please empty your brain below
From my own, non-scientific, experience the Royal Mail is fine as long as they are fully staffed. My previous postie told me that you get clumping when they become unusually short staffed as the available staff do what rounds they can in rotation, which makes sense.

Al | 18.09.24 - 7:23 a.m. | #

Here in Walthamstow, posting a letter becomes demanding in that collections are timed across the area where I live at 9 am. This means you'd need to have your letter prepared to send right at the beginning of a working day, which seems unlikely for most people, even switched on businesses.

dg writes: indeed

Also, the Royal Mail pledge is generally to deliver across the UK within one day for first class mail. Success from the other side of London is an easy task by comparison with from (say) Scotland.

Brian | 18.09.24 - 7:39 a.m. | #

I have a small Etsy shop and sell secondhand books. I know that in busy times RM prioritise delivering parcels over letters. I send everything second class and sometimes the parcels are delivered the following day.

ganching | Homepage | 18.09.24 - 8:16 a.m. | #

Stamps unfranked in transit could formerly be reused. Not so with barcoded stamps. Beware!

Malcolm of Kent | 18.09.24 - 8:22 a.m. | #

So hoping there might be a "frankly..." conclusion to this tale.

Waterhouse | 18.09.24 - 8:22 a.m. | #

I can confirm that when there are staff shortages at the local depot - which is often - even first class mail can take a week to get to me. More concerning is the amount of post they've lost this year. I used to have a sub to Cinema Paradiso and they cut me off because RM lost too many DVDs!

Chz | 18.09.24 - 8:45 a.m. | #

We subscribe to the Radio Times which should arrive on Tuesdays, and The Week which is due on Fridays.

The Radio Times is often a day late - say one week in 6 including this week.

The Week is slightly more reliable but when it is late it can be very late. The one due on 30 August arrived on 11 September, substantially after the next issue. And once earlier this year it was put in the letterbox on the Sunday morning by a middle-aged lady who had pulled up outside in a car (and then drove away). In neither case was there anything on the wrapper to show where it had been on its travels.

Ian | 18.09.24 - 9:04 a.m. | #

Interesting! If you have any faraway friends, would that change things? I’d love to see the results posting from Land’s End to John O’Groats once a day for a week

Ewan James | 18.09.24 - 9:22 a.m. | #

A 9am collection time doesn't mean the box gets necessarily emptied at 9am but that it is emptied by the postie as they are doing their round. If your mail arrives at a similar time every day then your local post box won't be getting emptied until then.

Having worked as a postie if a round isn't delivered because of lack of staff the box should still be emptied, but if you want to guarantee collection then you need to post at a properly timed box as they are collected by afternoon collection rounnds so the time should be accurate (mind you despite having to scan the barcode in the collection box when collecting there are ways of cheating the system!)

Andy S | 18.09.24 - 9:25 a.m. | #

It’s some time since I had anything to do with commercial mailing, but I remember that there were various levels of business delivery service, not available to the public. Some were potentially very slow indeed, but much cheaper, and aimed at non-urgent bulk post (catalogues, etc) — so slow arrival of, say, utility bills isn’t necessarily a guide to general delivery times. I don’t know what impact the use of non-Royal Mail contractors (who process post but feed it in to RM for actual delivery) might have on timings, but of course they don’t handle the birthday card you get from a relative that’s a day late.

Labourer | 18.09.24 - 9:45 a.m. | #

Blimey, 6 first class stamps. Are you made of money?

HTFB | 18.09.24 - 9:55 a.m. | #

I received yesterday 17/9 a birthday card correctly addressed, posted on 11/9, franked 12/9, with a nice new King Charles first-class stamp. Six days for it to get from Barnet to Finchley is unacceptable, but sadly typical these days. I believe it's fraudulent to charge 50 pence extra for so-called first-class and then fail on this scale but what can I do about it?

keenreader | 18.09.24 - 10:07 a.m. | #

They'll be 30p more expensive come Oct 7th. Each, not a book.

Gordon | 18.09.24 - 10:08 a.m. | #

I'm intrigued by managing to get someone else to buy all the stamps. Any tips?

