Best way to do door2doors ?

[lylehillboonen]

If I've got a choice I'll do a Column a day prepped before I put the mail in....They're classed as "Live" mail and the time to prep them is allocated daily...so if you're prepping them in your own time you're giving RM time/money for nothing!

By doing a Column you spread the load across all your bags/bundles, if you follow the Row you end up with all the Households for a particular Road it can get pretty bulky. I prep them first so I can put the mail in front of them, I don't consolidate the Households (Put them inside each other) as in the past I've had mail stuck between them and left in the frame. I'm a bit OCD about the order I do them and like to have separate piles with smallest to largest in order, pick one of each pile and throw them in...But that's just me!

Sometimes I'll cover a Duty and the Regular Postie's thrown them all off on Saturday (in his own time)! This I find a pain in the ass. Firstly I end up doing the Lion's share of them (taking them where I go) and secondly it can be a pain trying to throw the mail off when EVERY slot's got Households in.

Many times as I am moved about from duty to duty I have went to a frame with D2ds in nearly every slot I have pulled them ALL OUT and put them to one side and just done my 20% then had a word with the OPG that put them all in the frame and it never happened again. As has been said if you are on a delivery route all the time and you are never moved then look after the guy coming behind you and ask him/her is it ok to put all of the d2ds into the frame better still jus do 20% per day and everybody knows where they stand!

[Dorset Plodder]

That's exactly the reason why you're not meant to consolidate Households (or Nest as you call it) Freddy. Each individual business should receive the same prominence. When RM said they were going to deliver them all in a pre-prepped envelope I did wonder how they were going to get around that one? However since nothing ever came of that, the problem never arose!

[lylehillboonen]

That's exactly the reason why you're not meant to consolidate Households (or Nest as you call it) Freddy. Each individual business should receive the same prominence. When RM said they were going to deliver them all in a pre-prepped envelope I did wonder how they were going to get around that one? However since nothing ever came of that, the problem never arose!

I nest them but make darn sure I un-nest them at the delivery point! They are a hassle but without them the buisiness would be alot different to what it is now. I would love to know how much RM are making on them I think it would be interesting. Certainly our 'delivery supplement' is not pro rata in relation to this I would guess lol

[Dorset Plodder]

RM are SAVING themselves a Fortune on Households........When we were paid for each one at a different rate you could make quite a bit. Some of the local paper type D2Ds got 3p each! I used to cover several duties where the Regular Posties didn't like prepping them so we'd have an arrangement on prepping and delivery and split the money 50/50. I used to make £80 a week....that's a damn sight better than £20 for up to 7 households!

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

No OPGs get any part of their wage directly related to D2D any more, Delivery Supplement is not a direct replacement for the old D2D payments we used to get!

[Dorset Plodder]

No OPGs get any part of their wage directly related to D2D any more, Delivery Supplement is not a direct replacement for the old D2D payments we used to get!

You're Bloody Right there Trolley...It's not as much! You can call it what you like but I believe the majority of Posties still class "Households" as a direct replacement for "Door 2 Doors". I don't want to start a slagging match but I don't really see why staff in Mail Centres should have been given a vote on whether or not to receive the new "Delivery Supplement", after all they're not Delivering it!

[lylehillboonen]

So on a more positive role the D2Ds can do for the business and our jobs? Any suggestions?

How about a household to (selected?) delivery points focusing on PARCELS and some of the suggested neighbour/safe place options. I know it was done before with the stickers but it needs revisited.

[bustedflush]

I still believe D2D is absolute trash.

The energy involved in designing, printing, boxing, sorting and delivering it is astonishing. Then the customer receives it and in most cases, bins it. This is an old fashioned 20th Century medium with a massive negative impact on the environment, from beginning to end all that D2D generates is waste.

These mailshots would be a lot friendlier for the planet and the Postie if they were sent by email so that you can just click trash/spam or if they must, use banners on social media and the like................

You can't defend this sort of environmental vandalism in the 21st Century, D2D is trash, full stop.

