TNT and your delivery office.

[Martin Walsh]

I have had quite of bit experience of TNT in delivery and they are in West London , West End , The CIty , North West London and South West London but with The funding they will be in over 40% of urban areas. They only deliver letters and as they currently have 23% of the DSA market they can simply switch from using the inward Mail centre and Royal Mail Delivery Service to bypassing Royal Mail altogether.

They deliver to same addresses 3 timed per week and pay £7.10 per hour and the average contract is 25 hours. TNT have no quality standards.

TNT take on average 10% of an offices work within the first 6 months. However because the items are mainly mech letters it works out at 20% of your sequence Mail. The real concern is most MPUs now operate 70% of the first wave 30% on second wave. With 20% of this gone if offices lose more Mail Royal Mail could run the sequencing Mail all on one wave which would mean that offices would have much later starts , Mail centre nights and mgvs would be reduced and more part timers would be the norm.

The threat to the USO and rurals is very real as at the moment rurals and small towns have their Mail subsidised by cities and big towns but TNT are taking revenue from Royal Mail.

Off comm are refusing to take any action until Royal Mail improve the range of effieceny across the business hence the appointment of a top 100 manager whose job is talk to off comm and improve effieceny gaps.

The other major concern since Christmas is that Amazon have increased their own delivery service using couriers . Hermes and yodel. In fact in the Croydon and Bromley area Amazon bought up 3 courier companies who deliver all the amazon packets for those postcodes.

It's a double whammy ! Amazon have an option next year to buy a 20% share of Yodel.

So should we be concerned yes. Who would have said that within 2 years Royal Mails 2 biggest customers would become their 2 biggest competitors ?

We have to bring in new products , and that will mean tracking of parcels via PDAs and a range of other options to stem the decline .

[human1]

I bet there will be a major change before christmas. There are not many packets/parcels coming from Amazon and its noticeable.

[indio]

I sent a parcel last week by Hermes, signed for cost me £4.68...... Rm signed for would have cost £7.25!!!!

Interesting to know how much extra it costs RM to pay for our final salary pension, holiday/sick pay, £10+/ph pay etc or are you saying you'd prefer our customers paid £4.68 and you'd be happy on a zero hours contract, no pension or holiday pay etc?

[SpacePhoenix]

RM are going to have to make every single last item (except d2ds) trackable sooner rather then later. RM must be the only courier firm in the UK that doesn't track every item in its network. I wouldn't be surprised to see RM close MPUs in areas where TNT operate

[bustedflush]

I am a free marketeer. I don't like monopolies usually. Whether RM is part govt./part shareholder owned or fully nationalized doesn't bother me that much. This is because I have a Union which should strive (and has done to be fair) to maintain my working conditions.

What DOES bother me is that nobody seems to have a grasp of the practicalities of mail/packet logistics in conjunction with the USO obligation. I wouldn't trust f*ck-offcom with a kettle and coffee cup let alone to grasp this point.

The point is that we and the public love the USO - we and our forebears and theirs before were blessed with what I believe is the wonderful service of 6-day delivery to all UK addresses where accessible. Now this is expensive and we all know relies on dense areas subsidizing sparse areas. The amount of packets and letters that enable this service are finite. At present, RM is expected to provide that USO with a smaller and smaller proportion of those finite items. So, in the short term we can raise prices, but they will soon hit a point (very soon!) when the unfair competition can price us out of the market as we are tied to the USO.

IF the competition was forced to act under the USO too, then they would be forced out of the market overnight due to the colossal costs involved in having to set up the same infrastructure as RM, thus leaving RM a monopoly as before. If they aren't, then RM is doomed. There can be, as I see it, NO middle ground i.e. as now TNT et al effectively subcontracting RM to deliver items on their behalf while getting little profit from them to enable USO to continue at a profitable level.

If we did get two companies (i.e. RM and TNT) to offer USO services, then there are only two ways it could work - firstly, split the UK geographically and both companies maintained the USO for half, still making the same pro-rata profits but with only a half-size RM and keeping prices as now, or secondly, both companies offering a national USO thus each having half of the finite business, but charging double the prices in order to stay afloat. Either way we all lose, the public, the employees - everybody.

I think even Thatcher spotted this back in her time, that national postal delivery isn't like other industries which could be opened up to competition like telecoms and energy etc. In our industry there aren't the corners there to be cut.

