Official policies to blame for postal service chaos

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters ... 1699252007

It is hard to avoid the turmoil post office services are currently presenting, with later deliveries, no Sunday collections and mass closures threatened (your report, 23 October).

The postal market now appears to be driven by business users. Royal Mail is required to make the final delivery for new firms which are taking away some of its "easier" business. It does this at a considerable loss, and social users will bear the brunt of cutbacks and poorer service.

The imposed later start time for postmen is making deliveries later and may be only the first stage of an unpublished plan to put back delivery times further. This would make it even more difficult to turn round correspondence by getting a reply uplifted the same day, particularly in rural areas.

The Post Office, it seems, is being driven into steep decline by an indifferent government and a regulator partial to the bigger business user. Many smaller businesses receive only the same service as social users.

Government policy has taken so much work away from post offices that thousands are being considered for closure. Where is the sense in this?

R J ARDERN

Southside Road

Inverness

The number of Post Office counters to be closed in the much-heralded review has turned out to be more than was expected. This should be no surprise since Alan Cook, the new director of counters, has just been awarded a bonus of £1 million (80 per cent of his salary) if he reaches the target number of closures in the three-year programme.

Royal Mail also has its problems. One wonders why the British government was in such a hurry to introduce the EU guidance on competition. Two of the biggest "competitors" are subsidiaries of the Dutch and German post offices. In neither country has competition been introduced. But both are now making good money in Britain - at the cost of the Post Office and the British public, while complaining bitterly at home against the introduction of this condition in their service.

The government has not been kind to the Post Office and every Labour MP and MSP should be searching their hearts as to whether the government is correct in hounding this long-established and much-loved nationalised industry, which, under proper conditions, could still be a money-maker for the state.

J R HALL

Colinton Grove

Edinburgh

Comments

1. Sierra Foothills Scot / 2:29am 25 Oct 2007

Post Office closures -- just another example of the evils of the EC, which merrily produces edicts but does not have enough guts to even try to enforce them.

The UK government does not have the guts to tell the EC it will not comply with any edict until all of the non-compliances are forced to comply to every edict.

The non-compliance has been going on for too many years.

Now, about that referendum that Brown refuses...

2. Boy Wonder / 6:16am 25 Oct 2007

The Post Office and Royal Mail are marching merrily into oblivion, without taking note that it is treating the public (its customers) as badly Douglas Alexander did with the May election fiasco.

I have now switched my business to a private concern while awaiting the tardy Royal Mail to deliver items I should have had three weeks ago. Since several of them are to do with financial matters which carry late payment penalties, I intend to sue Royal Mail for damaging my business!

3. Maisie from Morningside, Morningside / 8:53am 25 Oct 2007

On Tuesday morning I read the list of Post Office closures.
On Tuesday afternoon I saw an ad on the TV trilling on about "the People's Post Office" and how it served the community etc.

4. G, dundy / 9:39am 25 Oct 2007

JR HALL

Just how could the post office be a money maker for the state??????

5. Guthrie / 7:23am 26 Oct 2007

The Royal mail used to make a profit in some years, believe it or not, long before they thought of privatising it.

[IWW Fellow Worker]

Just how could the post office be a money maker for the state??????


What planet are these people on? It was a cash cow for the Tories for years. This is why I don't believe it when we are told RM is running at a loss. At one stage it was making over £1.m a day. Very suddenly, it's losing over £1.m a day, but no one if dragged before a Commons Select Commitee to answer why this has occurred.

[Post Off]

I don't understand how someone can be awarded with bucket-loads of money for destroying people's lives. Surely, we should be awarding people for their creativity.

The chairman and the CEO who (think they) run Royal Mail are total shite. I read that even though there are to be another 2500 post offices ear-marked for closure, that the initiative is still there to be made...

The milestone comes three years after the Post Office joined up with Bank of Ireland to offer its customers credit cards, savings accounts and insurance.

Post Office bosses claim this success is evidence that the network is the fastest growing financial services provider in the UK.

Yet, about a fifth of existing post offices are expected to close by 2009.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6698525.stm

Btw, when Royal Mail re-introduced the Sunday collection, what was it that prompted them to do so?