In the rural community of my childhood we had two post deliveries per day Mondays to Saturdays, first delivery before 7am, usually a van, and an afternoon postlady on a bike delivering afternoon post usually 2-3pm.
Papers were delivered by a man, wearing shorts summer and winter, in his “shooting break” or whatever they were known as in those days, usually just 6am regular as clockwork, rain or snow!
Also had a van once a week with vegetables and groceries, a corona drinks lorry and an ice cream truck in the summer. And in those days the bin men came to the back door to collect the bins and carry on their shoulder and tip into an open top lorry (it had sliding doors that pulled over the load).
Our current bin men are pretty good overall. We have to put our bins out front, but that’s no big issue. And we still manage to tip them (the bin men that is !) at Xmas.
Being in a city I don’t think I’d even recognise our postman/postwoman which is a shame. The mail just comes when it comes and is rather unpredictable.
I still prefer paper statements for most accounts where possible and it incensed me that a bank keeps telling me ‘make the postie’s life easier by having electronic statements’ - no, that’ll just make their jobs less secure.
I would advise you both to contact Royal Mail Customer Service and place a complaint, so your grandsons address is on file, then if it was me, send a couple of letters just for your piece of mind.
Already done and further letter sent with proof of posting which demonstrates it has gone. So will wait and see if they arrive. Deliberately did not choose recorded/register/guaranteed.
Post is a bit haphazard where we are, but that’s true all year round.
In the summer I ordered some foreign currency, paying for a tracked, guaranteed delivery by noon on a specific day. It was shown as out for delivery, but by late afternoon was updated as returned (they had run out of time). Same thing happened the following day. Finally they came round on the third day. I refused acceptance as I had by then had to make alternative arrangements. All was sorted out without further hassle by the currency provider.
I think the issue is that our small town is on the edge of the delivery area, so they get to us last, if we are lucky.
They don’t seem to understand the concept of a guaranteed service though.
Thats simply not acceptable, did you go though RM Customer Care? anybody who gets poor service, especially when you have paid for a guaranteed delivery, needs to log a complaint.
I am not surprised about running out of time while on delivery, most stretch over 5 hours, however if they are part time, most of which are 20 hours and they have to prep the walk as well, 5 hours isn’t enough time, most sensible people would spot this straight away, however delivery managers are a complete different breed to anybody else, and simply blame the person(s) concerned as not being fast enough to perform their duty, again you will never ever see a delivery manager perform any delivery.
I consider that delivery providers are agents of the retailer. Therefore it became the retailer’s problem which they dealt with for me without fuss and making sure I didn’t lose out financially. I don’t trust organisations like RM to be effective at dealing with internal complaints. Better to show up their incompetence with their partner (the retailer).
Years ago, RM managers could, if need be step in and do the job, cos they had to have do it in the past, 95% of current RM managers have never done any aspect of the job, but are quick to point out, it’s been performed wrongly.
Similarly here, the regular postie is away, they are not covered, then a dozen or so are delivered at once.
The thing that we have both noticed, very few letters are franked, if they are then so smudged that it is impossible to read the date or location. Business letters franked at source are easier to date, most recently hospital letters taking ten days to arrive, a letter from Perth, so about 400 miles, second class, arrived in two days!
This should not be happening, they are supposed to be kept separate from normal mail, even if mixed in with normal mail, they stick out like a sore thumb, unfortunately due to what staff are been told they get left in the delivery office.
So for this to stop happening, please contact Royal Mail Customer Care and log the lateness of delivery, then contact your local MP.
If people are not happy with Parcel deliveries, you have a choice, to take your business elsewhere, Letters, you have no choice.
I am going back approx 20 years but when I worked for Royal Mail if a walk/round was not covered it was the delivery managers responsibility. If they couldn’t organise cover they had to do the delivery themself.
They pretty much always got it covered by posties on overtime as they hated going out on delivery.
Mail was never left in the delivery office for the next day. That was unacceptable.
