leave post with neighbour trial

[johnsouthwales]

that is the same principle as a community mailbox. we all know the principles of carrying, sorting, storage, distribution and delivery. then again, what they haven't thought through is how much mail an adressee gets and how much a neighbour is willing to store and for how long. maybe the adressee is an ebay buyer/seller lol and forever going through various amounts, but in that sort of business, it would be in their interests to be in.

we all know it is nice and trusting that someone we know has got our mail but at the same time elsewhere, the anxiety involved and complexity of a system where strangers or up to no gooders are handling an adressee's belongings.

personally i wouldn't mind if a courier asked if it'll be alright to accept a package, i know it is safe with me, but people do get tetchy even when the intention are good. and it becomes a problem when more than one packet becomes involved.. i may accept a packet at say 11am on a saturday for example and i may go off somehwere and not return for a day, it could be spur of the moment.

someone may accept it at 11am and be working afternoons or evenings, so the adressee will not get it until at least 11pm or the following day.. and if the adressee is out during the day when the accepter is at home after an evening shift or night shift, how would that work...? exactly the same way as another courier does now.. some people haven't got the time traipsing to s.o. rearranging a re-delivery to suit often is hindered by some sort of time issue. if someone misses a delivery and says i will be in today between 2pm and 3pm, they won't get it.. some people work part time, hours change, everyone's situation is not the same and is not based on an assumption that people are in 24/7.

if someone misses a delivery, they may have a chance of retrieving it by 1pm even on the same day if lucky.. some people work and may pop over the s.o in the lunchbreak.. some people cannot get to the s.o until 1:30pm or 2pm, or during normal hours if they work 7am til 4pm or 5pm.. if the s.o was open, they be happy, but in most cases, if they finsih at 4pm or later, by the time they get home, they see the card and would wish the s.o is open til gone 5pm or go the following day. if they can't get there at all during luch, they are stuffed... and believe it or not, some people's luch isn't until 1pm, just at the same time the s.o closes lol

[johnsouthwales]

it would be of some interest how they came up with the test areas and what info they looked at.. obviously living in smaller areas can mean a short nip up the s.o, and more likely to have someone in due to one reason or another. it'll save some money, liability and some space. maybe some form of big society lol, encouraging neighbouthood friendlyness through mailwatching..

[fishtank]

An idea would be to open a kind of building in each area where undelivered stuff could go.
Somewhere accessible,maybe in a high street that didn't shut at one and people could go and collect their stuff.
It would be like an office for post or something and could sell stamps and other stuff as a sideline.
You could even pay your bills there.
Not thought of a name yet....any suggestions?

[johnsouthwales]

the only logical place could be is longer sorting office hours, instead of carting stuff from there to a main postoffice or a shop. but people work 7-4 or 7-5, or 8-5 so could get a squeeze in enroute but not always practical if lift sharing, locality, public transport etc, and if work is half hour away. all is well in a small town, but try trecking across a city using the same principle.

i wouldn't fancy paying £1.50 a time to pick something up from a p.o, even if the s.o is 5 mins walk away from the p.o.
if it was a high st shop, we are back to square one, third party liablity.

no wonder they chose quieter places to run the experiment, it'll distort the data. some people work shifts so they be in during the day one week and not the next.. and the reliability of neighbours is likely to change, so if they assume quiet country life type of neighbours in a city, they got another thing coming.
a nominated neighbour can be easily called away at a moments notice and just miss the postie.. and when the adressee comes home, there could be ructions and blame each other lol

[johnsouthwales]

rotL - where it says If the neighbour does not accept the item.

why would the neighbour not accept the item if they agreed in the first place?

there is always a catch.. i would have thought it would have been common sense for an adressee to nominate a neighbour they trust... but it says that the postie decides who to leave the mail with..

i suppose it could be open to scamming if someone nominates someone as a partner in ebay crime or mail order scams lol....

and it will be sods law if the postie decides to leave someone's goodies with mr supected burglar out of random.... stuff that for a lark.

or what if some recorded mail was sent from a solicitor and the neighbour opened it and passed on the info lol.

or some confidential medical info... (see the rm/dwp/atos thread)....

passports, id... would be very useful if the neighbour was an id thief in his spare time.

concert tickets sent by recorded delivery... handy for a forger, replace the forged ones into the envelope..

or worst, obtaining tickets for a footy match or concert sent by recorded because of last minute availability, the neighbour signs for them and gets called into work the same day forgetting they are there in the rush, and the poor sod cannot access them because the neighbour works 100 miles away and cannot get back until monday..

the best and the worst..

[johnsouthwales]

lockers will not work at small town or rural stations...then again, some large town railway stations close their foyers at 5pm and they will not have the room for lockers so they've had their chips.. cities. London, kings cross, paddington, euston, victoria.. they still have to get there and driving to these venues cost money. who would fancy trecking from shepherds bush over to padd after 6pm? cost them more in fares. when they say redelivering is expensive, someone could be poncing about re-sorting, loading, driving, unloading, and sorting them out into lockers...at least an hours worth so may as well leave the s.o open for an extra hour... handy for someone who lives 10 mins walk from victoria but half hour walk to the s.o

say they purchased 100 lockers and only 10 used them.. that would cost a packet to do everyday, and since they said that redelivering is expensive, what could be more expensive than the lockers at that capacity?

they can't have too many stations or venues involved as that would become a distribution problem..

what the worse thing can be is if everybody was out during the day full stop. nobody home, no neighbours in.. how would it work then? how does a postie get mail if they're out all day lol....

