The Royal Mail and Citylink appreciation thread

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train boi Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Posts: 697

They are meant to be on strike, so that made me think, NO POST Very Happy

2 days without post and bills Very Happy

. I got post over the 3 days of the strike! Are the royal mail that incompetent to not be able to strike properly?

Rant over! No wonder they are losing customers left right and centre!

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:57 am

they seem to have a strike at the sorting office one day, then the posties strike on another, so it is screwed up both days. I'm chasing someone at the moment with a view to turning up on my motorbike and picking up a cheque rather than trusting the post.

If we learn anything from history, its that striking when there are alternatives in your industry for customers to switch to (and never come back) can get you what you want in the short term, but help you lose your job in the long run, ie the railways, docks, steel coal etc. Sad

train boi Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Posts: 697

At least when us railway types strike people know about it. If they are going to strike at least make an impact rather than get on peoples tits!

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I was talking to our postie this morning as he handed over a package.
They're out at the sorting office one day, other offices the next and the posties on the rounds will be out on Saturday

train boi Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Posts: 697

@Nanny Ogg

If I get post please bully your postman for me!!

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 1:33 pm

It's a pain this strike but a bigger nightmare is Amazon using City Link now, they are like a baiter courier company in that nothing ever gets delivered properly.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

^
OMG City Link must be amongst the worst
They once walked past our door (with our name on it ) and posted a note through our holidaying neighbours, or there was the time they phoned my daughter to ask her address?? She reasonably replied it would be on the parcel, so they said if thats your attitude we're not delivering it! ( I sorted them out Twisted Evil

)

Yes sounds like a baiting courier service

@ Jay
I dont bully the postie but am sweet and kind, but of course I'm that way with everybody

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 1:53 pm

^^last thing they tried to deliver, I phoned their head office and asked WTF was going on. "The driver didn't get a response and put a note through the door" was the reply. I'd been gardening next to our drive all morning, there was no note and no attempted delivery, apparently they have a reputation for doing this. Never had a problem with the Royal Mail.

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:27 pm

Rodus wrote:

It's a pain this strike but a bigger nightmare is Amazon using City Link now, they are like a baiter courier company in that nothing ever gets delivered properly.

Noooooooo I'm waiting on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 from Amazon. Bas***ds had better deliver it on time Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 10:56 pm

Just wondering . . . why do you folks in the UK have the Royal Mail to deliver your post and in the USA we have a Post Office that delivers our mail?

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 689

^^^^ We have THE Queen ... all you have is Queens (New York ... not g....) Laughing

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 1:33 pm

@ Lakeside77,

We used to have the General Post office (GPO) that ran the mail system, the telephone network, the Post Offices themselves, and many other services.
Then someone hit on the idea that if this giant government monopoly was to be split into various parts, they could be sold off and soemone somewhere would make a fortune, get knighted, retire with a big fat pension, and the world would have been put to rights.

Thus we have British Telecom for the phones system (plus all the competitors), the Royal Mail (with some half-hearted competition) for the postal delivery, the Post Offices (under what was called Post Office Counters PLC) which are being closed as most of their busness has been opened up to competition and they can't make a profit any more. These are all now effectively private companies and without the subsidies they once enjoyed from the government are struggling to make enough profit to keep the shareholders, CEO's, MD's etc happy.

A lot of the so-called competition to the Royal Mail, actually use the Royal Mail for the delivery of letters and parcels. Companies like TNT for example. The Courier companies do not deal with letter post and are limited by their license as to how and what they can handle.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

^
Sums it up nicely HH
And we have the Scouts at Christmas for delivering cards

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:53 pm

@Hitchhiker, thanks. I was actually being whimsical but your post gives a good backdrop for the topic at hand i.e., the postal workers' strike in the UK. Apparently, the GPS went through the same transformation as the Deutsche Bundespost.

In the US we once had a cabinet level Post Office Department that spun off to the US Postal Service (USPS) in the early 1970s. The USPS is a quasi-governmental agency with a mandate to be self-sufficient (no public subsidy). Consequently, USPS postal fees have increased close to 1000% since its founding and talk today is about closing post offices and eliminating Saturday delivery. USPS has to compete with the likes of FedEx and UPS for parcel delivery but, due to an interpretation of the Constitution, maintains a monopoly over letter mail. USPS employees, unlike other civil servants, can bargain over pay and working conditions and can go on strike, although some proposed legislation would eliminate these rights.

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:56 am

FedEx and UPS do deliver letters - but it's expensive. One wouldn't use them to send Little Sally's birthday card, unless one is sending Little Sally a sizeable check in the card and want to be very sure of its on-time and safe delivery.

Many US mail trucks have the steering wheel on the right side so the driver can drive along the street and pop the mail into curb-side mailboxes without leaving the seat.

And the Postmaster in a local Post Office is always the PostMASTER, even if said Postmaster is female.

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