Royal Mail - Covid affecting service

[John M Upton]

Hello

 

Anyone else suffering from a diabolically bad service from the Royal Mail at the moment?  Our deliveries and collections have, without any notice whatsoever been slashed to just once a week.  The usual Covid excuses being cited from unofficial sources (This thing has been around the thick end of two years, you would have thought they might have got a grip on it by now!) and I have a major backlog of items and letters both inbound and outbound missing in action, two to three weeks it is taking some items to get through at the moment.

[Michael Hodgson]

It's not that bad here, but when I get a message saying something will be delivered today/tomorrow (even if they quote a time) it usually isn't - it slips by a day or two.  Poor old postman usually able to chat for a minute or two but seems a bit frazzled at the moment.  I suspect they're trying to do more hours than is reasonable covering illness of others, so I'm happy to take covid excuses at face value.

[Wheatley]

Omicron appears to be causing as much havoc if not more in terms of absence as lockdowns 1-3 did, albeit with less serious illness. The difference is this time everything is trying to operate as normal instead of half the national infrastructure being locked down. 

 

I work for a TOC, my first job in a morning is to read the Control log from yesterday. On a bad day pre-covid there might have been half a dozen traincrew diagrams uncovered at start of day, to be made good by stepping up crews through the day. One day last week there were more than a hundred uncovered, all down to people either testing positive or isolating because a close contact had. You can't come to work with a negative test every day when there are no tests to be had. 

 

On the subject of RM, we're  still getting Saturday deliveries, he's just walked past ! So any issues are likely to be local and short term, the problem being that all these short term local issues are rolling  around disrupting different bits every day and making any kind of contingency planning impossible. Doesn't matter how many posties are sitting around at your local DLO waiting to go out if the bloke who drives the lorry which brings the post from the main sorting  office knocked a couple of hours ago.

[Gareth Collier]

I regularly talk to my ex RM colleagues and they are being hit far harder now than at any time in the last 2 years with covid related absences.

RM update the offices most affected every day here: 

https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12556

Click on deliveries today.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Gareth Collier

[Michael Hodgson]

19 minutes ago, Gareth Collier said:

 

https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12556

Click on deliveries today.

We're on the list, so that explains delays.  Not grumbling, they're doing their best.

[J. S. Bach]

The USPS does not seem to be having too much of a problem, at least in my area.

[Steamport Southport]

Recruitment problems I heard. They normally get a few in for Christmas and keep some of them on.

 

Unfortunately most don't want the zero hour or short term contracts anymore. Used to be great for getting a few quid over Christmas. 

 

I don't mean people having to live on those contracts, it's more people that want a few quid as a temp. Did it myself and ended up staying for a few years.

 

 

Jason

 

[Mike_Walker]

27 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

The USPS does not seem to be having too much of a problem, at least in my area.

Nor DPD in my area, saw 4 of their vans go past this morning one after the other - just like London buses!  Postal services seem erratic here although we're not on the list.

[Gareth Collier]

15 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Recruitment problems I heard. They normally get a few in for Christmas and keep some of them on.

 

Unfortunately most don't want the zero hour or short term contracts anymore. Used to be great for getting a few quid over Christmas. 

 

I left 3 years ago on health grounds but the last few years I was there we rarely got any Xmas temps, not because of the short term contract but because they weren't prepared for the hard work involved.

The last xmas I was there we had 2 temps, one lasted 2 days of delivery never to be seen again and the other didn't even manage a single day. He left a note attached to his delivery trolley that was still half full saying he wasn't prepared to walk miles in the rain. We did chuckle at that one

 

 

[didcot]

It's been an issue in certain parts of Oxfordshire for longer than I care to remember. No sign of it getting any better. 

[john new]

I am sure there is a valid reason for it but the post crisis is not helped when a bought shopping cart of two-items from one on-line supplier (and it wasn’t Amazon) and both were labelled as in stock is sent in two separate parcels. One was delivered today, tracking says the other will be Monday.

 

That said we think we have delivery issues here in the UK, see this BBC report from Los Angeles. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-60006306

 

.

Edited January 15, 2022 by john new
Reordered the paragraphs for clarity.

[zarniwhoop]

Up until two weeks ago I would have said that deliveries were about once a week. But now back to normal. I guess it very much depends on the  available-staff situation wherever your deliveries come from.

 

ĸen

[rab]

Going slightly off topic, (strictly forbidden on RMWeb of course),

our local bus service is in a similar situation.

It's got so bad since Christmas that they've removed their

online timetables for some routes (ours included).