if i buy something and i know it's quite large, what do i do? omg, i'm out all day say from 7:30am until 5pm.. in the old days, i could receive a signed for letter i was expecting at 7am.. i may scrape some time by leaving at 7:15 and should be able to get it from the counter but.... as for a large packet, i wouldn't bother at 7:15 if it is day one of delivery..unless very very lucky someone is processing it in that moment in time.. i can't go there after 5pm cos it's shut... i can't have it redelivered cos i'm not there the following day too..but i can pick it up at 7:15am the following day as it would have been processed on day one and be ready for pick up.. i could have achoice of having it picked up from a postoffice but pay cash. could i get it at postoffice at 5pm on the same day as it was attempted? if it was attempted before mid-day, and depending the route, it's most likely to be in a van for the next two hours at least, still got 3 hours left in the system.. no point paying to get it from the p.o the following day at 5pm when i can pick it up for free at 7:15am ...

at least they have got edinburgh in the list, but does that mean the whole of ed or a selective part? i see bolton is down but does that mean farnworth for example in it's location? i would have chucked down cardiff in the trial to balance it out a bit and take off gorseinon.. what is the point of having gorseinon down, a large town but quite a way from a bigger place like swansea. ammanford and llandeilo small and medium sized where most people know each other anyway but still doesn't solve the issues.. pitching in small towns versus large towns won't give an accurate figure.. at the end of the day, if nobody is in, nobody is in and that is going to happen everywhere and anywhere. if someone is within a 15mins walk from s.o, some people can manage that.. not forgetting elderly who would find it awkward.. live five miles away and they're stuffed.. it would be better to have a neighbour in these outlaying areas rather than a smaller compact area. even 2 miles would be a job for some people if it was a 2 mile gap in a compact area, which in reality would be no difference in city terms.. two miles in london or manchester is totally different than 2 miles in the sticks

[johnsouthwales]

if they are closing s.o, how come they are coming up with this plan now? effictively closing one distribution centre and opening up others.. all these lockers and little shops here and there are drop off and pick up points. somehow, they have to be distributed to these venues. lockers would be no more than a p.o box. railtrack would most deffo charge rent space for these.

take the lockers out of the equation and replace them with little outlets here and there. it could well just be a little spar shop or a newsagent. well, before i would entrust my mail, i would like to see how many times that newsagent has been robbed first before deciding thanks or attempts. in the past, it would have been fine.. i know some little shops were leaving stuff for people to pick up as a pick up point on a very small scale.. with mail, room and security is required.. if it is a room issue, rm are diverting their space elsewhere (if that is part of the plan). a small s.o in a small town won't have that much clutter with returned packets and bits and bobs floating about and be lucky to be 1 cubic metres worth a day, a van load, and that's being generous. but you will never know...i can't see it being a space issue at all. if it was a case of undelivered taking up over 20% roomspace, that would be completly different.

lol, if they could shave off 1% of a building they'd do it, just to save on the rates.. imagine adding all up the square metres of every single s.o and m.o, calculate the returns. i bet you that would fill up one small s.o everyday.. the redistribution can be calculated in proportion to the areas, but as it changeable day to day the postage patterns, may as well say that it costs the same amount of one small s.o operational costs being distributed nationally as if it was normal business.. a 100% can never be achieved because of the constant destinations etc, so unless someone actually identified each and every packet and analyzed it's distance paths, there's your figure... the saving would be the same as one s.o they closed down in the past.

if it could be worked out, how come it costs £1.50 to pick up a package.. as i mentioned earlier, the s.o is 5 mins walk away, 10 mins plus 2mins. that is 20% of a wage or there abouts.. looking at close to £2.. in that respect, they are losing 50p.. take the van is just about 2-3 mins each way plus 2 from the depot plus fuel etc (if they did it like that) so they're only just scraping it making it £1.50, roughly making it costing 2.4p a second..

daft as it sounds, they must have looked into it, if they operate at 3p to distribute, where is the money going to come from to pay the little outlets? rm will want their slice.. if the outlet charges the same as rm does, rm would get £1.20 and 30p for the outlet.. more money per packet means more for the outlet.. so, why would someone bother going to an outlet for £2 when they can it at the post office for cheaper? surely the whole exercise defeats it's own purpose? how can customers receive their mail at no extra cost? i wouldn't be happy with 30p a package, if i had 40 of them that would bring in £12 and that would take up some room, and could well contain at least £400 worth of goods and be the centre of attraction for a potential robber... and if i got robbed, i would be liable to pay.... unless joe public doesn't mind paying £2, £3, £4 a time for picking up mail as that figure could be reached to make a shop a bit more interested and worthwile to cover their own backs... same sort of franchising letter stores charge in the us, same principles apply.

if redistribution costs actually are that high, why plough that extra expenditure to distribute to pickup points. surely it would be just the same cost to keep a s.o open longer? or are rm relying on the public as a good neighbour scheme after all? talk about every little helps

[fishtank]

Member foolishly left a signed for with a neighbour.
When the customer went to the neighbour to retrieve it they denied receiving it.
Manager and member turned up at the neighbour's door with a copy of the signature...neighbour continues to deny receiving it.
The neighbour is lying but.......now the manager has a decision to make.
All of this happened this week.

Just a warning....

[Carp]

I've quoted in another post,that this will be the biggest concern,as its a case of his or her word against mine.We've also been informed its okay to give the neibour recorded or trackers for them to sign as well,which am still not to keen on doing.Composation on the rise all round i should think