Lockardian wrote:UK-UK are the ones I’ve noticed - mainly when a sticker is on the packet with the return address in small print underneath the destination address. The tiny little Chinese packets are sorted manually AFAIK as the envelopes have everything bar the kitchen sink on them.
I’ve seen them presented on the MDEC screens and it’s even virtually impossible for the keyers to highlight the correct part of the envelope for the PSM to read.
We ocassionally get some Tracked through where the return address is in a larger font than the actual address
postman1979 wrote:
SpacePhoenix wrote:
postman1979 wrote:My MC on Tuesday night into Wednesday processed 72K tracked items in an eight hour shift. 10K on the PSM the rest done manually. Busiest night last Xmas was 61K. That's with a staff shortage of 20%. People really need to stop buying stuff they don't really need.
What would be the average number of Tracked items that would be processed outside of either the pandemic, xmas pressure or a Bank Holiday week?
We process in a normal shift between 36K and 45K on a night shift. The oversized Tracked has increased by about 50% over the last three weeks. Though the Tracked we get from Amazon has stayed more or less the same.
We don't get much Amazon through normally, generally just places that are out in the sticks
I was thinking the other day if we are so busy then it must be so much worse up the chain.. Found this thread and knew it.
Ive noticed a massive increase in the amount of amazon parcels. We have had about a 10x increase in the amount of amazon special deliveries. Im pretty sure our Sorting Office broke the record for registered items 2 weeks ago so many that we had to fail them until the next day. (Which is unheard off as we always go above and beyond to clear our special deliveries). Its a good job Royal Mail has suspended the time guarantee! People in my office are saying this is because Amazon have switched from Hermes to Royal Mail? But I just ordered something on AMazon and its coming with Hermes But then again it weighs 2.1kg so maybe Royal Mail have only taken items 2kg or less ? Does anyone know ?
In addition collection mail has gone up massively too, seems many people writing to eachother out of boredom or out of passion in the current sitation. Probably this time last year I was delivering a hand written letter once ever 25 calls but in the last 2 weeks i have consistently been delivering hand written cards to 1 in 5 houses. Which is very nice to see.
Medway is full to the brim not much space work is being stored in trailers up the Voc loads of angard casuals on every shift social distancing is ok to a degree gloves are plenty and the odd hand sanitiser is on show lots of opgs on docket.
Lockardian wrote:Yes, it’s certainly busier than normal at our MC too - mainly on packets and tracked packets. Angard staff are in every night. I’m told that metered letters and flats are quieter than usual. The combination of staff sickness and changes in working practice due to social distancing is probably a factor as to why they are struggling to sort all the packets. So far we haven’t failed on night shift but it’s touch and go.
What is happening with the second class sort? Is it being done at another MC?
We are diverting 2c to another Mail Centre - we don't have a psm but they do
We are now diverting Heavy and Large as well
But we are still failing on 1c (by a little), 2c and inward by a lot
About the only shift, we get clear regularly is the weekend Amazon shift
Nights, mornings, lates and sats are all struggling
Nights and mornings are worst hit especially as they have the highest absence rate - nights is 4x higher than mine and ours is way outside the normal range
Steve_claret wrote:It would make sense for any MC who do not have a PSM to send their T48 parcels to an office who does. Sorting at 9K an hour and doing all the scanning as well that would make perfect sense.
Do parcel sorting machines do both inward and outward?
I think if this workload continues my MC needs to reaccess how they organise shift patterns and operate a 24-hour operation processing 2c and inward standard/tracked parcels.
I was thinking the other day if we are so busy then it must be so much worse up the chain.. Found this thread and knew it.
Ive noticed a massive increase in the amount of amazon parcels. We have had about a 10x increase in the amount of amazon special deliveries. Im pretty sure our Sorting Office broke the record for registered items 2 weeks ago so many that we had to fail them until the next day. (Which is unheard off as we always go above and beyond to clear our special deliveries). Its a good job Royal Mail has suspended the time guarantee! People in my office are saying this is because Amazon have switched from Hermes to Royal Mail? But I just ordered something on AMazon and its coming with Hermes But then again it weighs 2.1kg so maybe Royal Mail have only taken items 2kg or less ? Does anyone know ?
In addition, collection mail has gone up massively too, seems many people writing to each other out of boredom or out of passion in the current situation. Probably this time last year I was delivering a handwritten letter once ever 25 calls but in the last 2 weeks, i have consistently been delivering handwritten cards to 1 in 5 houses. Which is very nice to see.
I'm told in delivery some areas are getting only a delivery every other day and the large parcels are causing problems - same as with you as hand written letters are up
Collection drivers report extremes where some collections are zero but others have jumped to above Christmas levels - an example I was told was a gin business going from two Yorks to over a large van per day.
Another electronic business last week reported their busiest day ever and required an extra van
Amazon has increased but not as much as 2c ppi mail - my shift however on a Sunday / Monday morning has gone from 60 ish to 100 ish T24 Yorks on the last Amazon delivery - 2 hours to manually sort it :)
With Hermes, we have actually lost a fair chunk of T48 to them, unfortunately :(
postman1979 wrote:My MC on Tuesday night into Wednesday processed 72K tracked items in an eight hour shift. 10K on the PSM the rest done manually. Busiest night last Xmas was 61K. That's with a staff shortage of 20%. People really need to stop buying stuff they don't really need.
What would be the average number of Tracked items that would be processed outside of either the pandemic, xmas pressure or a Bank Holiday week?
I'm not sure on numbers on tracked but non tracked items hit 98000 one night last week - all processed manually
I'll have to ask what the tracked was :)
postman1979 wrote:My MC on Tuesday night into Wednesday processed 72K tracked items in an eight hour shift. 10K on the PSM the rest done manually. Busiest night last Xmas was 61K. That's with a staff shortage of 20%. People really need to stop buying stuff they don't really need.