 

It's a case of one will turn up dreckly*

 

* for those not familiar with the term,

Dreckly = manyana without the urgency

[Zero Gravitas]

On 15/01/2022 at 16:40, didcot said:

It's been an issue in certain parts of Oxfordshire for longer than I care to remember. No sign of it getting any better. 

 

Indeed not. In Didcot, Mrs. ZG’s birthday cards, posted in various parts of the country and post-marked 05 or 06 January, were all delivered together on 13 January...

[hayfield]

We had an issue with parcels for a week or two prior to Christmas, however the last outstanding item arrived Christmas eve, the past 10 days, first parcels were slow, then no post from Tuesday to Saturday PM when letters were delivered (neither our postman or the lady relief), he said the local sorting office has lots of issues. Today though I had 4 parcels I had been waiting for

 

Like everywhere else Omicron has been rife, far worse with infections than ever before, this week locally infections are 50% down

 

I think the Royal Mail like many others have served us well given what's happened over the past 2 years, it just caught up with them 

[John M Upton]

Yet the parcel couriers like DPD, Hermes and the others seem completely unaffected?

 

Odd...

[Jonboy]

At least one of the major carrier networks went badly wrong for at least the whole of December, next day parcels taking 2-4 days and almost every multi-parcel consignment getting split and turning up over several days…

 

[Trevellan]

My last consignment from Kernow took four working days, using the 48-hour tracked service. My postie is a good sort and told me that they were struggling to keep up, even more so than during the Christmas rush.

 

Having an unreliable postal service is a nuisance, but for most of my deliveries it makes little difference. However, as John has said above, the local courier companies appear to be unaffected.

[hayfield]

8 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Yet the parcel couriers like DPD, Hermes and the others seem completely unaffected?

 

Odd...

 

I had an Amazon delivery which took slightly longer than usual, and as for Hermes less said the better

 

Having no post for a few days is a minor irritant, I would much rather wait a bit of extra time with the RM than trust Hermes

 

Even the best companies have issues, I had an overnight order from Germany for a central heating part delayed using DHL, there was an issue in the Paris hub where it missed the plane to the UK, rather than putting it on the next flight it was held up for 3 days. Everyone has an issue every now and then

 

During the first lockdown, against all the odds the one thing that got through was the Royal Mail. I know at my local sorting office management altered the routes a few weeks before Christmas which caused a lot of trouble at its busiest time, hindsight is a wonderful thing but perhaps new systems should be introduced at the quietest periods not the busiest time, then with massive sickness and isolating recently something had to give 

[Oldddudders]

9 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Yet the parcel couriers like DPD, Hermes and the others seem completely unaffected?

 

Odd...

They tend not to have the organised, unionised labour force that RM has. Self-employed white-van men do not go sick at the first sign, or bother to get tested! 

[Fat Controller]

Ours (Folkestone) seem to have been getting through, though the 11am delivery has sometimes been closer to 15:00. This week, I was advised by E-mail that my delivery from Revolution would arrive at 11:35 the next day; it arrived two minutes late! We have had unscheduled Sunday deliveries, whilst many of the posties are using 4-wheel trolleys so the can carry more.

[hayfield]

54 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

Ours (Folkestone) seem to have been getting through, though the 11am delivery has sometimes been closer to 15:00. This week, I was advised by E-mail that my delivery from Revolution would arrive at 11:35 the next day; it arrived two minutes late! We have had unscheduled Sunday deliveries, whilst many of the posties are using 4-wheel trolleys so the can carry more.

 

Ours have their own Vans, but then we are in a village and I guess the rounds cover quite a lot of rural premises. I must admit the Saturday afternoon (3pm) delivery was a nice surprise. The past 2 days is back to normal

[Fat Controller]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

 

Ours have their own Vans, but then we are in a village and I guess the rounds cover quite a lot of rural premises. I must admit the Saturday afternoon (3pm) delivery was a nice surprise. The past 2 days is back to normal

We're in a fairly large village; they seem to park the vans where they can, then use the trolleys for the actual door-to-door work.

[Not Jeremy]

No problem here in Bath, and I'm sending lots of stuff to lots of places using Royal Mail,

 

You seem to be terribly unlucky, or perhaps you just enjoy complaining - you do seem to crop up on lots of threads as the "voice of doom".

 

Nothing in this world is perfect, but much as the Royal Mail has been royally shafted by privatisation it remains full of well motivated folk doing their best, and your complaining must really get them down.

 

Hopefully they aren't reading!

 

Cheer up John, things can only get worse....

 

Simon 

 

 

[micklner]

A Xmas card arrived 2 days ago .