Tracked Parcels & Delivery Window

[Dorset Plodder]

So, do we know how the time window is generated?

I wouldn't worry about it mate, it's not important in the great scheme of things. RM are trying to pretend that they're a parcel deliver firm like Amazon..... and they're not.

I believe the timings are taken from your PDA actuals (what time have you reached this point over the previous weeks kinda thing). What happens if you "Normally" walk a loop with a bag and get there at 10.00 ... but Mr Knob Head orders 10 tins of paint?

I'll leave his 10 tins of paint in the van and deliver them when I'm driving past, perhaps after delivering several bags of mail in nearby streets. It's a flawed system don't let it stress you.

I hope to God that we NEVER let the IT guys try and organise a manifest for us to deliver at specified times. Talk to any Parcel Force Driver about it... it's a total Clusterfuck! If you're listening Terry.. "Nip that one in the bud early on and save us Posties a major Ball Ache"!

[POSTMAN]

Head of Delivery Design

"The “Estimated Delivery Windows” are provided to a subset of RM Tracked customers who provide the SMS number and/or email details for us to be able to communicate with them about their item. They also provide the address the item is being delivered to, and this is used to look back over the last 9 months to see when we have made parcel delivery events to that address on the particular day of the week. There is then a consistency check to see how much variation in the time there is between the different visits. If there is too much of a range then no estimate is issued. If it is consistent then we issue a 2 hour window. If it is more variable then we issue a 4 hour window.

At present we can’t give this information to the delivery person because the “Ready for Delivery” scan which tells our systems that the item is in the delivery office only knows that an item with that barcode has arrived in your DO. It doesn’t know which route it is on or who is doing it with which PDA. To give visibility to the delivery person we would need to associate the item to a route and we could do this by changing the software on the PDA and doing the “Ready for Delivery” scan at the prep frame. This would then know who is going to take that item out and could “publish” the issued time to the delivery person. We would also like to include within this process the opportunity for the delivery person to advise what time they will leave the DO or get to the first delivery point as this anchor could help make the estimated arrival times more accurate. I do appreciate that you can’t always be within the delivery window predicted for you, but giving people the visibility of what we have told the customers would be a good step to allowing people to know when they are expected.

Because we use the typical delivery time to give customers their Estimated Delivery Window we are able to communicate this the night before delivery which is earlier than all other carriers. For Dedicated Parcel Routes we want to base the time on the route order for the items scanned today rather than history because the Routing app (RON) order the parcels according to what you have today and therefore historic delivery time is not relevant and we should be able to predict more accurately than the core route estimates. Again this needs some technology investment to support it.

I hope this helps explain how we are issuing times to customers and apologies that we can’t make the times visible to the delivery person just at the moment, but we are working towards this."

[Dorset Plodder]

Thanks for providing the information Head of Delivery Design (not a very good Pseudonym in my opinion). A few thoughts from the Posties point of view:

Head of Delivery Design

"The “Estimated Delivery Windows” are provided to a subset of RM Tracked customers who provide the SMS number and/or email details for us to be able to communicate with them about their item.[/u]
We call them "Sad People" who have nothing better to worry about.

At present we can’t give this information to the delivery person because the “Ready for Delivery” scan which tells our systems that the item is in the delivery office only knows that an item with that barcode has arrived in your DO.
That's OK because we've got enough to do without worrying about hitting time slots thank you.

We would also like to include within this process the opportunity for the delivery person to advise what time they will leave the DO or get to the first delivery point as this anchor could help make the estimated arrival times more accurate.
I'd like a workload that's do-able within my contracted hours.... but I'm not going to get it. I certainly don't need any more messing about with that bloody PDA. Veh Checks .... LABEL Deliveries .....Customer Collections... Age Verification .... Photo Confirmation .... Scanning Postboxes etc.

I do appreciate that you can’t always be within the delivery window predicted for you, but giving people the visibility of what we have told the customers would be a good step to allowing people to know when they are expected.

I'd suggest an Old Fashioned System that relies on Common Sense. If you order something either make sure you're in or make some arrangement. An Old School solution would be a note stuck to the door saying, "Please leave my parcel in the shed ...".

