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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