The Post Office punishes people who are at work all day. The problem is that these people have the most amount of money to spend online. I would like to know what percentage of goods in transit to residential actually get delivered as appose to collected from the depot.

It's simple. Greater flexibility on delivery scheduling for online customers will win day.

royal mail are a bunch of ------- it's funny that there is never anyone at home to sign for things when they deliver at 10am Mondays to Fridays and you can't reschedule for a Saturday delivery.

Royal mail = fine if you don't work normal hours.

Can't wait for the day they never blight my door again.

With the UCW not yet having released the dates for their strike, but having to give 7 days notice for the strike yet HP7 'deathly hallows' is released in exactly 31 days; Amazon has over a million pre-orders for HP7 , you can see why Amazon isn't trusting the PO to deliver. There would be otherwise a few weeks of mounting pressure, bargaining, disputes, shouting - and that's just from the potentially deprived kids who might not get HP7 on release day.

This is not very surprising as the Royal Mail seems to assume that all households are living in the 1950's when every family had “a little woman " at home all day. Household letter are still on two fixed deliveries in the mid morning and around midday and their parcel delivery around mid afternoon. Many items I have ordered from Amazon, unless arriving at the Weekend have had to be collected from a parcel office. Private courier firms at least make an effort to deliver at more reasonable times. I now try to arrange to have my parcels delivered to my work place as I can at least guarantee that I will be able to pick them up. If the Royal Mail cannot change its work practices to meet the demands of early 21st. century life (when both partners are out at work during the week) then they deserve to loose out. Blaming their staff for any problem seems to be a knee jerk response prevalent to any incompetent management team. If they want to compete in a modern environment let them adopt modern working methods.

I've been using RM for years to post out parcels. How I wish I could change to someone else (As soon as I can I will).

Not many people know but they changed there claims service this year. I started losing a lot of parcels suddenly and out of 20 lost parcles I managed to claim the money back from..... ZERO!

Royal Mail now send out a letter to the customer asking them to confirm that the parcel they've reported as missing is... well... missing. They have 5 days to reply and if the customer doesn;t answer back they close MY claim and tough luck to me!

This goes for both recorded AND special delivery.

I wish Royal Mails rivals all the best and I look forward to the day I can work with a company that once again cares for their customers!

3 weeks time the government gives the "poor old" post office some money to modernise, which they give to staff (AGAIN) as a bonus.

I don't think I'm alone in saying if there was a blue postbox for a different company next to the standard red ones, I'd put my letter in the blue one.

I'm usually not a praying man, but with royal mail I can't help but ask the lord to watch over my mail!

So who have they awarded the contract to, hope it’s not some courier company who only attempt delivery twice (inevitably while you’re out) before holding it at there depot for collection – which could require a 100 mile round trip.

Or a company that’ll chuck parcels under bushes, in wheelie bins or just leave it on the doorstep. One of the major attractions of buying from Amazon was the delivery service, hope it’s still the case but it could be a bigger loss for Amazon.

Perhaps the Royal Mail are expensive for delivering parcels because, unlike all their competitors, they actually bother to deliver them. If I'm not home when they try to deliver, I can phone them and say "please deliver on Saturday" and then my parcel turns up on Saturday. None of their competitors will do that in my experience. They all expect me to either take a day off work or drive to their depot which is only open for a few inconvenient hours in a ghastly industrial estate 20 miles away.

In London especially, the amount of valuble parcels and cards that "dissapear" with organised gangs buying them, mainly eastern europe and african. this is what prompted AMEX, Visa et al to use private companies. Every week I get 2 or 3 signed for parcels pushed thru my letterbox, never asked to sign for them. Dont trust the PO myself anymore for anything other than a letter or card, even recorded doesnt get there next day most times for us.

"directly caused by our failure to fully modernise our operations, are costing us business"

Really? I would have thought it had more to do with the amount of Amazon goods that get nicked per year. I lose about 10% of my Amazon parcels that go through the Royal Mail. Hopefully now the Royal Mail have been ditched I won't have to suffer with this affliction any more.

Bet the posties are glad they're not having to lug millions of copies of the last Harry Potter book.