[TopperGas]

Thanks for providing the information Head of Delivery Design (not a very good Pseudonym in my opinion). A few thoughts from the Posties point of view:

Head of Delivery Design

"The “Estimated Delivery Windows” are provided to a subset of RM Tracked customers who provide the SMS number and/or email details for us to be able to communicate with them about their item.[/u]
We call them "Sad People" who have nothing better to worry about.

At present we can’t give this information to the delivery person because the “Ready for Delivery” scan which tells our systems that the item is in the delivery office only knows that an item with that barcode has arrived in your DO.
That's OK because we've got enough to do without worrying about hitting time slots thank you.

We would also like to include within this process the opportunity for the delivery person to advise what time they will leave the DO or get to the first delivery point as this anchor could help make the estimated arrival times more accurate.
I'd like a workload that's do-able within my contracted hours.... but I'm not going to get it. I certainly don't need any more messing about with that bloody PDA. Veh Checks .... LABEL Deliveries .....Customer Collections... Age Verification .... Photo Confirmation .... Scanning Postboxes etc.

I do appreciate that you can’t always be within the delivery window predicted for you, but giving people the visibility of what we have told the customers would be a good step to allowing people to know when they are expected.

I'd suggest an Old Fashioned System that relies on Common Sense. If you order something either make sure you're in or make some arrangement. An Old School solution would be a note stuck to the door saying, "Please leave my parcel in the shed ...".

A note pinned on the door is not the correct way of informing a postie where to leave the parcel, should it go astray it's the postie's rather than customer's fault.

[tractorboy2]

Thanks for providing the information Head of Delivery Design (not a very good Pseudonym in my opinion). A few thoughts from the Posties point of view:

Head of Delivery Design

"The “Estimated Delivery Windows” are provided to a subset of RM Tracked customers who provide the SMS number and/or email details for us to be able to communicate with them about their item.[/u]
We call them "Sad People" who have nothing better to worry about.

At present we can’t give this information to the delivery person because the “Ready for Delivery” scan which tells our systems that the item is in the delivery office only knows that an item with that barcode has arrived in your DO.
That's OK because we've got enough to do without worrying about hitting time slots thank you.

We would also like to include within this process the opportunity for the delivery person to advise what time they will leave the DO or get to the first delivery point as this anchor could help make the estimated arrival times more accurate.
I'd like a workload that's do-able within my contracted hours.... but I'm not going to get it. I certainly don't need any more messing about with that bloody PDA. Veh Checks .... LABEL Deliveries .....Customer Collections... Age Verification .... Photo Confirmation .... Scanning Postboxes etc.

I do appreciate that you can’t always be within the delivery window predicted for you, but giving people the visibility of what we have told the customers would be a good step to allowing people to know when they are expected.

Who are the "Sad People" you reference. ?

[Norfolk 'N' Chance]

They are pushing a new way of delivering parcels. Similar system that all the main courier companies are using, where you scan your load into a manifest and it geo plan creates a route for you. It's very flawed system in my opinion. Still you have no idea what customer sees in terms of delivery window. Route it gives makes no sense to a postie with very good local knowledge.

Been doing this for a few weeks and although theres now no need to go back to outdoor and scan each item then confirm delivery (an improvement) there are bugs/flaws in the system. PDA seems to lock up when you get to a delivery point and the customer is in but theres been an in flight request. Last one I couldnt even scan as an ad hoc delivery as it seemed to lock up all options. In the end I delivered it unscanned and unconfirmed.

For redirections the envelope symbol comes up and you get options. However the system seems to have been designed on the basis that you are at the DO and have access to all the frames to see/look up redirections. When your at the MC and starting your parcel route from there this info is not available so its pretty useless. IVe overidden the redirect and kept the parcel in the manifest for the address printed on it and then relied on manual checking with the customer.

Similarly Ive noted several days that the PDA crashes/locks between the time i enter the barcode for dedicated parcels route at the DO and approx 40mins later when I arrive at the MC to collect the LAT's and then start creating the manifest. Through trial and error I now leave the PDA on the vehicle check screen after entering start mileage as for some reason that does not cause a crash.