Andrew S | 18.09.24 - 10:36 a.m. | #

My post this week has been non clumped, as I received 1 letter on Monday, and 1 on Tuesday.

By contrast I have had weeks in July and August when I've basically had a weekly delivery of a bundle of letters. Summer holiday issues?

Mikey C | 18.09.24 - 11:14 a.m. | #

Staffing does seem to matter, Hampstead chronically understaffed and reported frequently in Camden New Journal and on nextdoor.

I do wonder in your experiment whether the presence of a 1st class and a 2nd class at the same time in the sorting office improved the service for 2nd class, with the service level of the first class in effect forcing the postie to include your waiting 2nd class in that day's delivery. Needs a follow up experiment of 6 days of second class only (hoping you don't get any other post that would disturb the experiment)

MilesT | 18.09.24 - 12:26 p.m. | #

My post comes in a van with two delivery staff to disseminate. Not because we’re rural (I live in a town) so I’m not entirely sure why, but suppose it’s because it’s a fairly dense estate with several hundred addresses in close vicinity so is more efficient that way. Anyway, it seems to mean we rarely get skipped. If only I got sent interesting things!

Nick | 18.09.24 - 12:48 p.m. | #

Last week I received a birthday card sent first class from the Southampton area - a month after my birthday and the postmark confirmed this was not the sender getting muddled.

It's got so bad that a reminder letter about an overdue repayment had to be hand delivered.

Tim Roll-Pickering | 18.09.24 - 1:39 p.m. | #

Love the experiment.

I got a 'sorry we tried to deliver your parcel but no one was in' message today from Royal Mail, despite being in and only seeing a crisp packet blow near the front door. Apparently and allegedly they are trying again tomorrow...

Jayne | 18.09.24 - 2:02 p.m. | #

We recently had a Sunday postal delivery, the postie told me they were trying to catch up.

Another day we had two deliveries. One was man on foot. Other was two people with a van and a few days post to deliver. Each did a different side of the street.

ap | 18.09.24 - 2:53 p.m. | #

It is the unpredictability that is annoying especially when waiting for something important. Some weeks there is a delivery every day. Other weeks as few as two deliveries in the week.

Having said that I have never had a problem with the letter online pre-pay service where for the 85p postage with no extra charge the postman will collect the letter from your home the next day and even bring an addressed label to stick on the envelope.

HW | 18.09.24 - 3:21 p.m. | #

We've had periods when the postperson told me they were only doing alternate days because of staff shortage, and then a period when they were short of serviceable vans. On the plus side, there is a postbox inside our nearby Tesco that offers a 4pm collection, and 1st class post from there (Cambridge) to Edinburgh seems to be reliably delivered next day.

Peter | 18.09.24 - 3:58 p.m. | #

Royal Mail actually commission surveys to do exactly this -- they used to be run by Kantar, and gave out free stamps and things for your time, but it looks like they've moved to here now (?)

eta | Homepage | 18.09.24 - 7:38 p.m. | #

What about the solution for a mail carrier being either lazy or sloppy. At least twice a month I get mail for one of my neighbours either side. Yet same mail carrier has been delivering for years and knows us all personally.

Roman | 18.09.24 - 9:24 p.m. | #

A brighton an ilford a dagenham a southend postmen including my brother have all I recall told me one thing that the management are shocking, forever introducing illogically inefficient sorting and walk improvements. There is a new development some people are trying I think its called amail or imail I may investigate that.

Noel | 19.09.24 - 8:31 a.m. | #

I used to take part in postal surveys for the Royal Mail (it used to be run by Kantar, not sure who does it now).

These tests comprised sending post and receiving post with other participants across mainland UK in various formats. Each package contained a RFID tag that would enable scanning at various points in the journey. You have to log all the post sent/received and the code on the tag so they could do the stats and see where post was being routed/bottlenecks etc. This is the source of the official stats that get published.

I got paid in stamps and sets of special editions. Occasionally I'd actually get a voucher that could be used in a shop.

Louise | 19.09.24 - 12:35 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy