WTF is really going on?

[LouBarlow]

It is a pretty wild conspiracy to accuse Amazon for contributing to RM’s woes. The truth is, and I know people will continue to disagree but hey ho, it is a company that is dealing with a declining market, increasing costs (fuel/energy etc) and is being squeezed as much as possible to attempt to make it profitable. Ever since privatisation, the service has decreased in terms of quality. Nobody can deny that. It is not a company that is a public service any more. It exists to make money for the people who own it. That is the priority over anything else.

[ted_e_bear]

I really suspect it's something like Amazon taking RM out from the inside. No one could cause RM to regress from the smooth operation that it was to the shitshow it is now in such a short space of time without strategy and commitment. Incompetence alone only goes a tiny way to explaining it. There is a deliberate agenda to make this company as piss poor as possible. You have to ask "who benefits from that?" The only ones I can come up with are competitors and, I suppose to some point, some large scale shareholders if the land and building assets get sold off.

Also, whatever's "in it" for OFCOM to carry on evading doing their job, needs exposure and pulling to bits.

Royal Mail also like to continually compare us to Amazon and cite them as a competitor but I need it explained to me how we are Amazon's competitors. Amazon deliver directly from their own warehouses. They dont deliver for ASOS or M&S or Adidas etc like we do. Royal Mail doesnt have warehouses full of products that are sold on RoyalMail.com which makes up the bulk of the business. If we ceased to exist how would Amazon benefit? DPD and Evri sure, but how would Amazon? Dont they actually get RM to deliver some of the stuff its not cost efficient for them to?

I think its like comparing apples and oranges. Yes the two companies are both ''fruit'' in that they both deliver parcels but completely different models and not competing for the same share of the market.

I know I don't get the comparison either, you could go a bit further still, a Sainsbury's and an Asda van delivered stuff they sell to my neighbours yesterday are they going to include them as our competitors as well.

[Kenfandango]

Royal Mail also like to continually compare us to Amazon and cite them as a competitor but I need it explained to me how we are Amazon's competitors.

I think RM sincerely believe that if Amazon didn't exist the people who use them- all the prime members and those who resort to Amazon for last second gifts etc- would still be ordering the same volume of packets, only from somewhere that RM was delivering for. That's the only possible way they could be considered competition

[scotchy1962]

It is a pretty wild conspiracy to accuse Amazon for contributing to RM’s woes. The truth is, and I know people will continue to disagree but hey ho, it is a company that is dealing with a declining market, increasing costs (fuel/energy etc) and is being squeezed as much as possible to attempt to make it profitable. Ever since privatisation, the service has decreased in terms of quality. Nobody can deny that. It is not a company that is a public service any more. It exists to make money for the people who own it. That is the priority over anything else.

See there you go Lou, i can agree with you at times.
No doubt about it, although declining market in terms of parcels isn't, but for letters yes, all you say makes sense.
I have been in the private sector all my working life, except for my first few in RM, and i have never seen a company with such a lack of a coherent policy going forward. They liked to blame the workers/union, but that one is tossed out the window now as we and the union have little to no power.
I guess their next attack will be employment law so they can basically get us to do what they want.
Now that they have the union to heel it appears the management and board don't really know how to run a delivery company profitably.
Worse than that they don't seem to be learning from their mistakes, which means they just keep making them again and again, i am yet to see a good idea be forwarded by this bunch of numpties.
Sometimes the "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it" policy is the best one.

[HTPostman]

I don’t think there’s a huge conspiracy or underlying plan to run the company into the ground. Those at the top aren’t clever enough. I believe that’s why we are seeing such stupid ideas regurgitated time and time again. I’m of the opinion the only plan they had, which was successful, was Thompson breaking (or at least severely weakening) the union. Everything else is pure winging it from our superiors.

[Barnacle]

I really suspect it's something like Amazon taking RM out from the inside. No one could cause RM to regress from the smooth operation that it was to the shitshow it is now in such a short space of time without strategy and commitment. Incompetence alone only goes a tiny way to explaining it. There is a deliberate agenda to make this company as piss poor as possible. You have to ask "who benefits from that?" The only ones I can come up with are competitors and, I suppose to some point, some large scale shareholders if the land and building assets get sold off.

Also, whatever's "in it" for OFCOM to carry on evading doing their job, needs exposure and pulling to bits.

Royal Mail also like to continually compare us to Amazon and cite them as a competitor but I need it explained to me how we are Amazon's competitors. Amazon deliver directly from their own warehouses. They dont deliver for ASOS or M&S or Adidas etc like we do. Royal Mail doesnt have warehouses full of products that are sold on RoyalMail.com which makes up the bulk of the business. If we ceased to exist how would Amazon benefit? DPD and Evri sure, but how would Amazon? Dont they actually get RM to deliver some of the stuff its not cost efficient for them to?

I think its like comparing apples and oranges. Yes the two companies are both ''fruit'' in that they both deliver parcels but completely different models and not competing for the same share of the market.

I know I don't get the comparison either, you could go a bit further still, a Sainsbury's and an Asda van delivered stuff they sell to my neighbours yesterday are they going to include them as our competitors as well.

There is no comparison is there?! It’s infuriating to be competing with a premium service offered by a gigantic retailer. It’s ludicrous.