Every few days now, INVALID POSTCODE ERRORS, QR and Barcodes that wont scan at all! - so have to enter tracking ref manually.

From an IT software design veiwpoint it seems poor that you have to enter the dedicated parcels route barcode into both Indoor and Outdoor. Failure to enter into outdoor creates a problem where no confirmation can be made on delivery in Ron. Is it just me or is this not designed with the end user in mind?

[pieoftheday]

I'd suggest an Old Fashioned System that relies on Common Sense. If you order something either make sure you're in or make some arrangement. An Old School solution would be a note stuck to the door saying, "Please leave my parcel in the shed ...".

It's great when people leave a note saying where to leave a parcel,any dodgy chump can read that too and go help themselves to that parcel

[blacov]

They are pushing a new way of delivering parcels. Similar system that all the main courier companies are using, where you scan your load into a manifest and it geo plan creates a route for you. It's very flawed system in my opinion. Still you have no idea what customer sees in terms of delivery window. Route it gives makes no sense to a postie with very good local knowledge.

Been doing this for a few weeks and although theres now no need to go back to outdoor and scan each item then confirm delivery (an improvement) there are bugs/flaws in the system. PDA seems to lock up when you get to a delivery point and the customer is in but theres been an in flight request. Last one I couldnt even scan as an ad hoc delivery as it seemed to lock up all options. In the end I delivered it unscanned and unconfirmed.

For redirections the envelope symbol comes up and you get options. However the system seems to have been designed on the basis that you are at the DO and have access to all the frames to see/look up redirections. When your at the MC and starting your parcel route from there this info is not available so its pretty useless. IVe overidden the redirect and kept the parcel in the manifest for the address printed on it and then relied on manual checking with the customer.

Similarly Ive noted several days that the PDA crashes/locks between the time i enter the barcode for dedicated parcels route at the DO and approx 40mins later when I arrive at the MC to collect the LAT's and then start creating the manifest. Through trial and error I now leave the PDA on the vehicle check screen after entering start mileage as for some reason that does not cause a crash.

Every few days now, INVALID POSTCODE ERRORS, QR and Barcodes that wont scan at all! - so have to enter tracking ref manually.

From an IT software design veiwpoint it seems poor that you have to enter the dedicated parcels route barcode into both Indoor and Outdoor. Failure to enter into outdoor creates a problem where no confirmation can be made on delivery in Ron. Is it just me or is this not designed with the end user in mind?

I can confirm experiencing the same problems. Especially annoying are the barcodes that do not scan. My biggest gripe is that it doesn't seem to optimise the route properly. If you have any timed deliveries it doesn't recognize it and it gives you a generated route that means you will most likely be failing special deliveries. On top of that I realised it doesn't take into consideration traffic restrictions. It struggles with one way streets and no turn signs etc. I think it is a waste of time and doesn't work as it should be. You seem to be unable to adjust the route once it's been optimised.

[Racingpostie]

I only ever take out one PDA, I use that for scanning and my phone for navigation. Multiple apps that do route navigation with drops that vary from free to £10 a month, I've settled on one that is £6 a month and is vastly superior to what the Pda can muster up. Some will scoff at the thought of using there mobile or paying for anything out their own pocket but it saves so much hassle and time, especially time. Another thing that the Pda gets plenty guilty of is following turn by turn instructions and not seeing an aerial view of where they are heading which I think would help plenty especially on unfamiliar rounds/tight areas.

[yellowbelly]

.......I've settled on one that is £6 a month and is vastly superior to what the Pda can muster up. Some will scoff at the thought of using there mobile or paying for anything out their own pocket but it saves so much hassle and time, especially time.................

Saves RM time and money at your expense I suppose.......

[Norfolk 'N' Chance]

They are pushing a new way of delivering parcels. Similar system that all the main courier companies are using, where you scan your load into a manifest and it geo plan creates a route for you. It's very flawed system in my opinion. Still you have no idea what customer sees in terms of delivery window. Route it gives makes no sense to a postie with very good local knowledge.

Been doing this for a few weeks and although theres now no need to go back to outdoor and scan each item then confirm delivery (an improvement) there are bugs/flaws in the system. PDA seems to lock up when you get to a delivery point and the customer is in but theres been an in flight request. Last one I couldnt even scan as an ad hoc delivery as it seemed to lock up all options. In the end I delivered it unscanned and unconfirmed.

