I managed to attract Mr Speaker’s eye on at question time in the Commons – and came in on a question from another MP on lost and stolen post. Having done a survey a little while back in Hornsey & Wood Green and received an enormous response, it is clear to me that the Royal Mail is unable to deal with the issue properly. Part of the problem seems to be the lack of accountability short of the very top – when something goes wrong there is pretty much always someone else, higher up, to whom the issue can be passed rather than real local organisation and accountability.
I raised the result of my survey with the Minister Alistair Darling who said he would see that the Royal Mail addressed any specific issues and that 99% of the mail is delivered just fine and dandy. Gee thanks Alistair – I have already passed all the individual complaints to the Royal Mail having already got their agreement that they would deal with them. The point I was making to Mr Darling was that it wasn’t some tiny little individual problem – but that if I get around 1,000-2,000 complaints from just one survey in one constituency – something ain’t right! More on this in next week’s Ham & High column.
Lynne Featherstone 
Been thinking a lot about postal delivery services lately. Not because of things being lost, but because of not being delivered at convenient times. I order something from Amazon, pay more to get it delivered quickly, and lo! they turn up while I am at work and leave me a note to say I’ve got to take an hour and a half bus journey to now collect it sometime during the working day or before danw on a Saturday.If I order from Tesco (which I don’t as a Co-op member of course) I can apparently stipulate that I would like my food delivered at 9pm when I know I will be at home.Royal Mail needs a total rethink about how it operates in the increasingly remote shopping world. It cannot go on thinking that it works at its own pace regardless of how everyone else now lives their lives.
If you are in North London then Penny Freston is in charge of all of the delivery offices. penny.freston@royalmail.comAs for times of the day for delivery, I am surprise that amazon does not allow you to post the item to your work address.Royal Mail deliver 99.98% of the mail on time. Bear in mind they deliver 80 million items a day. That 0.02% adds up to a lot of items and it affects the individual involved.Also pleae note that Royal Mail still has some of the cheapest prices in Europe and also their service delivery record over the last 3 years has just kept on improving.This comes from a former employee who is now with one of its competitors.
Jock,It doesn’t matter much if you are there during the day… A few days ago I caught one of our postman putting a “sorry you were out” card through the door. Just mixed in with the rest of the post, together with other such “sorry” cards for other flats in our block. No attempt to ring any of the doorbells. So I chased after him and asked for my package. He mumbled something about “van…driver…” and hurried off.Of course he didn’t actually have the package, just the pre-written “you were out” card. If I’d been a few seconds quicker he could have handed the card to me in person to tell me I’m not there! I suspect they’re in such a rush now that they don’t come out with anything that might slow them down, just pre-written “sorry” cards.Of course I got nowhere trying to phone them, so I re-arranged delivery via their website. Got a confirmation, waited in, but it didn’t happen. Nothing at all. My partner tells me redelivery booked through the website doesn’t reach our sorting office and is just ignored – she’s had this several times before. I suspect I’ll end up having to go and queue to collect it myself from the sorting office. Just like we had to do last Christmas, and the one before that.Remind me, what are we paying postage for?
Live in Crouch End and notice a clear drop of service level in the post. I am getting more and more 'Sorry you were out' cards despite the fact that I work from home and in most cases, I was all home during the whole time! Seems like they don't even bother knocking on the door and perhaps since it's day time, they presume you will be out even though the sender paid a premium service to have it sent by a certain time.At the same time, my neighbour said they didn't have any mail for over 2 weeks which is odd if you live in London. Don't know how we can carry on with such poor service. I am pleased I am not in a business to rely the post service, otherwise I would have given up by now. If they can't run a proper service, give it up and let someone else do it properly. Open it up to competition. Privatisation is not a solution as long as they have a near monopoly, the service will be equally rubbish. Competition will be the only way!But as we probably have no influence over that, Lynn, can we at least make sure the Delivery Offices in the area are doing a proper job at a small scale.