RM is doomed as far as I can see, if the present scenario is allowed to continue.

[DavidFS]

Seems strange that I spent the whole day delivering council letters for TNT Post to every address which took us over my time and there was a TNT Postie virtually on the same route as us delivering door to doors. I'm sure it makes sense to some-one

[human1]

................ TNT and Amazon are in .... so where do you see Royal Mail in the end of next year ( or perhaps in the end of this year )? Doomed or what ? more changing in delivery system ?

[terry2972]

Busted flush I agree with your post why cant the so called leaders of this country see what is happening to the post service and that we might not have one shortly unless somebody wakes up and smells the roses !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DavidFS]

Think the worst thing Royal Mail can do is make wholesale changes.
TNT are making in-roads at the moment because they've got an aggressive Sales Team who make promises they cannot possibly deliver. In my last company we used to deal with them but we switched to Yodel because they became so expensive once original contract expired and quite frankly their service was terrible. Think we're seeing the results of their promises in all the negative press they've been receiving about dumped/damaged mail. Think Royal Mail will win back a lot of customers without even trying.
As for Amazon. When they realize the huge costs involved with providing a delivery service in the UK. They may change their mind about further investment in the future. Not sure how that one will pan out.

[Brain Fury]

Think the worst thing Royal Mail can do is make wholesale changes.
TNT are making in-roads at the moment because they've got an aggressive Sales Team who make promises they cannot possibly deliver. In my last company we used to deal with them but we switched to Yodel because they became so expensive once original contract expired and quite frankly their service was terrible. Think we're seeing the results of their promises in all the negative press they've been receiving about dumped/damaged mail. Think Royal Mail will win back a lot of customers without even trying.
As for Amazon. When they realize the huge costs involved with providing a delivery service in the UK. They may change their mind about further investment in the future. Not sure how that one will pan out.

It will be interesting to see the impact of the negative publicity that TNT are getting on their end-to-end mail service.

As for Amazon, they see the introduction of their own delivery service as a way of maintaining the growth of their business, cutting costs and improving customer service (by delivering evenings and weekends). They have also introduced their own delivery service in the USA and even working on the development of the delivery drone service (which I still find hard to believe) so it looks like they are pretty committed to taking delivery into their own hands. That cannot be good news for us.

[borders]

its the slippery slope no doubt, Royal Mail will be somewhat scaled down further , especially when Amazon achieve their goals on being less reliant on RM . I can see some sort of USO because it will become apparent to the Gov/Ofcom that RM can no longer burden the cost and there will be no other choice than to allow RM to push the prices up or it could be curtains for RM. I cant see the Gov allowing RM to go bust because of the embarrassment that would bring but we will be a shadow of our former self.
the upside , loads of minimum wage , non-unionised jobs with basic terms and conditions = more profit for the fat cats ...... nice

[newtimes]

its the slippery slope no doubt, Royal Mail will be somewhat scaled down further , especially when Amazon achieve their goals on being less reliant on RM . I can see some sort of USO because it will become apparent to the Gov/Ofcom that RM can no longer burden the cost and there will be no other choice than to allow RM to push the prices up or it could be curtains for RM. I cant see the Gov allowing RM to go bust because of the embarrassment that would bring but we will be a shadow of our former self.
the upside , loads of minimum wage , non-unionised jobs with basic terms and conditions = more profit for the fat cats ...... nice

If our rate of pay goes down, should it be reflected in the pay rate we pay our CWU full time officials. Should the maximum we pay them be and average take home pay of an OPG and they can only serve 2 terms of office then go back to develop the grass roots at branch level or join RM management.

[clashcityrocker]

First wave sequenced "tray" today - 37 letters.

[dvbuk55]

Probably the future holds nothing but trouble. It's not that this hadn't been spotted long ago with lots of people talking about cherry picking the service. Everyone must have thought you needed a like for like system to make inroads into RMs profits but obviously that's not true. Stick to letters, use bikes and cheap labour and only deliver every other day from small units tucked away on industrial estates. That's just TNT, now take DPD and other high end operatives and we are way, way behind them in terms of technology for tracking an item.

[Chitchat]

Competition is in every business, what Royalmail needs to do is lead the way rather then follow way behind of everyone else. What customers want is their product now. So I would start by removing second class on packets/ parcels and everything goes next day as standard.