pretty sure I have the same postwoman as before!

Generally, deliveries are OK (I think this just depends on the quality of the local workers) but there seem to be more problems further up the chain in the offices or depots. For example, I sent off the form to replace old stamps with the QR coded versions several months ago, and never heard anything back, so that's a fiver down the drain. My small act of protest will be to refuse to buy any postage from now on, and try to use alternatives if I absolutely need to send anything physical.

edit: I actually contacted RM about it: they said the stamps were sent out, and agreed to send another lot, so that worked out OK.

Our postman refuses to ring the bell for some reason, but otherwise I find them fairly reliable.

I run an online business and have had quite a big increase in people not getting their items since the beginning of the year.

No issues in my area, sorry.

I had a letter today with the postman's boot print on it. That is all.