New delivery method in order of priority “sigh"

[TopperGas]

Some of the specials have moved to next day guaranteed.

RM should phase out 9am SDs as how often do they have a chance of being delivered before 9am?

Every day in.my DO as somebody is sent out to deliver them before 9am? Given RM are charging £30+ compared to £10+ for a 1pm SD why would they phase out a bit of a cash cow?

[TopperGas]

Some of the specials have moved to next day guaranteed.

Getting one of those is like finding hens teeth, they are few and far between.

[TopperGas]

Specials, T24, First class, T48, Second class.This isn't a new plan it's just COVID all over again.

No different to.most DO's when they can't cover all the duties? It seems senior management are cracking down on specials since the takeover, I assume somebody, DK?, has realised that we're paying out loads in compensation for missing the 1pm deadline.

[Patmanposts]

Specials, T24, First class, T48, Second class.This isn't a new plan it's just COVID all over again.

No different to.most DO's when they can't cover all the duties? It seems senior management are cracking down on specials since the takeover, I assume somebody, DK?, has realised that we're paying out loads in compensation for missing the 1pm deadline.

I can only speak for my Do, since i joined the priority has always been all tracked, no exemptions. Specials were prioritised up until around 6 months ago when manager told us to "deliver when you get there” rather than break away to do them.

I’m thinking now that specials are back to being prioritised as well as first class, is because performance has crashed for these items and someone has taken notice.

[britwrit]

The constraints of delivering mail will always prevent is from being a serious parcels business competitor, up against gig economy businesses paying peanuts & hiring self employed workers.

The challenge of the last-mile delivery is tough. Royal Mail solved it for a while with letters and flats because they were easy to transport, (relatively) easy to sort and you could deliver a lot in one round.

Amazon deals with it by paying a laughable amount of tax and subsidizing it through other parts of their business, getting people like me to shell out 9 quid a month for Prime. They distort the economics of the entire parcel delivery market. I like to think I'm not brain dead but I have no idea how a business deals with that.

[norris9]

No idea why we still have a 1pm Special service. I don't believe that many people who are receiving these items care whether it's delivered by 1pm, they just want it next day. It's probably more likely that the sender has used the service because it's more reliable and secure, they also don't care about the 1pm deadline as long as it gets to the destination by the end of the following day.

At the very least it should be changed to 2pm as it makes it inefficient for us to have to cut-off to do them, especially on days when we have 2 days' mail.

[Mr Rush]

No idea why we still have a 1pm Special service. I don't believe that many people who are receiving these items care whether it's delivered by 1pm, they just want it next day.

I think the logic behind the time guarantee, rather than just generically next day, was that it once demarcated the end of the working day for this job. Not sure about the 12PMs, but the 9AMs made sense if that was originally intended to be the cutoff for the first delivery (or when that was axed, businesses wanting their delivery at the old time).

What's infuriating about the plain Next Day specials is that no-one at the end of the duty ever gets one, thereby nullifying the advantage of not having to break off. It's a mystery why the people at the end of the walk might want their stuff to turn up before 1530.

But the RM software in My Doorstep registers them (as well as 'normal' 1pm SD's delivered after 1pm on a Sat) as 'late' if delivered after 1pm

It also doesn't understand specials can be delivered after 1PM when they are redelivered the following day or any other day subsequent to the initial delivery attempt, and 9AMs are only guaranteed for that time in a set number of defined postcodes. I've raised it and got told to just ignore it. But management constantly badger you to look at it because it's important you see what it has to say about your performance.

[TopperGas]

Pretty certain it does distinguish between first attempt and second attempt 1pm SD's? As far as ignoring the doorstep app when I failed one in error recently I received a manager's note highlighting the fact I'd missed the 1pm deadline. I'd imagine at nearly £10 for the cheapest SD the business are content to stick to the 1pm time slot as it's probably quite profitable for them.

[kazardaimenu]

Don’t worry about the doorstep app It’l just upset you.

[Seymour Buts]

Pretty certain it does distinguish between first attempt and second attempt 1pm SD's? As far as ignoring the doorstep app when I failed one in error recently I received a manager's note highlighting the fact I'd missed the 1pm deadline. I'd imagine at nearly £10 for the cheapest SD the business are content to stick to the 1pm time slot as it's probably quite profitable for them.

Ours certainly does, coz I routinely deliver second attempts after one and have never been flagged or pulled up on it.