Oh dear Royal Mail

[Mr_Pink]

NEXT DAY DELIVERY

£13.79p - Parcelforce 24 (Home Collection)
£15.59p - Parcelforce AM (Home Collection)




£16.96p - Royal Mail 1st Class Signed For
£26.60p - Royal Mail 1st Class Special Delivery

And we even undercut ourselves, for what are effectively the same services.

[Darren Bent]

We need to sort that pricing out and take advantage of tracking system. Also it is time to replace recorded delivery to tracked as it will be better for everyone.

[k979aaa]

Royal Mail needs to decide where it wants to be in the market and what its USP is, and it needs to invest in that area. Doing everything on a wing and a prayer, and with a slap dash approach to packets aggravated by lapsing rounds only confuses customers, staff and clients. DO something well and you are remembered, do everything averagely, no one remembers.

I completely agree. Our special delivery used to be a USP (in the days when we had designated drivers who did specials, bulk calls and large packets) but everyday I see lino's messing around trying to find staff to deliver the 9am specials in an adhoc fashion.

And as for the guaranteed 1pm specials, well we had 4 failures last week in our DO. Its no excuse but I guess its because staff are dashing round doing tracked, large packets, letters and then lapsed deliveries on top !! If the specials are at the end of a shared van run, for a lot of staff it probably gets delivered after midday.

Not surprised happens in ours too these so called managers planers could not make coffee never mind plan resource anything it is now the tipping point for all who have a job left to consider their options for this job is going down the drain fast!

[RedBagMan]

Scary innit ?? How many Parcel/Courier companies exist in UK

(and for good measure ... how many DSA companies are out there ???)

[Straight4ward]

Hi,went to post a parcel earlier,thought I would use the post office,parcel is under 2kg in weight & skateboard deck size! Jeez royal mails price was £11.99,so went & checked online & used Hermes instead £4.20 collected from my house! Couldn't believe the price difference..I'd say Royal Mail will go tits up inside 10 years! Shocked

RM’s costs are far higher than other delivery operators. Putting aside the costs of maintaining the USO and just looking at packets/parcels, RM’s labour costs make it impossible to compete.

For example if you do work for Hermes you need to supply, fuel, maintain, tax and insure your own vehicle. Their drivers are paid piece work, as low as 50p per packet for Amazon work. They are only paid on delivery (hence the large amount of door-stepping). They are now operating on Sundays, giving their drivers a seven day a week job.

There is no pension scheme, no sick pay and no holiday pay.

If you want RM to compete in terms of price with courier companies for parcel deliveries then be prepared to work on similar terms.

[Budfrog]

Hi,went to post a parcel earlier,thought I would use the post office,parcel is under 2kg in weight & skateboard deck size! Jeez royal mails price was £11.99,so went & checked online & used Hermes instead £4.20 collected from my house! Couldn't believe the price difference..I'd say Royal Mail will go tits up inside 10 years! Shocked

RM’s costs are far higher than other delivery operators. Putting aside the costs of maintaining the USO and just looking at packets/parcels, RM’s labour costs make it impossible to compete.

For example if you do work for Hermes you need to supply, fuel, maintain, tax and insure your own vehicle. Their drivers are paid piece work, as low as 50p per packet for Amazon work. They are only paid on delivery (hence the large amount of door-stepping). They are now operating on Sundays, giving their drivers a seven day a week job.

There is no pension scheme, no sick pay and no holiday pay.

If you want RM to compete in terms of price with courier companies for parcel deliveries then be prepared to work on similar terms.

I understand your sentiments and personally I would like to see the staff of all postal carriers and courier firms given good T&Cs with the removal of piecework rates that risk health and safety. Doorstepping is another matter entirely and here I believe the regulator needs to step in and provide the public with regular updates on Quality of Service, in the same way that they do for broadband and mobile phone services, just so the customer can see the wider picture and make an informed choice.

That said the firm that comes out with the best price is UPS and I have heard that they are a good employer, in fact my brother in law works for them in Toronto (ex union rep would you believe) and says the same. In terms of operating costs, labour rates make up a large portion but when you consider the scale of the RM operation can this and the support of the USO really justify such a wide margin between the firms - which would be even wider without the VAT exception that RM enjoys.

I think we all know where RM haemorrhages money .... but at the end of the day it will be down to the customer where the traffic goes.

[janitor]

Using wage costs to say RM can't compete is a cop out, wage costs are a minimal part of the total equation of delivery price,I used to work for a cleaning business that paid me £6 an hour, there base price to the customer was £20 an hour, and upwards depending on the work required, and customer supplied materials, don't know how they managed to get away with it but there you go. Saying that Hermes still can't quite manage to be cheaper in all locations, as a lot of the deliveries here are still carried out by DPD or RM , I think once you get away from the major cities RM can compete quite well, it's just pure greed from the top, that prevents RM competing on a level footing.

[Straight4ward]

Using wage costs to say RM can't compete is a cop out, wage costs are a minimal part of the total equation of delivery price,I used to work for a cleaning business that paid me £6 an hour, there base price to the customer was £20 an hour, and upwards depending on the work required, and customer supplied materials, don't know how they managed to get away with it but there you go. Saying that Hermes still can't quite manage to be cheaper in all locations, as a lot of the deliveries here are still carried out by DPD or RM , I think once you get away from the major cities RM can compete quite well, it's just pure greed from the top, that prevents RM competing on a level footing.

Complete BS.
Why is it to say that using RM’s wage costs is a cop out? It is not a cop out to state the bleeedin’ obvious. We are being undercut by those that pay their workforce considerably less than RM pay.
Wage costs are not a “minimal part of the total equation of delivery price” they are the greatest proportion. Hermes undercut RM by virtue of paying staff a great deal less than RM pay their employees. It has absolutely nothing to do with “greed from the top”.

[janitor]

RM are losing business because they put up prices, nothing to do with paying their staff more or less, yes RM want you to believe staff costs are causing them to lose business, because these are the costs they want to cut. The price they charge is what is causing the loss of business. A business man said to me once when I was on delivery, I prefer to make a little profit on a lot, rather than a lot of profit on a little,this is what RM need to learn, yodel, city link and Hermes, already have learnt this, and make small profit on each item, but move large volumes RM have the network for large volumes but fail to use it by pricing themselves out of the market,if paying peanuts to delivery staff was the cause of the competitions success then they would be able to beat RM countrywide, which as I said isn't the case, because my new address and old address both had majority of parcels delivered by RM why, by paying peanuts they should be delivering here too, but they are not.

[Brain Fury]

RM are losing business because they put up prices, nothing to do with paying their staff more or less, yes RM want you to believe staff costs are causing them to lose business, because these are the costs they want to cut. The price they charge is what is causing the loss of business. A business man said to me once when I was on delivery, I prefer to make a little profit on a lot, rather than a lot of profit on a little,this is what RM need to learn, yodel, city link and Hermes, already have learnt this, and make small profit on each item, but move large volumes RM have the network for large volumes but fail to use it by pricing themselves out of the market,if paying peanuts to delivery staff was the cause of the competitions success then they would be able to beat RM countrywide, which as I said isn't the case, because my new address and old address both had majority of parcels delivered by RM why, by paying peanuts they should be delivering here too, but they are not.

Royal Mail put up it's prices to make sure it covers it's operating costs. A major part of it's costs is wages. RM profit margin is not excessive.