Royal Mail

[Over The Hill]

Whilst I agree the sizing in proportion pricing is confusing, it makes sense in that they are trying to automate as much mail as possible, good for me I get to fix break things

You see that whilst we have a large flat sorting machines located in various areas of the country they can sort larger items but if its not machinable then it goes manual, hence costs alot more to process. Also we are required now by the Department of transport ( I think ) that all items thicker than 6mm must be put through an airport scanner at our mail centres before they are flown anywhere ( if destination requires it ). The pricing before did not really reflect the true costs, however the current pricing strategy possibly needs looked at again. But hey no need to worry once the business is privatised, I mean it will obviously be cheaper right?

You seem to be under some illusion that the price is or should be in line with the cost of delivery!

As it is I can put a 32p stamp on my letter or a 41p stamp. Are you saying it costs them 9p more to get on with sending it a bit quicker? I cannot see that it would.
Also they charge the same to send the thing to the next street or to Inverness whereas it must cost them 10x as much to fly it up to Scotland.
So given that the price is not related to the cost, why not have a simple price policy that encourages use?

Price only comes into play in a free market. The letter post is not a free market. Parcel post is. If DHL, UPS or whoever did not make sending a parcel better/cheaper/easier they would be out of business. No one is forced to use them.
As it is generally impractical to have competition in letter post, it is not an overall price issue. However the Post Office seems to go out of their way to make the simple job of sending a letter consisting of a few pages of paper as difficult as they can.
I sold two books on Ebay for my kids. In one parcel they cost £2.24 to send but if I had put them in an envelope each then it would have been £1.92 in total! (2x96p).

 

[E11a]

I seems to be very rare that I get mail. Well mail addressed to me that is, I get everybody elses around me which i then go out and re-post to the correct houses. God knows where my mail is going!

Have made several complaints all to no avail.

I complained a few years ago when most of my mail (except the junk) went to someone at the other side of town. The post office interrogated my fantastic postie who doesn't even cover the area my mail was going to, then months later sent me a letter to say that they hadn't found a problem. The envelope was marked "wrongly delivered to ...". I gave up.

 

[Amanda P]

We recently started gettting junk mail delivered by Royal Mail again. This is rather annoying, since we have a sign on the door requesting no junk mail. Royal Mail decided that didn't apply to them for some reason, and we had to fill in some forms a couple of years ago as well to get them to stop.

(In fact, we filled in a form that the Post Office gave us. It turned out that that was only a form on which to request another form - the second form was actually the one to ask them to stop delivering rubbish. WTF?)

When we complained at the local sorting office, they said that the forms expire after two years, and we have to start all over again.

It seems to me that if a neighbour was pushing unwanted waste paper through my letter box every day, that would be, legally, a Nuisance, and there would be legal remedies to make him stop.

But if Royal Mail does it, it's me that has to jump through hoops to make them stop, and apparently, I have to jump through those hoops every two years. Why are the rules different for them?

(And are there any legal types who'd care to advise on whether RM pushing unwanted waste paper through my letter box is legally preventable?)

 

[Arch]

(And are there any legal types who'd care to advise on whether RM pushing unwanted waste paper through my letter box is legally preventable?)

Can't help there, but I think the issue is that someone pays RM to deliver the junk, and RM are therefore bound by their contract to deliver it.... Annoying I agree, but if they could pick and choose whose contract to honour (bearing in mind we make the same contract when we buy a stamp), it would be the start of a slippery slope. I think something similar comes up aroound elections when people don't want to receive BNP leaflets - if the BNP pay to have them delivered, they have to be. (of course the answer is to send them back to the BNP, without a stamp, and make them pay to pick the stuff up. Add a brick for effect.)

I've been delivering a lot of leaflets recently, because of the new recycling system we're involved in, and I wouldn't fancy being a postie. Bloody hard sprung letter boxes that rip your knuckles off, dogs waiting the other side to bite you (I've just lost the scar from that one), and then those damn letter boxes that are 6 foot off the ground, or back breakingly low. And a surprising number of flats complexes with no external letter box at all - the posties must all have to have a note of keycodes for each one. Come to think of it, I now know the gate codes for several blocks of flats or binstores (some of which double as bike stores). Good thing I'm honest.

BTW, with regard to leaving parcels in a recycling box - my colleague picked a box up some weeks back, and found a little box in it, containing a pot of hair gel - a free sample sort of thing. So he picked it out and left it on the doorstep. Next time we went, there was a nice little note, saying thank you for rescuing it, as the owner thought they'd lost it. So probably not left there by the postie, but accidentally put in by the resident.

 

[Amanda P]

Can't help there, but I think the issue is that someone pays RM to deliver the junk, and RM are therefore bound by their contract to deliver it.... Annoying I agree, but if they could pick and choose whose contract to honour (bearing in mind we make the same contract when we buy a stamp), it would be the start of a slippery slope.

I see where you're going with this. But suppose I set up a contract with you under which I agree to pay you to push, say, banana skins through the letterboxes of a thousand people every week. You agree to deliver the banana skins in return for the payment. The fact that you and I have a contract doesn't give either of us the right to cause a nuisance to all the people who don't happen to want a regular supply of banana skins. Many of them would object, and quite rightly.

Another step in the argument, and I might pay you to annoy people by mugging them for me. It just makes us both complicit in the nuisance - it's still a nuisance.

I can't see how Royal Mail's waste paper is any different.

Where there is a difference is when the junk is addressed to me personally. There they are legally obliged to deliver it. The junk I'm talking about (as I should probably have made clear in the first place) isn't addressed to anyone.

If I could light the fire with it, I wouldn't mind so much, but most of it is glossy coated paper that won't even burn well.

 

[Arch]

Yeah, I see your point. I suppose RM have to accept any client who wants to pay them - like the NHS has to patch up anyone, even if they sustained their injury burglarising a pirahana breeding facility...

 

[Arch]

I see where you're going with this. But suppose I set up a contract with you under which I agree to pay you to push, say, banana skins through the letterboxes of a thousand people every week.

Ok, I'm in. How much per banana skin, and will you supply the bananas, or do I?

Any particular thousand people, or just any I happen to be passing?

 

[mark barker]

Where there is a difference is when the junk is addressed to me personally. There they are legally obliged to deliver it. The junk I'm talking about (as I should probably have made clear in the first place) isn't addressed to anyone.

I had a huge argument with a postie some years ago about this. On a daily basis I had loads of mail addressed to the previous owner, random other names and general junk. Nothing of any importance to me. It got so annoying that I decided I didn't want any post. Simple. At the time I was having a new front door fitted so ordered one with no letterbox, and I contacted the sorting office to explain that I didn't want anything delivered to my address and anything they received with my address on should be returned to sender. They said it was illegal to prevent a postie from delivering mail, so they refused to accept my request. The postie continued to to try and deliver, knocking on the door every morning, and I would explain that I wasn't going to accept the mail and he should return it to the sorting office. After about 3 months of this I had a visit from a representative of RM who stated they could take legal action to make me accept the mail! I welcomed them to try, and heard no more about it, but still got the daily knocking from the postie!

 

[StuAff]

I had a huge argument with a postie some years ago about this. On a daily basis I had loads of mail addressed to the previous owner, random other names and general junk. Nothing of any importance to me. It got so annoying that I decided I didn't want any post. Simple. At the time I was having a new front door fitted so ordered one with no letterbox, and I contacted the sorting office to explain that I didn't want anything delivered to my address and anything they received with my address on should be returned to sender. They said it was illegal to prevent a postie from delivering mail, so they refused to accept my request. The postie continued to to try and deliver, knocking on the door every morning, and I would explain that I wasn't going to accept the mail and he should return it to the sorting office. After about 3 months of this I had a visit from a representative of RM who stated they could take legal action to make me accept the mail! I welcomed them to try, and heard no more about it, but still got the daily knocking from the postie!

He was right. If the mail was addressed to you or anyone resident at the premises, Royal Mail is obliged to deliver it. And if it's a case that the addressee is deceased/moved elsewhere/never lived there at all, it's up to the householder to return it (or for the previous occupant to arrange a redirection), Royal Mail (rightly) does not have the authority to interfere with mailings in that way.

 

[StuAff]

We recently started gettting junk mail delivered by Royal Mail again. This is rather annoying, since we have a sign on the door requesting no junk mail. Royal Mail decided that didn't apply to them for some reason, and we had to fill in some forms a couple of years ago as well to get them to stop.

(In fact, we filled in a form that the Post Office gave us. It turned out that that was only a form on which to request another form - the second form was actually the one to ask them to stop delivering rubbish. WTF?)

When we complained at the local sorting office, they said that the forms expire after two years, and we have to start all over again.

It seems to me that if a neighbour was pushing unwanted waste paper through my letter box every day, that would be, legally, a Nuisance, and there would be legal remedies to make him stop.

But if Royal Mail does it, it's me that has to jump through hoops to make them stop, and apparently, I have to jump through those hoops every two years. Why are the rules different for them?

(And are there any legal types who'd care to advise on whether RM pushing unwanted waste paper through my letter box is legally preventable?)

'Door to Door' items that Royal Mail handle (unaddressed mailings, one in every letter box) are delivered to all households in the areas that the advertiser has paid for.
Sticking a 'no junk mail' notice on your door does not affect this, it has no legal standing. Speaking as a member of the public rather than a RM employee, I want to decide what (if anything) is junk out of the mail I receive, I certainly don't want someone else deciding. And please remember that these days there are plenty of other people delivering pizza leaflets & flyers of all kinds, we don't have any control over them, and they ignore those notices anyway! If you want to opt-out of getting 'Door to Door', that will include all unaddressed mailings that RM handles from all customers for the service, which does include local authorities. There are sound reasons for making you 'jump through hoops' and renew your refusal- people move house, for one thing! I appreciate it's annoying for people (RM employees get them too of course!) but they do help pay for everything else we do.
A further point for anyone with a similar problem: Please don't stick these items in a postbox marked 'return to sender' etc. We can't do anything with them that will prevent you getting these in future, as they are unaddressed (even if they were returned to the company that sent them)- they'll only end up in the bin or being recycled, and waste time and effort that could be spent on all the addressed mail we have to deal with. So please just recycle them yourself!

 

[StuAff]

You seem to be under some illusion that the price is or should be in line with the cost of delivery!

As it is I can put a 32p stamp on my letter or a 41p stamp. Are you saying it costs them 9p more to get on with sending it a bit quicker? I cannot see that it would.
Also they charge the same to send the thing to the next street or to Inverness whereas it must cost them 10x as much to fly it up to Scotland.
So given that the price is not related to the cost, why not have a simple price policy that encourages use?

Price only comes into play in a free market. The letter post is not a free market. Parcel post is. If DHL, UPS or whoever did not make sending a parcel better/cheaper/easier they would be out of business. No one is forced to use them.
As it is generally impractical to have competition in letter post, it is not an overall price issue. However the Post Office seems to go out of their way to make the simple job of sending a letter consisting of a few pages of paper as difficult as they can.
I sold two books on Ebay for my kids. In one parcel they cost £2.24 to send but if I had put them in an envelope each then it would have been £1.92 in total! (2x96p).

Mail is a 'free market'....just not in the ways it should be.
Royal Mail does not set its own prices, it is obliged to ask/beg the regulatory body Postcomm for price increases, which seems more interested in allowing other operators to enter the market than giving Royal Mail a fair chance of competing properly. The universal postal service is loss-making, but it is a legal requirement, and 2nd class makes more of a loss than 1st. At the moment, Royal Mail can neither make money on its own letter business (because of those restrictions on pricing) nor charge those other companies who use 'Downstream Access' (where they process it & then hand it to us for delivery) what it actually costs for us to process that mail.
If you think you're being ripped off, please remember that UK mail prices are still amongst the lowest in Europe, and much cheaper than in Germany (for example).

 

[slowmotion]

I quite appreciate the position of the postmen who are bound to deliver the junk mail. They have to.

How about this. The post people know I don't want that crap, because I told them, but they are paid by people who want me to get it.

Bear with me...

I decide that I want to phone up the pretty daughter of a neighbour and leave silent messages on her answering machine. She doesn't want them but I want her to get them, and I'm paying my phone company to do the needful.

Can she stop me? If she can, why can't I stop my junk mail from the the mail people?

 

[PBancroft]

Royal Mail are one of those organisations that people seem to hate, but I reckon will miss greatly after its inevitable privatisation or demise.

 

[PBancroft]

I quite appreciate the position of the postmen who are bound to deliver the junk mail. They have to.

How about this. The post people know I don't want that crap, because I told them, but they are paid by people who want me to get it.

Bear with me...

I decide that I want to phone up the pretty daughter of a neighbour and leave silent messages on her answering machine. She doesn't want them but I want her to get them, and I'm paying my phone company to do the needful.

Can she stop me? If she can, why can't I stop my junk mail from the the mail people?

Because sexual harassment is a little bit more serious than an unwanted pamphlet extolling the virtues of your friendly local supermarket?

 

[Amanda P]

Because sexual harassment is a little bit more serious than an unwanted pamphlet extolling the virtues of your friendly local supermarket?

But both are nuisances. Arguably of different degrees of severity, but nonetheless nuisances.

Slowmotion has grasped my point.