Post tests show target is missed

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.witneygazette.co.uk/news/wgh ... is_missed/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MORE than half of Oxfordshire’s first-class Christmas post arrived late, according to a test.

An experiment carried out by us showed just 43 per cent of first-class letters arrived the next day.

According to the Royal Mail’s own targets, nationally 93 per cent of first-class post should arrive the next day.

On Monday, December 19, we organised for 30 letters to be sent from across the country and county back to Newspaper House, in Osney Mead, Oxford.

Just 13 arrived the next day. A further nine arrived after two days, and three after three.

The remaining five had still not turned up at our offices four days later.

Last night, customers said they were disappointed, but not surprised at the results.

Sarah Williams, 33, who posted her letter from Northfield Road, in Coventry, said she sent scores of Christmas cards last week and is worried they may not have arrived.

She said: “I am a bit annoyed because when you pay for a first-class stamp, which aren’t that cheap anymore, you expect it to arrive as promised.

“That said, I appreciate it is a busy time of year.

“If people want to make absolutely sure their post will get somewhere on time for Christmas, I suppose we all just have to post a bit earlier.”

Betty Dale, 84, posted her letter from Isleworth, Middlesex.

That too took more than three days to arrive.

She said: “I have had problems in the past getting Christmas cards to my grandsons, but I thought that must have been down to all the snow we had last year.

“It is a busy time of year, but I don’t understand why it’s taken so long this year.”

This year, the Royal Mail has invested an additional £15m in its Christmas operation to deliver the nation’s festive mailbag of around two billion items.

It also opened ‘packet hubs’ around the country in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Swansea, Bristol, Peterborough, Manchester, Swindon, Nuneaton and Watford, in a bid to speed up the time it takes for a parcel to be sorted.

Royal Mail spokesman Valerie Antoine said: “This is an extremely busy time for us and our aim is to deliver all the mail posted by the recommended last posting dates to our customers in time for Christmas, at a time when we are handling twice the usual volume of mail on a daily basis – 130 million items in the run-up to Christmas, compared to 62 million items on an average day.

“We have invested an additional £15m in our operation for Christmas, including setting up dedicated hubs to sort parcels and packets, taking on extra staff and using additional planes, trains and vehicles as part of our operation.

“We are in great shape to deliver a successful Christmas to all our customers in the Oxfordshire area.”

Pete Bonney, from Wood Farm, received two Christmas cards last week for the wrong address.

He decided to test the post on December 14, by sending a postcard to himself.

By Friday, December 23, it still had not arrived.

Mr Bonney said: “These results don’t surprise me at all.”

According to the latest quarterly figures, issued in November, in the OX postcode area, 93.2 per cent of first-class mail was delivered the next working day.

This was against an OX postcode area target of 91.5 per cent.

Robert Hammond, director of watchdog Postal Policy and Regulation at Consumer Focus, said they had advised people to post early.

[PhilthyPhil]

Aren't we exempt from delivery targets for December? I think its pretty good that at the busiest time of year we got almost three quarters of the letters there within two days.

[Straight4ward]

Have they recently suffered the trauma that is a Delivery Methods Revision in that part of the Country?

Was it an understaffed, or overwhelmed, office that was instructed to "concentrate on the packets, never mind the cards"?

My own equally entirely unscientific test shows that all the cards I sent were received before Christmas and all the cards I was expecting to receive I got, again before Christmas. So thank you to everyone that played a part in that.
- - - but then I don't send to anyone in Oxford.

[Ahebban]

You could always send a christmas card to Cameron's constituency home in Witney! ...

[Ahebban]

At least the hair product advertisements promote surveys which run into the occasional hundreds rather than lower 10s! A totally meaningless exercise by them and is the predictable cheap shot targeted at Royal Mail at this time of year - especially now that the Oxford MC is no longer there to provide an endless source of material to be twisted and thrown back in the face of the workforce.