The post!

[Sorastro]

When we first moved into this house {32 years ago} the post was delivered at 7 a.m. give or take 15 minutes. As the years rolled on it got to 10 o'clock then 11 o'clock then dinner time.  For the past few years it has been anything from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m...... till yesterday

 that's when we got our post at 6:45p.m.

Also this new system they have were postmen can now pick up letters to be posted, another brainstorming session by the P.O.
Not only is it going to increase their working days, it looks as though, if yesterday is anything to go by, the end of the routes will be waiting into the evening to get their "morning" post.

After the courts ruling over the computer fiasco {that ran for years} in which a vast majority of post masters and mistresses were, as it turns out,wrongly accused of theft that turned out to be a major computer glitch {i.e. the post office's fault} and now they have to pay out millions in compensation, my guess is they are going to do their utmost to close down as many post offices as they can, and by starting the above they will erode the need for the public to rely on the post office.

[Alsatian]

My experience of Royal Mail whilst working for them (finance not operations) was that they employed people with a university background and didn't have a clue as to how things worked.
Then they wondered why things get into a mess!

A bit like when they changed the name to Consignia (sounds like a male deoderant!) with all the associated costs (to what benefit?), only for it to be changed back!

[Old Cruser]

Ours used to come early morning years ago and then came in the afternoon. It now comes mid morning.

One thing we have learned not to do is pop cash into birthday cards anymore as we have had several not reaching their destination!!

[bransoj]

I've got Royal Mail experience from two sides, for years i worked in various support roles for them and then a couple of years ago i did 6 weeks temp work as a postie. Some cracking lads doing their best but this time of year its starting to ramp up to silly volume levels and they are being asked to deliver all sorts. Majority want to start earlier but for some reason they werent asked to start until later in the morning which obviously pushes things back, one week i spent doing delivering around Tupton and the volumes for two of us were massive and instead of being done for 2:30/3pm it was often nearly 5/5:30pm when we actually got finished. Like many places they are being asked to do more as other things are cut around them. Believe they are actually going through something at the moment where contracted hours are being reduced. All this said i very nearly ended up doing it permanently, whether i would have enjoyed it as much long term i dont know. A lot of the time the earliest they even get to leave the delivery office after sorting and bagging things up is 9:30am.

Main problem is they are being squeezed by other delivery firms who dont have to comply to many of the regulations they do such as having to delivery letters anywhere in the country etc. Heard many a story of other delivery companies charging end users their fees for depths of Scotland etc only to stick it in the Royal Mail system for them to deal with for not as much postage. They are having to come up with other methods of posting like this new pick up thing to try and be competitive.

[Sorastro]

After the courts ruling over the computer fiasco {that ran for years} in which a vast majority of post masters and mistresses were, as it turns out,wrongly accused of theft that turned out to be a major computer glitch {i.e. the post office's fault} and now they have to pay out millions in compensation, my guess is they are going to do their utmost to close down as many post offices as they can, and by starting the above they will erode the need for the public to rely on the post office.

It would appear that the P.O. is to pay out at least £1billion in compensation to these postmasters wrongly convicted.
WRONG!!!
It turns out the £1billion is coming from the taxpayer, so once again a "private" company is being baled out by the taxpayer.
The company that own Horizon, the computers in this saga, have apparently {due to a loophole} got away without paying any compensation this was helped by bad P.O. management.

To top it all whilst Horizon was constantly in the news about how cr*ppy the system was and how it was proven to be so, the makers of Horizon are STILL picking up I.T. contracts in the u.k. including one contract worth at least £42million and that contract is with, yes you've guessed it..........THE POST OFFICE.

You couldn't make it up!