Story in the Mail today

[haveagojoe]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... =1770&ct=5

[somerset]

I am a bit confused as to all this about EC directives I was a lorry driver 14 years ago.And all new lorries were fitted with this speed limiter then? And speed limit for hgvs was 60mph. So i hardly see how 4mph is going to make that much difference. And now it has been started for 7.5 tonners. Come on you drivers how often except on a motorway do you have the chance to do 56mph?? Just rm bulls**t again giving excuses to deliver later.

[Wild Rover]

Royal Mail last night refused to comment.

As f***ing usual :cfo :lfo

[Wild Rover]

This has to be the most appalling decision to be made in recent times by a company who is milking this country of vast amounts of money pretending to provide a service.
This cannot be allowed to happen and media and consumer groups should act to prevent this occuring.
This is a company who has already raised rates hugely, rips off customers continuously and whose senior management should be removed or this service re-nationalised.

- David Tomlinson, East Yorks

Well said Mr Tomlinson

[vigilante]

WHAT?? DO MY EYES DECEIVE ME?? TORY RAGS NOT SLAMMING THE CWU FOR A CHANGE
AND HAVE WOKEN UP TO WHATS GOING ON??

[Lounge Lizard]

They never had a problem with a 56mph speed limit when much of the mail went by rail overnight. Bring back the trains.

"A 2pm delivery time is no use to businesses". Precisely, so many more items will then need to go by Special Delivery, 'That's £4.30 please', not 34p - a cunning way for the Royal Mail to boost their income.

[Jonboy]

They never had a problem with a 56mph speed limit when much of the mail went by rail overnight. Bring back the trains.

"A 2pm delivery time is no use to businesses". Precisely, so many more items will then need to go by Special Delivery, 'That's £4.30 please', not 34p - a cunning way for the Royal Mail to boost their income.

Well said 100% why did they exactly finish the trains ? Surely their advisors would have picked this up?????????????????

[KawasakiKid]

:lfo :cfo As I posted in another forum, the Public are with us so the press, even right wing press, has to print what it's readership want to read.-------------KAWAK

[F0zziebear]

56 mph:
I think you are right to say the impact is being over-egged. The implications have been modelled. Don't be surprised if RM are trying to increase the size of the impact. To be fair to them they need to fight their corner. Most people leave for work before 8am anyway and don't get their post until the evening. Few items these days really need to be there before you go to work. Please provide arguments otherwise to prove me wrong (willing to be corrected).

Trains:
Some trains are back in operation at the request of the new Director of Operations Tom Melvin who came into the role just as Transport Review was being implemented. This was because the alternatives didn't work. The other train routes were replaced without a problem.

Special Delivery:
One of RM's biggest successes in recent years. They make approx. 50-60% profit margin on this product so don't knock the gravyboat as it goes a long way to paying your wages and competitors cannot compete with it.

Press & public:
Still not convinced the public care that much. The public are not the customers (possibly you want to contend this). The mian customers are the big banks. They spend over £1bn on mail every year. The government sector is divided into departments, so individually are much smaller.

The press only care if you don't deliver their mail, or their editor specifically wants an article

Please not too much hate mail

Weekend Fozz

[BELIAL]

56 mph:
I think you are right to say the impact is being over-egged. The implications have been modelled. Don't be surprised if RM are trying to increase the size of the impact. To be fair to them they need to fight their corner. Most people leave for work before 8am anyway and don't get their post until the evening. Few items these days really need to be there before you go to work. Please provide arguments otherwise to prove me wrong (willing to be corrected).

Trains:
Some trains are back in operation at the request of the new Director of Operations Tom Melvin who came into the role just as Transport Review was being implemented. This was because the alternatives didn't work. The other train routes were replaced without a problem.

Special Delivery:
One of RM's biggest successes in recent years. They make approx. 50-60% profit margin on this product so don't knock the gravyboat as it goes a long way to paying your wages and competitors cannot compete with it.

Press & public:
Still not convinced the public care that much. The public are not the customers (possibly you want to contend this). The mian customers are the big banks. They spend over £1bn on mail every year. The government sector is divided into departments, so individually are much smaller.

The press only care if you don't deliver their mail, or their editor specifically wants an article

Please not too much hate mail

Weekend Fozz

over egged, its a giant ufo[ umungous f***ing souffle]

[DGP1]

Press & public:
Still not convinced the public care that much. The public are not the customers (possibly you want to contend this). The mian customers are the big banks. They spend over £1bn on mail every year. The government sector is divided into departments, so individually are much smaller.

