Not content with providing only a third-class service on deliveries, across Croydon, the suits who run Royal Mail have been sticking barely visible notices on post boxes to explain how they are now dismantling their previously reasonably dependable collection service.
Inside Croydon has reported before about the increasingly unreliable delivery service being provided by privatised Royal Mail’s officials.
LibDem Vince Cable, the enabler of this Tory privatisation, must be feeling so, so proud.
Unable to meet the requirements of its expected delivery service, Royal Mail management has spent much of the past decade seeking to redefine its terms, downgrading it from the minimum of one delivery a day, six days a week service.
Blink and you’d miss it: Royal Mail are not trying very hard to let their customers know they are reducing collections. Only a small sticker carries the announcement
And likewise, in another cost-cutting effort, Royal Mail are now looking to reduce the number of post box collections – to such an extent that Royal Mail customers may soon not bother to buy a postage stamp or stick anything in the iconic red pillar boxes ever again.
Eagle-eyed Inside Croydon readers have spotted very small notices going up on pillar boxes near them announcing a change in collection times.
“There is not now an afternoon collection, just ‘sometime’ during the morning,” says a reader of their post box in Croydon Old Town.
Others have seen similar little notes being stuck to their post boxes in South Croydon, too (though with different implementation dates).
The notices are a word salad, lacking in clarity, probably intended to confuse. The changes, the Royal Mail message states, are “in order to improve efficiency”. Aren’t they always?
On one pillar box, it states: “From 1 April 2024, the final collection from this post box will be made no earlier than 9am Monday to Friday and 7am on Saturday. The latest collection time for this area is shown on the post box notice.” That latest collection time is 4pm.
There’s otherwise been no great publicity about this significant downgrading of the collections service. It looks like “A change ‘on the quiet’,” according to our reader.
Getting a close-up: the Royal Mail sticker
Hard-working, hard-pressed Royal Mail staff say that this is all just the latest management ruse to reduce costs by removing a significant part of the service.
“Our postie collected the mail from our postbox at 11.55 today. I spoke to him and said I thought the post was collected at 4pm. He said it’s any time after 9am now.
“I checked our main post office. A similar small sticker. If I didn’t know this, I could have posted a first-class letter this afternoon and expect it to be collected today and delivered tomorrow.
“What is the point of first-class post if you have to guess when the post has been collected or chase around to find a box that hasn’t been emptied yet?
Another reader told us: “A local postman also drew my attention to this, explaining that not only do they have to deliver around here, they also have to collect from these boxes.”
The latest downgrading of the Royal Mail service appears designed to drive away what remaining custom the once-proud service has left.
“I will never buy first-class stamps again, there is no point,” said one disillusioned ex-customer.
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
The “no earlier than 9am Monday to Friday and 7am Saturday” collection arrangement has applied to many post boxes in Croydon for a few years now. I have to walk 15 minutes for my nearest post box that has an afternoon or early evening collection. It seems Royal Mail are intent on increasing the number of boxes that have the early collection.
I left Royal Mail nearly six years ago. It was happening then in RG5, RG10, RG6 and RG4 and probably many others.
I’m a postie in Kent.
These changes were designed to reduce the number of pm collections runs which are a separate duty, typically done by a postie after his delivery duty.
Instead far more boxes are done as part of a delivery duty and the labour hours and wage bill is cut.
I wouldn’t say there’s ‘no point’ to first class now; in fact it’s second class which might soon seem pointless as Royal Mail’s proposal is to put 2nd class letters and packets into your posties’ hands only five days per fortnight.
Clearly there’s no point in still having a ‘latest collection’ on such boxes as the collection could well have happened hours earlier.
Royal Mail is in a death spiral. They say that fewer letters are being sent , their only answer is to reduce the service and increase the price. This can’t end well.
Successive managers have run Royal Mail into the ground. Delivery offices are so short handed that even with posties delivering extra walks, walks are still left undelivered because there is no one left to do the job. Still the bosses are hell bent on change for changes sake, changing start and finish times leaving posties to be still working when they would’ve been collecting children from school so they have to pay someone to look after their children. And they wonder why no one wants to do this job.
What is going to happen with post (new appointment letters and consultation summaries) sent by the National Health Service to patients? Especially NHS correspondence sent to people who don’t have access to their NHS correspondence and appointments online?
There are already many issues with NHS letters and not just the post.
Sometimes the letters are not even sent. The box is just ticked on the PC to say it was sent but never printed.
Many patients especially those with mutiple conditions are discharged for not attending appointments they were not even aware of.
Others are booked for appointments when they have other appointments and then discharged also for the one they did not attend.
They then have to seek a new GP appointment to get a new referral.
That is just the tip of that.
Some Hospitals are pretty good with rebooking others could not care at all.
One can be a cynic and point to the correalation that those hospitals managing the appointments in certain ways seem to be ones that are pretty good at reducing waiting lists.
A better way perhaps now would be not to look at lists but look at the time from original referral to completion of treatment so as to accurately reflect a Hospital and CEOs performance.
I’ve worked as a trunk HGV driver for Royal Mail, most recently last summer. I can confirm that parcels are greatly prioritised over letters; the overwhelming majority of the carts (called yorks) we loaded onto the trucks were full of parcels; very few had letters in them. The organisation also has very poor worker/management relations; there is always someone to lecture you about yellow jackets (they have to be long sleeved, even in broad daylight on a summer day, which given the nasty synthetic material makes it extremely uncomfortable) but when you need to ask a question there is no one to be found.