parcels backlog at delivery office

[kathyx7306]

I was expecting to receive a large number of parcels during the second week of march. I am led to believe by my local delivery office in south Manchester that they are all sat there in a cage amongst hundreds of others, as they have no staff to deliver them as they are all off sick. My postman confirms this and told me his managers are useless and not up to the job. He's close to walking out after 15yrs on the job. What hope do I have of ever receiving my parcels? I have total respect for the Royal Mail as a whole but the management need a kick up their backsides.

[pinstripe]

Sadly due to constant cuts in full time staff,especially drivers (most, at least in my office are being employed on a part time basis), lack of experience and training, incredibly poor industrial relations resulting in a significant number of staff being reluctant to perform overtime and poor planning, your situation is repeated all over the country. This is a direct result of the change enforced by RM senior management from a public service to a business. The result is that while the amount of 'junk mail' sent by big business has increased, the service provided to the public, namely the early and efficient delivery of their mail has become so poor that RM and the government will finally get their way and be able to privatise RM due, quite simply to no objection from the public who are quite rightly fed up with such a poor service.
I would suggest that you contact RM's customer services and start complaining and keep on at them on a daily basis until you receive your items.
Please remember that we want to do our jobs, but there are only so many hours in our working day and the constant denigration of the service is only one of the many reasons we were striking last year.

[Johnny_Rad]

This happens in our office all the time. As stated in the previous post it is not down to the posties being lazy. Its down to RM cutting staff. We have had 6 parcel turns condenced into 3 turns which as you can imagine is running me ragged, Some days I dont even have time for a toilet break. Im working flat out and generally more efficient than most workers in my office and still end up at the end of my shift with upto 100 parcels left to deliver.
The managers reply to this is what they call streaming the parcels which means we are always a day behind with our parcels, and on a busy week we can fall 2/3 days behind.
For some reason parcels are less important than mail and managers dont seem to be fazed by a parcel backlog even tho we are delivering first class parcels that customers have paid upto £20 for the service are getting delivered upto 3 days late.
Im afraid this is the service RM now offer and things are set to get a lot worse.

[norbert]

Sadly due to constant cuts in full time staff,especially drivers (most, at least in my office are being employed on a part time basis), lack of experience and training, incredibly poor industrial relations resulting in a significant number of staff being reluctant to perform overtime and poor planning, your situation is repeated all over the country. This is a direct result of the change enforced by RM senior management from a public service to a business. The result is that while the amount of 'junk mail' sent by big business has increased, the service provided to the public, namely the early and efficient delivery of their mail has become so poor that RM and the government will finally get their way and be able to privatise RM due, quite simply to no objection from the public who are quite rightly fed up with such a poor service.
I would suggest that you contact RM's customer services and start complaining and keep on at them on a daily basis until you receive your items.
Please remember that we want to do our jobs, but there are only so many hours in our working day and the constant denigration of the service is only one of the many reasons we were striking last year.

It is cynicism to deliberately reduce and wear down your expectations of a early and efficient delivery service and work in a privatized mail service .New Labour are just more devious about what they intend to do than previous governments . You can guarantee Joe Public the tax payer will be taken to the cleaners .

The orders came directly from Gordon Brown , you can forget about public service , he installed Investment Bankers and analysts with set targets and they in turn installed people like Leighton & Crozier with their Senior & Area Mangers on huge bonuses to cut costs , boost profits without penalty for poor service .

Take no notice of all the rubbish in the media , it's all RM spin and PR .

[Thorby Bislam]

When parcels are being put out for delivery, those for businesses are prioritised.
Business mail, including business parcels always take precedence over social mail / parcels.This is understandable because RM makes money on business mail but loses money on social mail.

As the above poster said, it's become all about costs rather than service. Although in our office a serious attempt is made to deliver everything the day we get it. a manager said to me once, "they're only granny parcels". That pretty much sums up their proirities and attitude.

[dvbuk55]

Previously the vehicles that did the deliveries, and left at 7 am could be used later in the day for any excess packets by people willing to work overtime. Now of course the deliveries start so late the vehicles are no longer available and when they are it is too late for them to be put to good effect even if people were willing to work so late in the day.

What we have is a company that puts into practice some half assed idea without thinking through the consequences and then instead of admitting it has erred it brings out a matrix for packet/parcel sizes that should now be taken by a walking postman, the size of which is equivalent to a shoe box, which again is totally unrealistic. I am beginning to think that instead of managing RM they should be in a loony bin.