That is not how the general public see it, they still see themselves as the customers ie the receivers of the product.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

F0zzie: Most people leave for work before 8am anyway and don't get their post until the evening. Few items these days really need to be there before you go to work. Please provide arguments otherwise to prove me wrong (willing to be corrected)

You have forgotten the small business who are the heart of most communities, with us getting most deliveries done for 12 - 1230 they had a least 4 1/2 hours to respond to urgent letters and get their responses out. Also Doctors Surgeries waiting for important test results for patients.

The most affected would be business who are paid by cheque - most banks close at 3pm so if latest deliveries are 2.30 they wont have time to do the accounting and pay them in time this will affect their bottom line. If they use a night safe the credit to their account is delayed 24 hours and most small business work on tight margins. If they paid for early delivery this would also have an impact on their bottom line but RM are only worried about their bottom line the bit about providing a service is well out of the window now.

Just in case you think business don't make up a lot of deliveries I have 600+ delivery points and I deliver to over 20 small business spread throughout the walk

[F0zziebear]

I am not disputing that small businesses have had a rougher deal in recent years than say bigger businesses.

1. RM consciously tried to focus on retaining the Top100 customers as they account for a huge percentage of their revenue, and without them the company would go bankrupt
2. Accessing small/medium businesses who in total numbers is huge is very difficult in terms of products and operational feasibility.

They rarely have planned campagins, which allows RM/others to plan their resources to meet this need, which increases costs at the RM/other end

Doctors surgeries etc...
I once had a call with a local surgery who complained that their mail wasn't arriving early enough (before 9-9:30am) and why wasn't it on a drivers run? I said that if they wanted a gauranteed delivery by a certain time then they needed to speak to customers services about paying for this. The surgery are NOT the customer. This is a really difficult thing for many people to understand. The person who sends the letter is the customer. The reciever is part of that chain, but it;s the sender who should complain if something doesn't get where it should and on time. I had a huge amount of sympathy for the surgery, but not the caller who was arrogant and rude over the phone. I actually threatened to not deliver their mail if she carried on behaving that way.

3. Competitors are also slightly struggling to work out how to meet SME (small-medium sized enterprises) needs and extract revenue from this sector.

The wayt this country is set-up both geographically and business wise means you have a small number of large customers who dominate the market. In operations you don't necessarily feel this, but if you see several artics of mail from one sender then it starts to make sense.

RM is NOT in my opinion a public service dominated business anymore. It IS a commercially driven communication medium led by banks. 1 of those banks account with RM is the equivalent budget for the largest area in the country. Hope that gives some kind of proportion to the issue.

I think there is a public service within RM, but again it will have to come at a price as the revenue bucket has got smaller, and there are now more players in the field. The maths currently do not stack up to keep everyone in jobs who currently has one. If you have alternative stats to argue this, or can see a political/economic solution then please shout now

F0zz

[BELIAL]

I am not disputing that small businesses have had a rougher deal in recent years than say bigger businesses.

1. RM consciously tried to focus on retaining the Top100 customers as they account for a huge percentage of their revenue, and without them the company would go bankrupt

3. Competitors are also slightly struggling to work out how to meet SME (small-medium sized enterprises) needs and extract revenue from this sector.


RM is NOT in my opinion a public service dominated business anymore. It IS a commercially driven communication medium led by banks. 1 of those banks account with RM is the equivalent budget for the largest area in the country. Hope that gives some kind of proportion to the issue.

I think there is a public service within RM, but again it will have to come at a price as the revenue bucket has got smaller, and there are now more players in the field. The maths currently do not stack up to keep everyone in jobs who currently has one. If you have alternative stats to argue this, or can see a political/economic solution then please shout now

F0zz

A clearer case of cognitive dissonance i have never seen.Your whole arguement is based on the complete acceptance of leightons ideas and vision of the future.I dont think im alone in rejecting this. There is no ''competitor" delivering the mail to all uk households and there never will be the "maths do not stack up". Consider the costs of establishing a rival delivery network:real estate;plant;transport;recruitment and labour;advertising etc, all to duplicate an existing established network . Even with a wildly ambitous target of capturing 50% of the market immediately thats half a ''revenue bucket" theres no chance of covering start up and operating costs.
Dispute this if you want but the fact is the "competition" have had years to plan for this and not one has done it. Big buisness isnt usually slow to exploit a profit making opportunity. Sorry Adam

[DirtyHarry]

I think I hear the sound of hammer hitting nail squarely on the head.

Bottom line is, no postal worker should be in danger of losing their job, not because of, what is in effect, a private/public partnership.

As I keep on saying, COMPETITION , WHAT BLEEDIN' COMPETITION ?