Do Royal mail still class us as a letter delivery company?

roytheboy · Post by **roytheboy** » 29 Jul 2020, 12:50

Having had a visit to our office recently from the South wests area manager, I feel it seems clear that Royal mail wants to see the end of letters so we are some kind of parcel company, this after 350 odd years of being known for letter deliveries to the general public.
I said in conversation that RM missed a trick during lockdown with not advertising some letters campaign given people were at home & not visiting friends & family but that was just poo pooed as it wouldnt have generated much interest, i dissagreed then & I still do but that made me realise RM doesnt care for letters anymore.
If you live in rural areas like mine then this is a vital service but it has become increasingly obvious that service doesn't matter where letters are concerned.
During the pandemic, managers did not seem to worry about leaving vast amounts of mail behind in frames on a daily basis, yes we were overloaded with parcels during the lockdown but it didn't seem right to me, as a postie of 31 years that letters did not matter, which was regularly said by managers throughout this time, we then had the no letters delivery at all on Saturdays, which confused many people when they saw you out & about delivering parcels.
I am glad I am not starting a job with RM now & at nearly 57 the reality for me is I could have anywhere up to another10 years of working given how our pensions are now utterly unfit for purpose, if the truth be told, we have someone who is nearly 73 still working a part time round of 32 hours in our office, although to be fair he is a fit & spritely guy for his age, but who in all honesty wants to keep working at that age what with the ever increasing expectations that RM have on us posties these days, expecting us to be on our feet for the whole day delivering, 6,7 or 8 hours a day is what they really want, cue all the sickness & health issues which must be prevalent throughout RM workforce even now, many days I'm just dead on my feet & to knackered to do anything else at home when I've finished work as a rural postie, so its a worry wondering what plans are afoot.

yubin282 · Post by **yubin282** » 03 Aug 2020, 15:31

Yep, my office had the visit too. All doom and gloom as usual.

They even asked us if we had any suggestions on how to improve things the way they are.

WHAT DO THEY GET PAID FOR?

Mr Rush · Post by **Mr Rush** » 03 Aug 2020, 17:44

About three years ago the sector manager came down and did one of those meetings. No-one took it seriously, because it was humouring us in the worst sense of the word. Whatever decisions are taken, they will be those already decided by management and rammed through regardless. Similarly, the Conservative government tried to frame the distribution of shares to employees during privatisation as akin to creating a co-operative. It is not.

We're a packet company, until it gets busy and then you get told to leave the packets and clear the frame.

Sir Henry · Post by **Sir Henry** » 03 Aug 2020, 18:08

We're a company delivering dividends to shareholders pretty much everything else is immaterial.

PostmanBitesDog · Post by **PostmanBitesDog** » 03 Aug 2020, 18:49

We're a company? I thought we're a circus.

Post by **blue1873** » 03 Aug 2020, 23:30

PostmanBitesDog wrote:We're a company? I thought we're a circus.

Yep ......A three ring circus

postieblueshirt · Post by **postieblueshirt** » 04 Aug 2020, 06:58

Unfortunately we're a company that does not know what it is and does not know how to evolve.we should be a subsidised public service so as long as we operate like one we won't evolve into anything else.

number one · Post by **number one** » 04 Aug 2020, 18:20

11bn+ letters delivered vs 1.8bn parcels. I say we’re still a letter compnay

Mr Rush · Post by **Mr Rush** » 05 Aug 2020, 17:23

Mr Rush wrote:About three years ago the sector manager came down and did one of those meetings.

Well, speak of the devil. Sector manager in the office today reading the approved story. At least it was short this time and didn't involve a whiteboard.

krussel · Post by **krussel** » 06 Aug 2020, 17:49

You see iam confused with RM. The 2 times before they sent one of Rico's little helpers we were all told that the letter market was finished and we needed to grow parcles to survive. Roll forward and now we have a maintained 38% increase in parcel traffic BUT NOW the guy who came us recently told us that we make little from parcels and its the decline in letter that will finish us. Total U turn in policy

Post by **fb1969** » 06 Aug 2020, 17:52

Anyone at our office wanting to leave anything is told to concentrate on the packets, regardless of whether they are Tracked or not. Our letter/flat levels are increasing but they are the first thing to be left when people have to cut off.

Post by **SpacePhoenix** » 06 Aug 2020, 19:56

fb1969 wrote:Anyone at our office wanting to leave anything is told to concentrate on the packets, regardless of whether they are Tracked or not. Our letter/flat levels are increasing but they are the first thing to be left when people have to cut off.

For a good few years, manual letters and flats have been the first to be sacrificed if it looks like we're going to fail

deltaforce · Post by **deltaforce** » 06 Aug 2020, 21:53

number one wrote:11bn+ letters delivered vs 1.8bn parcels. I say we’re still a letter compnay

There was a time when we were delivering 80 million letters per day and now it’s less than half that and dropping.
It was always the case that delivering packets withe letters cross subsidised itself but now letters are dropping to a level that it now doesn’t work. Packets are more labour intensive and don’t seem to be generating the income that was hoped for, besides the competition can do it far cheaper.
So where do we go from here? Do far more work in a given time or work far more cheaply, or both.

wallan · Post by **wallan** » 07 Aug 2020, 09:31

deltaforce wrote:
number one wrote:11bn+ letters delivered vs 1.8bn parcels. I say we’re still a letter compnay
There was a time when we were delivering 80 million letters per day and now it’s less than half that and dropping.
It was always the case that delivering packets withe letters cross subsidised itself but now letters are dropping to a level that it now doesn’t work. Packets are more labour intensive and don’t seem to be generating the income that was hoped for, besides the competition can do it far cheaper.
So where do we go from here? Do far more work in a given time or work far more cheaply, or both.

Any suggestions ?
I would start with ONE Class of Letter , Next Day Delivery in the Mail Center Collection / Delivery Post Code Area,s , Day After The Rest
It was said many years ago That" Post Office Telephones" now BT / Openreach Subsidised the Letter Side

Tman · Post by **Tman** » 07 Aug 2020, 09:57

It might have been said, but it was nonsense. RM made big profits for many years after BT was split and sold off in the early 1980s.
BT needed a massive and expensive modernisation programme which privatisation (for better or worse) financed.
If anything, prior to the split, the archaic phone side was subsidised by the letter and parcel side.