One of the things I liked about Amazon is that things are dispatched by Royal Mail, so if I'm not at home, I can arrange to have my items delivered to my local village post office, where for 50p I can collect them at a time of my choosing on a day that I am at home. This is a great Royal Mail service, and seems to be a bit of a secret, perhaps if they published it more, more people would use it.

My experience of all the major home delivery services is that they have inconveniently located depots that are hard to find and open only during office hours and expect you to wait in for them to delivery at some random time, at least my local delivery office is open until 7pm every night, all be it 15 miles away. (Parcel Force is 25).

Oh, most on-line retailers will dispatch by Royal Mail if you ask them too, and if they won't, I go elsewhere.

I would lay odds the only thing Amazon looked at was the delivery cost, and not the ability to deliver at the customers convenience.

Royal mal was the only delivery company Amazon use I've never had a problem with... I'd select my delivery options based on the chance of getting them,.

"...the loss of such a significant piece of their business demonstrates very clearly that Royal Mail's higher costs ... are costing us business."

*waits patiently for the next price rise*

"The Post Office punishes people who are at work all day. "

That's me, but I solve the problem by having parcels sent to work.

Some employers don't allow that. The simple answer is to apply the same laws as for use of the telephone, and make employers legally obliged to allow employees reasonable delivery facilities.

"Royal Mail now send out a letter to the customer asking them to confirm that the parcel they've reported as missing is... well... missing. They have 5 days to reply and if the customer doesn;t answer back they close MY claim and tough luck to me!"

That's wholly unreasonable, and probably wouldn't stand up to legal challenge.

Don't take NO for an answer. The county court exists for dealing properly with small claims like this. If you paid extra for recorded delivery to prove delivery and the recorded delivery doesn't show the item as delivered then the court is unlikely to accept non-response as evidence of anything.

Yup, I'm afraid so. Of all the couriers that I've had deliver here, they are the only ones to consistently a) deliver before 8am, and b) ring the BLOODY DOORBELL when delivering, rather than, eg, DHL for whom I have to set bear traps in the front garden to prevent them from timidly waving at the front windows and running away.

Looks like it very much depends on where you live.

If you've had a large delivery from Amazon in the last year or so. The introduction of the new postal charges was probably the last straw for Amazon. RM's functions have been degraded considerably in the last couple of years.

My area was one of the first to go to the single daily delivery, probably because most of the population are pensioners, with weekday delivery coming at about 11am, yet at the same time the Saturday opening times of the collection office were shortened from 7am to 1pm to 7am to 11:30am, which is great way to treat your customers.

RM have lost this contract due to their complacency and also due to the amount of corruption in the delivery system in some areas - Amazon's management team's love of statistics is probably more telling of RM's performance than any public figures are. It has to be remembered that when Jeff Bezos was looking at setting up amazon.co.uk, he was looking around for a carrier for a delivery partnership and he couldn't believe that a carrier like the Royal Mail existed. The relationship has lasted about 10 years. These days he probably can't believe that a carrier like the Royal Mail exists.

My local Royal mail depot has changed its opening hours to fit in with the new national working practices. Conveniently open at 8AM, but only for the British gas engineers who collect all their parts from the depot now there's no BG facility in the area. We of the general public are allowed in from 0830, and they have a very convenient closing time of 1700. At weekends it's 0830 to 1200.

The posties don't usually deliver the post until 1PM anyway, so if you get a card left with wait 4 hours before coming to collect, you just have to forget about it until the next day.

Someone should point out to these people in the service industry that they are meant to be providing a service.

...here's a name to freeze the blood - Amtrak.

If you've never had to deal with them, be glad - a company where 'guaranteed next day' means 'might be there in a week or so, presuming we can be bothered to deliver it and not just drop it on a random doorstep without taking a signature. Sounds broken you say? Must have been when we reversed the truck over it, the large hole in the side? Ventilation sir. And we took the opportunity to have a look at your parcel - nice computer you've got there and thanks for the memory, that'll go nicely in my own PC. Just sign there will you?'