[Mr Rush]

Don't think local management have any effective authority any more, seems like they just implement whatever they're ordered to by higher up, and if they don't they get moved on.

s**t flows downhill and delivery is now a blocked sewer. If management still will not complain about being up to their necks in stinking waste then they are truly pathetic. The market has discovered the optimal price at which they will debase themselves. The Yes-men are going to lead us to complete collapse soon.

[postslippete]

Royal Mail has become a hedge fund that delivers parcels and its long term vision relies on reducing the USO and focusing on parcels. GLS only has over 20,000 employees, just under half of whom work in Germany, and yet the group accounts show that they are more profitable than us. So parcels are where it is at right now and that is why Royal Mail has been consistently rightsizing the workforce and delivering letters wherever they can. The company view letters as a burden partly because of the obligations but also because it is time consuming and costly.

There is a world of difference between Royal Mail leadership and management. Leadership often have 5 year business plans and visions of what they want the company to look like in the future whilst management are often too imbued with the day to day running of things to actually make many of these changes happen as soon as they would like. A classic example of this are RM's ideas for improving indoor delivery method change. They know that staff are spending time putting sequenced letters into frames and they see this as inefficient, but I've yet to see a better system being employed unless all the letters comes sequenced in one wave. If this happens then the mail is going to arrive in delivery offices a lot later and lo and behold what do we have? Later start times. If Royal Mail can get away with not using these frames in our offices then they will because it will allow them to close offices and make asset disposals....

But the biggest change by far are these parcel hubs and how RM will maximise their returns on their investment. Will we see COMs utilising performance management as they now have stats on their employees that tell them how quickly and efficient we are, especially as regards how many parcels are being delivered?? Regardless of the Select Committees that took place I believe that the company will use that against us in the future somehow just like Amazon do once the revisions that made all our duties bigger have become a very distant memory.

[Barnacle]

It’s so depressing

[Mike G]

I try not to think about it really ,go in on time do my tracked and half my walk go home on time until directed differently,collect my wage for an easy week while the company lose money with their hair brained schemes,get a couple more years in and im home and dry.

Perhaps the most "hair brained" aspect of the way this company is being run and losing money is that they're allowing workshy piss takers such as yourself to get away with doing half the work you're paid for and boast about having "easy weeks"?

[thefox]

Perhaps his duty is so big he only has time in his contractual hours to only do half the duty and isn't workshy at all but simply doesn't want to work 2 hours over his time....just a thought.

[Mike G]

Perhaps his duty is so big he only has time in his contractual hours to only do half the duty and isn't workshy at all but simply doesn't want to work 2 hours over his time....just a thought.

In that case why does he boast about how "easy" his working week is whilst he leaves half his walk in?

I'm sure in an ideal world we'd all have jobs and working lives that we'd describe as "easy" that come with zero mental stress or physical exertion, but unfortunately that perfect eutopia doesn't exist for most (well unless you're allowed to get away with being a workshy piss taker)

[Post69]

I try not to think about it really ,go in on time do my tracked and half my walk go home on time until directed differently,collect my wage for an easy week while the company lose money with their hair brained schemes,get a couple more years in and im home and dry.

Perhaps the most "hair brained" aspect of the way this company is being run and losing money is that they're allowing workshy piss takers such as yourself to get away with doing half the work you're paid for and boast about having "easy weeks"?

There is undoubtedly p*** taker’s in Royal Mail as they are in many other companies but to say that this is a work shy p*** taker is a bit below I’ve started in this company in the early to mid 80s and always treated this job as a service first but over the last few years I’ve become completely disillusioned purely by the way it’s being ran totally against what I’ve been doing for the last 40years so I’m at the point of I just do what is set in front of me and if I run out of time I return and go home I don’t think about anything Royal Mail but the one thing I’m definitely not is a work shy p*** taker I’m just a worker that’s lost any sense of pride in my job because of the way the leadership is dictating (and probably deliberately to demoralise it’s full and long service workers in fact we’ve actually been told from our line manager when he had to go to that RM academy for a massive management meeting that was their intention because they couldn’t fund the crap VR package!…….who knows and workers will leave at their own accord ) how it’s going to be ran so I’m thinking this is probably their state of mind

[Valentina@1]

Can’t believe just how bad things have become,where does this all end up?

Sad times

[scotchy1962]

I try not to think about it really ,go in on time do my tracked and half my walk go home on time until directed differently,collect my wage for an easy week while the company lose money with their hair brained schemes,get a couple more years in and im home and dry.

Perhaps the most "hair brained" aspect of the way this company is being run and losing money is that they're allowing workshy piss takers such as yourself to get away with doing half the work you're paid for and boast about having "easy weeks"?

I think what he means is "easy" as in stress free, you have to remember us older guys always would have gone the extra mile to get everything delivered as that was the service we provided. Dutys now are so big that to do this now requires constant o/t everyday with no let up.
Perhaps the old way with smaller duties wasn't economically viable anymore and us oldies are unrealistic, but lets be real i don't want 1-3 hrs o/t everyday and i don't particularly need it, so why should i or anyone work over their contracted hrs if they don't want to.
It has become a relentless slog that only the young or fit can cope with and i fancy even they will become fed up with it eventually.
The amount of newbies leaving should be enough to let them know how bad it is.
So stress free and finish on time is not workshy, just realistic.