I wholeheartedly agree. We don't want them, the customers don't and the whole affair is a mindless environmental crime, a catastrophic waste of resources. I did hear the figure bandied about that £100m is added to RM profits by this junking, but to me that seems excessive. As for 'nesting' what sodding difference does it make? The bloody things disperse in the flight between letterbox and doormat anyway, and even if the junk lands in one wad you always shake them apart in case you have a 'wanted' letter inside them. I ripped the crap in half without looking(as usual) one week at my house and I had a bank statement inside them which suffered accordingly

The tactics of the serial-junkers reflect the fact we don't want them for pity's sake! Why do so many come in plain white/brown A5 enevlopes? To fool the householder into thinking they're proper letters so they don't immediately rip 'em. Same as the incessant V*rg*n M*d** addressed A4 envelopes in our IPS mail (we can tell immediately by the font in the address window who they're from) which have the return address in microscopic font on the bottom of the back, and no indication or V*rg*n logo on the front - why? For the same reason that they know their incessant junking pees people off and that hiding the source means the householder may actually open it before destroying it.

From all the conversations I've ever had, the only household junk that's even slightly welcomed is the local supermarket ones when they have 'money off if you spend over £40' vouchers or similar.

I'd like to set fire to the bloody lot, the thousands of tonnes RM gets each year and flog the electricity generated to the National Grid - at least some good would come from them.

[thegreatestfreddy]

I still believe D2D is absolute trash.
.....
As for 'nesting' what sodding difference does it make? The bloody things disperse in the flight between letterbox and doormat anyway

crap... you try dropping a nested bundled of d2d's... they don't disperse at all.... stop trying to cut corners and handing rm the opportunity to say the job takes less time to do than it really does... (apart from it being bad for the d2d paying customer)

[bustedflush]

I still believe D2D is absolute trash.
.....
As for 'nesting' what sodding difference does it make? The bloody things disperse in the flight between letterbox and doormat anyway

crap... you try dropping a nested bundled of d2d's... they don't disperse at all.... stop trying to cut corners and handing rm the opportunity to say the job takes less time to do than it really does... (apart from it being bad for the d2d paying customer)

Well you ain't doing it right then. Say you've got 3 or 4 other craplets inside the biggest one (Dominos for example) and you hang on briefly to the back edge of the Dominos one before you push it the final inch, you'll feel all the other craplets slide out onto the floor. Only exception admittedly is the floor-level box.

[jbbicker]

Different systems seem to suit different people depending on their walk, their contract or their frame. I'm a floater on a 6 day week. I have 5 different duties rotating week to week. Personally, I prefer to use up the single slots on Monday and Tuesday, taking them where I'm going, then fill up the double slots on the heavier days. My frames are all different and the biggest walk has no single slots at all so I split it up roughly a fifth on each loop per day. Some people like to do one column a day, because that's what the manager told them to do. I don't agree with that system myself. The current delivery methods were designed so that each loop was specifically timed and calculated according to the planners 'revolutionary' computer systems. If you go down each column day by day that creates an imbalance on each loop and potentially causes either you or your partner to be waiting around if you get lumbered with 40 door to doors on a quiet Tuesday and the other had none. Plus, I don't enjoy dead walking or delivering only door to doors to a delivery point if I can help it. I'm not one to rush around, come in early and get down in the quickest time possible, but I still believe in doing the job in the best possible manner and it wouldn't sit right with me if I could do something better than I already am. Hence the reason I keep the doors to doors balanced throughout the week.

Sorry if this covers points already discussed in the thread but didn't have time to read it all.

[toomuchcoke]

If I've got a choice I'll do a Column a day prepped before I put the mail in....They're classed as "Live" mail and the time to prep them is allocated daily...so if you're prepping them in your own time you're giving RM time/money for nothing!

Don't prep them in my own time (will do overtime to prep them, though new management is less likely to sign off on that alas) but show me the difference between throwing them in on work's time the day before and on the day in question? I forget the actual wording, but the last communication from management was you could throw them in on the day before, on the day first or on the day last as you preferred but to avoid screwing over the day-off floaters the D2Ds for them where to be thrown in the day before. (Which I figured meant the floaters should throw in the next days, unless agreed otherwise with the duty holder.)

[dave72]

We get 20 minutes per morning for d2d prep only, don't others?

Even on no d2d days we get those 20 minutes per morning (20 sleep in )

[lylehillboonen]

So another question lol this week has a bank holiday so what do others on this thread do with regards to this? Our unit clears the d2ds mon to fri leaving sat free. I know some poor postie will be facing a d2d section this sat!

[dave72]

So another question lol this week has a bank holiday so what do others on this thread do with regards to this? Our unit clears the d2ds mon to fri leaving sat free. I know some poor postie will be facing a d2d section this sat!

We normally blend them in, half of the column one day and the other half another day. We never do d2ds on a Saturday