To think the Royal Mail are shit and generally useless at this time of year?

[CiderBomb]

They know that more and more people are doing their Xmas shopping on line, but seem to have employed relief staff who are either lazy, stupid or both.

My regular postie is fine, I have no problems with him and he now stops me and gives me my post in the street if he sees me. However over the past few weeks we've been getting our neighbours post and they've been getting ours. They've also apparently "attempted" to deliver parcels when I've been at home and they didn't even bother knocking or ringing my door bell. One time they pushed a card through saying a parcel was next door, but instead they'd left it with some people down the road who I didn't know from Adam.

This culminated today with an expensive Christmas gift being left with my next door neighbours. That's fine, however the RM didn't even push a card through at all so I didn't even know it had been delivered and the first I knew of it was when the neighbour brought it round. It had been delivered at 11am, I was at home then sitting in my living room. Once against they'd not even attempted to ring the bell or knock the door! It's a good job I have a good relationship with my neighbours and they are honest isn't it?

AIBU to think that this industry needs to pull its socks up? Christmas must be their busiest time and they don't seem properly equipped to deal with it. Also they should employ more competent people to cover the delivery side of things, most of them seem bone idle and unable to read addresses and names properly.

[JeanSeberg]

They're shit all year round sadly. I'm hoping that privatisation will give them the wake-up call they desperately need.

[MrsTerrysChocolateOrange]

You should try Canada Post. Now, they are REALLY shit.

[JeanSeberg]

Good advertising opportunity for RM - ' We're not as shit as Canada Post'.

[PaddingtonBearsDuffleCoat]

Well, there is shit as in your experience of Royal Mail (mine are generally fine) and then there is diabolically shit which is Yodel so there is a sliding scale of shittiness for parcel deliveries at this time of year. I think Yodel are consistent on the shittiness front all year round though to be fair.

[formerbabe]

I think they do a pretty good job...

[Nancy66]

I agree. In my part of London it's atrocious. Up until about five years ago we had a regular postman who'd built up a good rapport with residents.

Now we have endless agency staff who don't give a shit. I get post for neighbours at least twice a week. One guy this week, who I had never seen before, put the post for three doors down through the letterbox and then knocked expecting a tip!

[craftynclothy]

Funny you should mention no card being put through. The postie asked me if I'd take a parcel in for my neighbour and of course I said yes. He asked if I'd drop it round and I said yes and he said "Great I don't need to stick a card through then". Is it a new policy or something?

[MrsTerrysChocolateOrange]

I hate DHL too so shall we have a list in descending order...

Royal Mail
Canada Post
DHL
Yodel

[CiderBomb]

They should always stick a card through IMO. Not everyone gets on with it even knows their neighbours, what if they were to steal the package?

[mycatlikestwiglets]

YANBU. I've had two parcels go missing in the last month and a deliveryman (not my usual postie) try to deliver my parcel to the wrong house on the wrong road, putting a card through which they thankfully brought around to me (meanwhile I was of course at home so could have accepted my parcel). When I went to collect it from the post office they said they'd had loads of issues with their Christmas temps.

There is a complaint line you can register problems with - they identify the person responsible for messing up your deliveries so as to try to avoid it happening again.

[Mcnorton]

My experience with RM delivery has always been fine (although queues at the sorting office are massive at this time of year). I DETEST most couriers though!

[MincedMuffPies]

I agree OP, I feel like a pisstaker and maybe play.com and amazon will be emailing me about trying it on for the amount of refunds and parcels having to be sent out again thanks to the stupid postmen leaving things outside my front door and my shitty neighbors stealing my packages.

[gobbynorthernbird]

YANBU. Our temp postie (usual one is great) doesn't look at the house numbers. After speaking to him twice, I had to phone the depot. Since then we have had no post at all, not next door's, and definitely not ours. We are fairly sure that when he was delivering our neighbours post to us the neighbours who got our post haven't given us all of ours.

[CiderBomb]

How do they recruit their temps? Surely anyone working for RM should be CRB'd first?

[VoodooChimp]

My local sorting office & posties are brilliant, I've never had a problem with them. Yodel on the other hand..........

[CiderBomb]

gobby, the other week I was leaving the house and saw a strange post man handing something over to my neighbour. She saw me and said "oh, there she is". He sauntered over, handed me a package and walked off. As he did I said, "did you knock? I didn't hear you?" He just said "yeah" without looking at me. I know for a fact that he didn't knock, because if he had I'd have heard him.

[JeanSeberg]

Heaven help you if you attempt to receive any form of telephone support from these organisations

[whereisshe]

Our RM posties are great - both this time of year and in general. And that's taking into account the fact that I average about 2 amazon orders a week + I have an eBay habit that I'm trying to kick!

I can't say the same for Yodel or Hermes...

[TheGreatHunt]

Well they've privatised them, wages are being cut so they have little motivation. Not a surprise really.

[MincedMuffPies]

Yodel surprisingly have been really good, everything I have ordered has been delivered no problems.

[Longdistance]

Well, my lovely posty had one of my parcels at the bottom of his bag. He'd already given us our large bundle of post. He came back half an hour later saying he found my parcel in the bottom of his bag.

He's a new posty as they hate doing the round around us as it's all hill. I can't even begin to tell you how many posties we've had. We had a local 'celeb' doing our post at one point. When I say celeb, it's a very zzz lister, but a guy well known in our town.

[caroldecker]

thegreathunt
In the privitisation, they got around £10k of shares each and no wages have been cut

[JeanSeberg]

Well they've privatised them, wages are being cut so they have little motivation. Not a surprise really.

They've been appalling for years. The organisation is too large and cumbersome and the management too far removed from the customer interface.

Bring in performance related pay with targets.

[cantbelievemyeyes]

Does anyone else think it's strange that there are often complaints about posties not knocking, and leaving stuff with strangers instead. Why would a postie NOT knock on your door, but then choose to knock on a neighbour's door to deliver it there instead. Surely that'd just be creating more work? Not saying it doesn't happen as I've heard it often enough, but it doesn't make much sense!

Got to say I'm generally very happy with RM- I run a business and use them for all deliveries; touch wood, never had a damaged or lost parcel in over 2 years. One late Special Delivery when we had awful snow but that's it. On the other hand, nothing but problems with every courier except Parcelforce. I always check delivery methods and don't buy from anywhere using a courier unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

[Golddigger]

I find them good.
It probably depends on where you live?