What Shall We Do With The Royal Mail?
I get very little useful mail today and haven’t for about ten years. My friends either, e-mail, text or phone me and all of my banks, utilities are on line. The only important post I get is tickets for various events, I’ve ordered on-line or by telephone and the odd small package delivered by the postman, like my INR test strips.
Most of the rest of the mail is junk usually addressed to the Occupier of my house. Make non-specific junk mail illegal and the Royal Mail would go bust. The worst offenders are estate agents and Virgin Media. I think I’ll get some cards printed, that I can post to the worst offenders, saying they will be charged £50 for wasting my time, if they send anything more.
Incidentally, I do post letters more regularly than I used to, as I have a post box on the corner.
Most of us love the Royal Mail and in rural and sparsely populated areas, I will admit, they do perform a regular social service. But where I live now in Hackney, I wouldn’t even recognise my postman, if I sat next to him in a pub or cafe. We though have a guy, who performs that low-level social service. We have this very accommodating guy, who keeps the streets clean and tidy, with his barrow and he always wishes you a hello and how are you, every time, you meet him on the street.
The real problem, I have is with parcels and packets, delivered by all of the companies and not just Parcelforce and Royal Mail. Usually, they come early in the morning, when I am still here, but often I return to find a card through the door.
Royal Mail/Parcelforce are in a strong position to create a proper on-line tracking service, as they are generally trusted.
You would need to register your name and address on their site, so that if you were getting a parcel delivery, they could send you an e-mail to say it was coming. I know some on-line vendors do this, but it often means logging in to a site and entering a tracking number, which means you have to have on-line skills.
Obviously, you wouldn’t always get an e-mail before it arrived, but you could have standing instructions like leave with number 27 or something similar.
A properly designed system would make it more efficient and probably save the Royal Mail money.
The first courier that gets it right and completes the loop between supplier and customer, will make a fortune and clean up.
Privatisation is not the cure, but augmenting the local link with technology may just be.
Just look at how easy it is to track trains and collect tickets at stations, compared to say ten years ago.
A Bad Case Of Oops On Regent Street
You occasionally see post boxes knocked over by an accident.
A Bad Case Of Oops On Regent Street
But this is the first time, I can remember seeing a double one on the skew.
And Now A Pop-Up Post Office!
Camden Market now has a pop-up Post Office until Christmas. Read about it here in the Standard.
Two Parcels From Roche
I thought the Softclix device had failed so Roche sent me a new one. I also needed some lancets, so Roche sent me some of those.
They both arrived the same day as expected, but one was by courier and the other by Royal Mail.
You’d think they’d use one company!
The Price Of Postage Has Just Risen
I posted a letter this morning and if the cafe opposite had been open, I’d have bought a cappuccino.
The Price Of Postage Has Just Risen
They’re either shut, as it’s a bank holiday, or they haven’t got up yet!
I Spy A Pillar Box With A Cupboard
I haven’t seen a pillar box like this for some years.
A Pillar Box With A Cupboard
I always remember this from the I-Spy books of my childhood. These were books published by the News Chronicle, where you ticked off things you had seen. This type of pillar box might have been in something like I-Spy on the Street
The cupboard incidentally, is so that postmen can store mail in a safe place, whilst they deliver to other addresses. I doubt it’s used these days.
The Non-Arrival of a Refund from East Coast
On the 3rd of February, I travelled down from York on the 19:35 East Coast train from York. The train was about ninety minutes late into King’s Cross and forms were given out to claim a refund. I filled the form in the next day and posted it to Newcastle in the envelope provided.
I have not heard anything since.
It could be a malfunction of the postal service, but since I have moved, I regularly send letters to my old house in Suffolk and know that they arrive the next day, when I put them in the box opposite my house here.
On Sunday, I tried to report this non-arrival of the refund through the East Coast web site. I got a server error, asking me to submit it again. I didn’t as it was quite a long form and after all, it’s not that much money in the greater scheme of things.
But I tried again to submit the e-mail and still got a server error.
I also tried to send a simple e-mail saying that I was getting server errors and got another server error.
It really isn’t good enough!
So I put a letter in the post.
Mail Scams
There is a piece this morning on the BBC about mail scams.
Since moving, I’ve been receiving the most amazing amount of junk through my letter box. A lot is flyers for things like takeaways and mini-cabs, neither of which I use. But some looks like mail scams, so it goes straight back in the conveniently placed pillar box opposite marked “Return to Sender”. As the house was tenanted before I bought it, there has also been a few letters, to those tenants, who might have done a runner.
I just wonder though, if all of the scam mail was sent back marked for return, the government and the Royal Mail, might take a bit more concerted action, against the countries from where it comes.
Trying to Stop Inevitable Decline
There are two related stories today about improving the lot of rail passengers and improving the Royal Mail.
The Royal Mail is probably past saving especially if they raise prices, as people will not be prepared to spend more to get letters delivered, when e-mail and the telephone is there. After all phone charges are dropping because of competition and the Royal Mail will only compete by dropping prices.
As to improving trains, we need to replace some old stock like the Pacers, but many are saying they’ve had enough with commuting five days a week and are using the Internet to cut some of those journeys. We are also getting to a point, where people won’t pay more to commute, if stories about low-ridership on the fast commute lines to St. Pancras are true. So perhaps we might see some strategic spending on the worst parts of the network, but the grandiose plans of some are surely dead in these austere times.
Royal Mail to Abolish Counties
Well not quite, but they are going to remove the county line from addresses.
Just out of curiousity I looked up the address of their ground on Ipswich Town’s Web Site.
Ipswich Town Football Club
Portman Road
Ipswich
Suffolk
IP1 2DA
United Kingdom
So it would only mean one line disappears in this case, but I suspect there are few in the UK, who don’t know that Ipswich is in the County of Suffolk. Incidentally, there are people in Suffolk, who would say that Ipswich is in the County of East Suffolk, which was merged with West Suffolk to form Suffolk in 1972, when Ipswich lost the County Borough status it had gained in 1888.
So the address of Ipswich Town, if the pre-1972 rules applied woiuld now be exactly the same as the Royal Mail is now proposing.
Ipswich Town Football Club
Portman Road
Ipswich
IP1 2DA
United Kingdom
So it might not make much difference to many here in Suffolk, but I can imagine that others might be not so relaxed about it.
What annoys me about addreses, is that I moved here nearly twenty years ago and my bank still haven’t got the new address on my statement correct. But the Royal Mail usually gets it delivered correctly.
So does it all matter? No!
The Anonymous Widower 