For redirections the envelope symbol comes up and you get options. However the system seems to have been designed on the basis that you are at the DO and have access to all the frames to see/look up redirections. When your at the MC and starting your parcel route from there this info is not available so its pretty useless. IVe overidden the redirect and kept the parcel in the manifest for the address printed on it and then relied on manual checking with the customer.

Similarly Ive noted several days that the PDA crashes/locks between the time i enter the barcode for dedicated parcels route at the DO and approx 40mins later when I arrive at the MC to collect the LAT's and then start creating the manifest. Through trial and error I now leave the PDA on the vehicle check screen after entering start mileage as for some reason that does not cause a crash.

Every few days now, INVALID POSTCODE ERRORS, QR and Barcodes that wont scan at all! - so have to enter tracking ref manually.

From an IT software design veiwpoint it seems poor that you have to enter the dedicated parcels route barcode into both Indoor and Outdoor. Failure to enter into outdoor creates a problem where no confirmation can be made on delivery in Ron. Is it just me or is this not designed with the end user in mind?

I can confirm experiencing the same problems. Especially annoying are the barcodes that do not scan. My biggest gripe is that it doesn't seem to optimise the route properly. If you have any timed deliveries it doesn't recognize it and it gives you a generated route that means you will most likely be failing special deliveries. On top of that I realised it doesn't take into consideration traffic restrictions. It struggles with one way streets and no turn signs etc. I think it is a waste of time and doesn't work as it should be. You seem to be unable to adjust the route once it's been optimised.

Ive had no specials on LAT's, and thankfully 90% of the time my delivery points are all rural, so not had any one way/no entry issues. But many a time I have followed the directions and its ta left turn or right turn too early!

Ive noted that Parcels from ZARA in particular dont scan! Had one today that would not scan. Manually entered the tracking number as QR and bardcode both no go. On swiping at delivery PDA stated you only have non barcoded items for this address, yet its a tracked barcoded item! Answers on a postcard please....? Do I assume that these all get recorded as tracked mail failures due to the software not working?

[ssdd]

Ive noted that Parcels from ZARA in particular dont scan! Had one today that would not scan. Manually entered the tracking number as QR and bardcode both no go. On swiping at delivery PDA stated you only have non barcoded items for this address, yet its a tracked barcoded item! Answers on a postcard please....? Do I assume that these all get recorded as tracked mail failures due to the software not working?

Not sure about this. I guess you'll find out tomorrow whether it went through or not - unless someone else can confirm. I don't remember having a problem scanning Zara parcels normally. If it is a problem with the RON app for some reason, then maybe you would need to ad-hoc scan on delivery. Let us know if you find out if delivery was confirmed or not.

[Racingpostie]

.......I've settled on one that is £6 a month and is vastly superior to what the Pda can muster up. Some will scoff at the thought of using there mobile or paying for anything out their own pocket but it saves so much hassle and time, especially time.................

Saves RM time and money at your expense I suppose.......

Merely being efficient, the days go so much smoother and they don't go smooth at Rm often do they....Another way of looking at it is, I'm regularly done before others on evening/Sunday duties that are set shifts and until Clock cards are in I will continue to do so.

[Dorset Plodder]

Thanks for providing the information Head of Delivery Design (not a very good Pseudonym in my opinion). A few thoughts from the Posties point of view:

Head of Delivery Design

"The “Estimated Delivery Windows” are provided to a subset of RM Tracked customers who provide the SMS number and/or email details for us to be able to communicate with them about their item.[/u]
We call them "Sad People" who have nothing better to worry about.

Who are the "Sad People" you reference. ?

The people I'm referring to Tractorboy are the one's who stand in their porch waving their idiot-phones saying, "You've got a Parcel for me ... I've just recieved a text"!

No Shite Sherlock I know that because I've just zapped the parcel to say I've delivered it. Apparently they're known as "Subset of RM Tracked customers". Like I say I just call them .... Sad

[no1postie]

more unrealistic crap at the expense of the customer, shame on you R.M.