Ofcom delivery to neighbour consultation

[POSTMAN]

Ofcom is today consulting on allowing Royal Mail the freedom to roll out its ‘delivery to neighbour’ scheme across the UK.

The proposal could offer consumers greater choice for receiving mail when they are not at home. Customers who prefer the existing arrangement, however, will be able to opt out of the scheme. The consultation, which closes on 24 August 2012, can be found...

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consul ... neighbour/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Straight4ward]

This is a situation where an "opt in" should be secured.

An "opt out" requires that the recipient is a) aware of the process and b) is sufficiently energised to get off their arse and respond.

Too dangerous,

[skull]

If we are obliged to drop these packets off with neighbours, how on Earth will we know how long our duties will take ?. People who can't work overtime are going to have a nightmare estimating what they will be able to deliver. I'm probably jumping the gun and worrying unnecessarily, RM management will come up with some sort of assistance to help us.

[Mr Rush]

Packets should go to one place: the listed address. If an alternate address is desired, then that's what a safeplace instruction is for. Writing 739s out can eat up to 30 minutes on a bad day, so I can't wait to see how much backtracking this will require out on delivery. Standby to trim another loop of my duty

[fishtank]

If Dave Ward is serious about getting time built in to deliveries he has to understand the realities of how this would work.

Step 1..You arrive at the recipients address knock and obviously wait to see if they are in.
Step 2..If unsuccessful at Step 1 move on to the neighbours house,knock and obviously wait to see if they are in.
Step 3..If unsuccessful at Step 2 decide whether to repeat with another neighbour.
Step 4..Return to recipients address and either P739 or card informing of location of packet.

If you can manage all of that within 5 minutes you will be doing well,but for argument's sake let's say you're a machine and can do the whole thing in 3 minutes.
Unfortunately your perfectly timed loops are now thrown out because your partner has been waiting for you for 3 minutes so the whole experience has cost the park&loop pair and obviously Royal Mail 6 minutes.
The current rate for unsuccessful packets is 5 per 500 calls which in my experience is low balling(banker's term) but even using those figures that's 12 on a pretty average 1200 call park&loop duty so potentially this farce could cost 72 minutes from the duty time.
Of course those are less than realistic figures....it could be much more.

Does anybody other than Dave Ward actually believe that Royal Mail is about to reinvest that kind of time into deliveries?
Farce start to finish but that's what happens when you get too close to management.

[Mr Rush]

So has this been worked out at all? Is anyone who attempts only the listed address liable to be disciplined? Cause at the same time management is likely to be pressing down on people not to cut off. Which is going to cost the DOM more: hiring more delivery staff for cut offs or having a caller's office buried under packets?