What would be the average number of Tracked items that would be processed outside of either the pandemic, xmas pressure or a Bank Holiday week?
I'm not sure on numbers on tracked but non tracked items hit 98000 one night last week - all processed manually
I'll have to ask what the tracked was :)
What sort of number of items would that have normally been?
I'm told in delivery some areas are getting only a delivery every other day and the large parcels are causing problems - same as with you as hand written letters are up
Collection drivers report extremes where some collections are zero but others have jumped to above Christmas levels - an example I was told was a gin business going from two Yorks to over a large van per day.
Another electronic business last week reported their busiest day ever and required an extra van
Amazon has increased but not as much as 2c ppi mail - my shift however on a Sunday / Monday morning has gone from 60 ish to 100 ish T24 Yorks on the last Amazon delivery - 2 hours to manually sort it :)
With Hermes, we have actually lost a fair chunk of T48 to them, unfortunately :(
I've heard similar things about collections. Spoke to the postie on the fitting next to mine and he has been doing collections for 28 years and never seen the boxes so busy. Fair enough back then they would be emptied 2 or 3 times a day compared to one collection per day now..
I spoke to a Hermes driver the other week when we were absolutely rammed. I think I had 24 special deliveries for my round of only 360 calls. (Crazy when you consider this). Also was absolutely rammed on tracked and parcelforce too. Anyone spoke to this Hermes driver and I was like, by christ its busy isnt it! And she turned around to me and said "no actually I'm quiet. I'm about to finish for the day, at 12pm. Most days I'm going until 5pm" she said. My theory is that Royal Mail must have approached Amazon with a cheaper quote so they are automatically sending things out with us. Which means Hermes are struggling for work in my area. I live in an area where in order for 1st class mail to not fail, a mail plane has to he used. And I think Hermes can only afford to use boat transport which means we are getting picked by Amazon for having that quicker service...
Also consider that my area doesn't have amazon couriers yet so it seems to spread out between hermes and royal mail. However now we are getting 90% of it and hermes just delivering the >2kg and oversized parcels.
Lockardian wrote:Yes, it’s certainly busier than normal at our MC too - mainly on packets and tracked packets. Angard staff are in every night. I’m told that metered letters and flats are quieter than usual. The combination of staff sickness and changes in working practice due to social distancing is probably a factor as to why they are struggling to sort all the packets. So far we haven’t failed on night shift but it’s touch and go.
What is happening with the second class sort? Is it being done at another MC?
We are diverting 2c to another Mail Centre - we don't have a psm but they do
We are now diverting Heavy and Large as well
But we are still failing on 1c (by a little), 2c and inward by a lot
About the only shift, we get clear regularly is the weekend Amazon shift
Nights, mornings, lates and sats are all struggling
Nights and mornings are worst hit especially as they have the highest absence rate - nights is 4x higher than mine and ours is way outside the normal range
Our mail centre has diverted all 2C/T48 for several years, so we only process 2C from the Saturday collection (incidentally, all the Saturday collection gets dispatched together, effectively as 1C!). However the mail centres who take the diverted mail must be at capacity in the current climate - but the automation helps.
There’s also a lot of mail “stuck” in the network at hubs but our centre itself is clearing the 1C and inward on every shift.
Lockardian wrote:Yes, it’s certainly busier than normal at our MC too - mainly on packets and tracked packets. Angard staff are in every night. I’m told that metered letters and flats are quieter than usual. The combination of staff sickness and changes in working practice due to social distancing is probably a factor as to why they are struggling to sort all the packets. So far we haven’t failed on night shift but it’s touch and go.
What is happening with the second class sort? Is it being done at another MC?
We are diverting 2c to another Mail Centre - we don't have a psm but they do
We are now diverting Heavy and Large as well
But we are still failing on 1c (by a little), 2c and inward by a lot
About the only shift, we get clear regularly is the weekend Amazon shift
Nights, mornings, lates and sats are all struggling
Nights and mornings are worst hit especially as they have the highest absence rate - nights is 4x higher than mine and ours is way outside the normal range
Our mail centre has diverted all 2C/T48 for several years, so we only process 2C from the Saturday collection (incidentally, all the Saturday collection gets dispatched together, effectively as 1C!). However the mail centres who take the diverted mail must be at capacity in the current climate - but the automation helps.
There’s also a lot of mail “stuck” in the network at hubs but our centre itself is clearing the 1C and inward on every shift.
Yeah we treat all Sat past 2pm as 1st class
I was told of 6000 Yorks stuck at NDC over the weekend
My mail centre needs to get its act together, to be honest, and work better as a team e.g help each other more and look at its staffing
Some of our divert is going to one of those re-opened parcel hubs they run over Christmas
paulus103 wrote:I was told of 6000 Yorks stuck at NDC over the weekend
They must be literally jammed up solid with no room to move at NDC
Yeah my shift manager said pretty much the same when we were talking about the workload / NDC
Our local delivery offices over the weekend couldn't get the all mail out either as didn't have the staff/drivers/lorry space
When I left on Sunday our MHU area for despatch was completely full with work piled up everywhere else
We were supposed to close Sunday evening but instead remained open and staffed it with an ad hoc new shift made up of a few agency and a couple of RM
Sunday day shift (inward sort) was exceptionally busy. There was a skeleton staff working Monday night (the usual Sunday night staff) expecting only Amazon Tracked, but Angard were called in due to a backlog of 2C that was expected from the hubs. In reality only one extra trailer turned up that wasn’t particularly full - so maybe the backlog is cleared for our area. Who knows?
