bertiewooster wrote:From a customer's viewpoint there's nothing more irritating than having a new service advertised to you online which proves non-existent when you turn up at a branch. Fastdrop's a perfect example of this - one arrives with a package and fastdrop form and you're made to join the (enormous) queue because the Fastdrop counter isn't staffed and they refuse to serve you at it. It's pretty straightforward: if your branch has signed up for Fastdrop, you need to staff the counter. If you can't do that reliably, don't sign your branch up for the service (ditto the dedicated Special Delivery counter - if you can't staff it, don't offer it as a service).
As for the Ebay prepaid labels, one can appreciate how people get confused: a preprinted ebay label is indistinguishable from a preprinted fastdrop label, at least to an ordinary customer. It would make a lot more sense for those paying for postage via ebay to be offered the Fastdrop option at the same time. As it is, any ebay customer who knows what they're doing (i.e. has learnt the hard way) will avoid paying for postage via ebay, and instead go straight to the Royal Mail website so that they can use Fastdrop, particularly as doing this also gives far more (and cheaper) postage options anyway.
We have a Fastdrop position, we didn't 'sign up' for it, we didn't choose it, and we don't have the staff to man it. It was installed during the CORP refurbishment programme, no questions, no consultation, just installation. Then, in a blinding display of typical POL forward thinking, we had an AEI machine installed at that very position, with the Fastdrop signage left intact as there was 'no budget' to have it removed. So now we have customers bursting in to drop off the occasional prepaid item whilst we are trying to take someone's photo etc!! You could not make it up. The irony of the customers demanding to be served in the AEI booth to beat the queue, was on every occasion there was no queue whatsoever, but they've paid their 25p so they wanted their money's worth!! I have breached God knows how many H&S rules by climbing on the counter with a pair of wire cutters, and the signage has been removed, which has stopped the problem, and to be honest we were lucky(!) if we took in 2 items a week.
