My mum posted my brother's birthday card on Monday, it was his birthday on Thursday, the card didn't arrive until Thursday, the same day that mine arrived that I posted on Wednesday.
The government previously offered to sell Royal Mail in its entirety to TNT but they were not interested unless they could charge different rates, ie more to outlying areas which clearly would not be acceptable to UK public. TNT own the Dutch postal service, but Holland is a small densely populated country so viable for a commercially run service.
It would not be acceptable to the UK public as any competitor has to currently comply with the Universal Postal Service, which ensures that post is delivered to every UK address 6 days a week for one price.
I don't deny they're not perfect, but I think on the whole they give outstanding value for money & people in less well populated parts of the UK will be a heck of a lot worse off once they eventually slam the final nail in the Royal Mail's coffin.
In fact I suspect that ultimately we'll all be a lot worse off - well apart from those who own the private companies (or have fingers in the pies)
I can understand why people slate Royal Mail as they do make cock ups from time to time. I suspect that one of the reasons mail sometimes gets delayed is because it gets gets "misrouted". For example a PR (Preston) postcode could be misread (either by a machine or a person) as being a BR (Bromley) postcode and end up in the wrong mail centre. This sort of mistake will always happen no matter who is running the mail service The misrouted mail then has to be forwarded on to the correct mail centre so that it can get to the correct recipient. I'm not fully conersant with how RM move mail around, but to make a profit it has to be done in bulk so the misrouted letter would be forwarded to the right mail centre on the next truck that is going to said mail centre. Obviously this takes time, hence the delay.
On the other hand in some cases when Parcelforce have a misroute they will usually have a same day courier (like me) go into the depot to collect the misrouted parcel and deliver it to either the correct depot or the customer. They do this to make sure they meet their service level agreement, but when it does happen they loose a heck of a lot of money on it because moving one parcel on a van costs a heck of a lot more than moving hundreds of parcels on an artic!
As a couple of others have already said, no private company would be prepared to operate a postal service in the way RM do because they wouldn't be willing to subsidse the unprofitable parts of the business such as delivering mail to the door of properties in rural and remote areas of the UK six days a week. So I think we should be gratefull for the universal postal service that we have, even though it's not perfect!
Quote: Originally posted by martin2410 on 29/9/2012
well Im sure it wont be too long before you get 1 on your doorstep.
No, they tried but were rejected in favour of another supermarket. They then tried to buy the land to stop the other supermarket from being built but the Scottish Parliament overruled the sale of the land to Tesco.