Here in MK Amazon sometimes deliver with 'Home Delivery Network' - I'm not sure if they are national or what, but if I'm out and give them a call, more often than not they'll drop it round that evening, or first thing next morning - even on a Saturday. Oh and they're polite and friendly - it's almost disturbing.

I don't know when it started happening, but I have noticed that Amazon don't dispatch parcels same day any more. And by them not using Royal Mail I will now be forced on a 50 mile round trip to pick up my parcel, compared to a short stroll through the village to the local sorting office.

Fortunately just as Amazon don't have to use Royal Mail, I don't have to use Amazon.

I can't work it out - if you're a private individual, Royal Mail offer very competitive prices. If you want to send something to be somewhere by lunchtime the next day, guaranteed, you can either pay in excess of a tenner by courier, or just over a fiver by RM. And I've NEVER had a problem with Special Delivery - always gets there, and always ontime. Never had to claim a refund for late delivery.

As for getting stuff delivered to me, some courier firms (thanks DHL) won't even deliver to my address (fear of clampers, despite clampers giving people 15 mins), and don't even post a card to say something is waiting at the depot. They even sent something back, because it was there for a few days with no contact by me (I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS THERE, YOU DIDN'T TELL ME!)

Oh, Royal Mail also deliver stuff on Saturdays, for no extra charge. Also the post offices are open to collect stuff on Saturdays, unlike most courier depots.

And who says that courier firms are better at delivering when you want them to? Not in my experience! They'll deliver once a day, when they feel like it, and if you ask for it to be redelivered again, it'll be tomorrow (when they feel like it) or you can collect it from the depot. What flexibility!

I hope Amazon will be open in telling us who they have chosen.

I got "stung" a few months ago when my wife bought something off Ebay and the seller shipped the package by a company who wont deliver on Saturday, or out of hours, or allow delivery to another address, so I had to do a round trip of 60 miles to a rather grim, dodgy looking business park near Stroud to pick up something we had paid to have delivered.

It's a pity, one advantage of Amazon was that the parcels could often arrived overnight and you could collect from the Post Office next morning if out when delivered. Many "express" carriers take several days or longer to reach here and their nearest depot is often a considerable distance away.

M

Royal Mail was the only Amazon courier I haven't had any problems with. If they're only using Home Delivery Network now then I don't plan on ordering from Amazon at all in the future. Last time they delivered something for me it sat in a depot for a week because one of their drivers was sick (no attempt was made to get another driver or to deliver it any possible way) and they wouldn't give me a number or location for the depot so I could arrange collection myself.

In the end I met a bloke who used to drive for them who gave me the depot number. When I called amazon to complain I got the same rubbish as here about not commenting on their suppliers. They made it very, very difficult to make an effective complaint about the shoddy service I'd received on their behalf.

An internet search at the time revealed a large number of people who'd had similar problems with HDNL and with Amazon's customer service procedures.

I always thought that a 2 to 3 day delivery time was standard for Royal Mail until I came to France and finding mail posted at 5 PM was delievered to the other side of the country by 10 AM the next morning via the state owned "La Poste"...

From the rest of my family in england, I hear stores about mail boxes being broken into, mail bags being found abandonned because the postman cannot be bothered to deliever the contents, and absolutly no guarantee that your mail will ever get anywhere, especially if there could be money in the envelope.

It looks like another part of UK life and society that seriously needs to be re-civilised: I left England to study abroad and originally was going to return at the end of my studies, but over the following years, things have seem to have gone downhill so fast, with a global lack of trust, service, hospitality, roving packs of uncultured and uncontrolled "yoofs", and it seems that everyone finds this "normal"...

There are times that I am ashamed to be English, and I currently have no intention of coming back to Blighty!

I've actually got a packet from amazon waiting at Royal Mail's depo in Lincoln for me to collect. 2 Foo fighters cds and American History X (I liked what I saw on TV the other night).

I work 9 to 5 so I basically got to either drive through 8am traffic to the town centre (ha!) or pick it up saturday morning before 12:30.

Why the f*** do I have to get out of bed so earlier on a saturday?

I have a friend who works for the USPS. He told me that the Harry Potter books are delivered in a container with a seal. They can break the seal at midnight. We expect our book (well, Carol's book) around 9 am, on our doorstep. I will not have a conversation with her until she is done.

I would dearly like to throttle the Royal Mail-person who can't be bothered to deliver mail to *anyone* on our street properly; however, in my experience DHL put RM in the shade when it comes to screwing over customers.

I ordered a mid-sized, heavy printer from Amazon that was 'delivered' by DHL. On the first go, they gave me no warning that delivery would be attempted that day so, of course, I was off earning a living.

I rang up to reschedule delivery and was told it would be made in two days' time. So on that day I waited all day, and after calling several times to confirm that it was 'out for delivery' they finally got around to telling me that, no, it hadn't actually left the depot.

So I arranged it *again*. And the *same* thing happened. Again. And I was forced to travel by bus to the a** end of Vauxhall and then carry the thing back to West London or they were going to send it back to Amazon.

Apparently, although you can 'reschedule delivery', the package doesn't actually go out on the truck if it's a second or third attempt unless there's "space on the truck." I kid you not, this is what they told me.

I *was* under the impression that DHL was a logistics company. But they apparently can't say for sure if they've got space on a truck for a delivery scheduled two days from today. God forbid that that you need to plan to use a slightly bigger truck or cram an Epson printer into a corner somewhere! No, it's all a big surprise when they turn up at work and can't fit it all in.

I will never use DHL again. I avoid Amazon items that look like they'll be shipped by DHL. In comparison the RM are stars.

jon

At work we send around 1000 parcel by courier every year and around 500 parcels by royal mail. We also send around 6000 letters by post.

By courier in the last 12 months, 3 parcels have gone missing, which were eventually found and arrived at their destinations in the end.

With royal mail 5 parcels have gone missing, not to be found (remember we send half as many parcels by royal mail)

With the letters, around 150-200 go missing every year. Those are just the ones we know about as people have phoned up to complain that they have not been received, there are quite likely more, but people have kept quiet.

Also we ran a competition last year. The closing date was 28th April 2006. To our suprise we received an entry sometime in February 2007. We were having a laugh about it in the office, until we noticed the post date was 24th April 2006.

This is posted anonymously as i am about to call my workmates a bunch of lazy sods, and suggest something very fraudulent that would seriously cut down the profits if it was used too much....

If a special is put through the door without any signature being asked for, complain straight off, within the day if possible, before the hard copy of the signing sheet gets filed. (you could also claim that it was never delivered, the burden of proof is on them to produce a signature on a card, however I cannot suggest that due to illegality)

Almost all the postmen will be back by 3:00, and most of the packets will be filed by 4:00, so you can generally pick a packet up in the evening. (may not be possible for very large or heavy ones as these are done by van when one of the posties from an earlier round is free). however make sure to get there well before the closing time, on the dot of 17:30 (12:30 on weekends), the door will be closed, the main person on the desk is rarely given overtime, and i have witnessed him physically dive through the oversize parcels hatch and close the door as someone was walking up to it.

The person on the desk wants to get rid of you, if you can see the trolley of that days returns and ask him to have a quick check, it is easier for him to do that than to go and get a manager.

If you get a red card, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT!! you cannot be given anything without one without the express permission of a manager, and it generally takes ages to find one (the delivery office is a big place). If you do not get a card, you are pretty screwed unfortunately, for some reason we are not allowed to hand it over even with proof of address, although you may be a bit luckier with normal packets than specials/recordeds, if possible say that the card is unusable (went through wash (which is rather messy by the way) etc) rather than didn't turn up at all.

Your postman is lazy, put a note up telling him to put the packet through the catflap and he will, if you have one of those wall mounted post boxes, an amazon DVD pack will often fit in without enough sticking out for it to be removed.

Also, come in to collect stuff on a Saturday, if the caller's counter is busy then I can generally get put there rather than having to do a round, which is considerably easier. during the week there are enough other people that i don't tend to get in...

As a final note, anything with a return address is returned after 2 weeks, so if you really cant stand it, then just wait for the person you ordered it from to get it back.

Also i don't give a damn about the strike, only got 6 months left on my contract, so would not get enough cash from it to be worth it. I will be going in so that any further reference that I need from them looks good though

CDs, books and DVDs from Amazon fit through our letterbox and our postman used to just pop them through every time.

For some reason they have stopped doing this recently, so identically sized packages are no longer posted through our letterbox.

I can only assume they had some complaints about items getting damaged when dropped through letter boxes. This has never happened to us and is surely Amazon's responsibility for not adequately padding their packaging, anyway....

This week my wife has made 3 visits to our local delivery office to pick up 2 packages from Amazon (the extra trip was because although the red card said to allow 24 hours, the package wasn't there when she called in *32* hours later...?!)

On the other hand, I can't imagine any other courier providing a better service. The one positive experience I have had was with CityLink - after attempting delivery in the morning without success, their guy rang the neighbour's doorbell, found out when I got home from work, and actually returned at 6pm *the same day* to deliver...! (Perhaps it was his first day on the job, who knows ;) )

"Private courier firms at least make an effort to deliver at more reasonable times."

That is the biggest load of BS I've heard all month.

I have yet to deal with a freight company which will give you any estimate of delivery time within one day, or which delivers outside of 9-5 mon to fri. I am intimately familiar with the hard to find Citylink Cricklewood depot as a result. (Not to mention UPS in Kentish Town and FedEx in Enfield)

I am sick to death of having to drive to pick up parcels I have been charged a fortune to have delivered - and then there is the customer service - I have wasted literally days of my life trying to get through to freight company customer service lines.

It would be a catastrophe of free-ish market capitalism if a right to collective bargaining was to be threatened by the risk of untimely delivery of a children's book.

chosen as courier from Amazon. Amazingly, even the stuff I ordered first class, from Amazon, took many days to arrive, whereas even with the old super-saver, it would often be delivered in a few hours.

Home Delivery Network have this disgusting premium-rate line on which to rearrange the delivery which they won't put in the shed, and which there isn't a means of asking them to. Deluge Amazon customer services with complaints about this company, that's what I say!!

"At the same time our customers are being threatened with disruption because of strikes - strikes which are aimed at preventing exactly the modernisation that could keep our big customers on board."

In other words: Because our employees are miffed about the possibility that we cut their wages or just shove them out entirely, we are currently not able to present the modern version of us - worse services for higher prices for the average customer.

The only important customers, as expressed here, are the big ones who will get huge rebates; you and me who want to receive or send a parcel at a convenient time and for small money here and then, do not count.

And please don't anyone tell me that the service of UPS, DHL or the others is actually any better.

I see the situation from both sides, as a postman and also a customer. While I agree wholeheartedly that there are many things that my employer should do to better service the needs of the customer, small and large alike, providing an infrastructure that aims to deliver to every UK address 6 days a week does not come cheap and whereas Royal Mail's contract obliges them to do this, the same rules do not apply to their competitors. It also occurs to me that the competitors, given the opportunity, would not have their own post boxes as they require emptying at least once every day, there are few companies who would be willing or able to carry out such a task.

In general when Royal Mail delivery staff go out they are expected to at least attempt to deliver any packet / parcel that is approximately shoe box size or smaller along with all the other letters, bills and unwanted leaflets that you routinely get to 500-800 addresses. Where I worked you weren't allowed to leave the office to start your delivery round before 07:30, this meant that the vast majority of the customers would have already left for work, and even if you knew that they would not be there you still had to take the item with you 'just in case'.

Times have changed and provision needs to be made that will accommodate the more typical scenario where there is no one at home during the day to accept signed for items or those that are too large for the letterbox. One suggestion I heard was to double the number of delivery staff and halve the hours so that more could be delivered earlier and catch more people before they left for work, I wonder where all these delivery staff will come from that are willing to get up at 4am for 4 hours work .

Fortunately for everyone there is a solution however, buy things in shops, that way you avoid all the things that are poor about delivery services, the downside is that you then have the problem of surly and poorly trained shop staff instead of a surly and poorly trained postie

:p

I am dismayed at this turn of events. I have spent several thousand pounds at Amazon and the Royal Mail delivery has always been good for me. If I miss a delivery I have a 5 minute drive to the depot to get it.

Now contrast that with Misco and Dabs who use Citylink. I was working at home and heard the letter box. A non-delivery notice - "we called but nobody was home". Bullshit - I was there and the guy never bothered to press the button. So a phone call and "it will be on the van tomorrow". Again - total bullshit - no delivery and then after another phone call they admitted it missed the van.

Now Citylink in Bristol do not allow customer collections on Saturday mornings and they are a 2 hour round trip for me.

This has happened several times - our daughter's birthday present was late due to 3 screw-ups by Citylink so I hope Amazon don't go for them as a replacement for Royal Mail but sadly the best I get from Amazon is :

"Thank you for writing to Amazon.co.uk.

Unfortunately, aside from what is already in print, we are not able

to provide the public with any comments on our relationships with

suppliers.

However, be assured that this will not affect Amazon deliveries and

will remain on-time."

I guess us yanks can smile about some thing. Or post office is the only gov agency to run with out subsidies, infarct it runs at a slight profit. The only thing i complain about is my current mail man is a lazy sack of s--t. The ones before him were all great.

We have an excellent local postie in Essex. If my wife or I are not in, he delivers parcels to my mother-in-law in the same village, which is really helpful. On the other hand in London where I have a flat, a parcel from the US was returned to sender twice as undeliverable because there was no flat number on the parcel, just a name, house number, street and all the rest. A card through the door would have helped. RM helpfully wrote the reason on the package, and I sent this to Postwatch when I finally got it. They were worse, having send the proof to RM, they then accepted that RM couldn't either investigate or compensate me (not the person who paid), nor the sender (not their customer as they're i the USA), and also then wanted me to resend the proof they already had with the complaint.

It could be a great service if brought up to date, with what other delivery service can you drop a letter in a box at a time of your choosing to go to anywhere in the country, including rural areas and islands for a low fixed price. If they revised their practices and allowed the option of "deliver to nearest post office (or one chosen by customer for their convenince) for collection by customer" most users in rural areas would use more internet based delivery, (hopefully not to the detriment of local shops), and this could also be good in the cities for busy working types. Mind you they would have to have more user friendly opening hours and not be shutting all the local post offices. It could also be a greener option, reducing the number of different delivery vans on the roads...

Well i can say from recent experience that the new courier Amazon use are absolutely useless, at least with the RM if you weren't in it was dropped off your local office/sorting office and you can collect at a later stage... the new company won't deliver to a different address, only deliver between 9 and 5 (when i'm at work) their local delivery office is 25 miles away and they're only open between 9 and 5 also and if they have to return the parcel to Amazon you get charged!!!!!

i cant believe this. recently amazon switched their delivery for some of my orders to one of their new little favourites... home delivery network..and the service was

absolutely awful. one delivery never ever appeared and the other, worth over a hundred quid with an electronic item in it was just left by my dustbins (with a little card through the door). suffice to say that delivery was not there when I got home!

I've _never_ had a problem with royal mail delivering amazon orders. sure, sometimes I have to go to the local PO to pick it up.... 140 metres from my house,

other times to the sorting office..which is next door to supermarket and petrol station - handy. its not like HDN and certainly not like CityLink - whos depot is in the middle of nowhere 38 minutes drive away with no other reason to go there.

both them and Drop-it, Hide-it and Lose-it also have a strange way of never ringing the doorbell, or knocking the door and being able to slip a card through

the letter box very quietly...as the card is delivered even when i'm in the house..which makes me think that they deliberately leave the goods int he depot and use the customers own transport as their delivery method.

" If they revised their practices and allowed the option of "deliver to nearest post office (or one chosen by customer for their convenince) for collection by customer" most users in rural areas would use more internet based delivery, (hopefully not to the detriment of local shops), and this could also be good in the cities for busy working types."

well this actually exists as a service, although there is a 50p surcharge.

If a card is dropped through your letter box because an item cannot be delivered then there are a number of options available to you for re-delivery or collection, one of these is 'Local Collect' where you can have your package delivered to a post office of your choosing, this does not have to be the nearest post office to your house, it could be the nearest one to your workplace. Not quite as convenient as getting it delivered to your work but a close second I think.