talkmagic.co.uk

This is a thread for all of you who are lamenting the fact that you've just ordered some cool piece of magic but you won't get it until the end of next week because of the almost week-long postal strike.

I'm hoping to goodness that my diaries for "Chronologue" arrived this morning and are waiting for me when I get home because I will be furious if I have to wait even longer for those.

I would be more supportive if my experience was of postal staff busting their chops to help me day in, day out, but sadly my experience is this:

1) Ridiculous redirection systems forcing me to wait 2 days to collect undelivered mail when the postman didn't even knock

2) Accidently saying "registered" instead of "recorded" means they will try to fob their £4.80 Special Delivery on you

3) Having to pay extra because your letter is thicker than 1 micron

4) Staff waiting until there's a mile long queue before they go on their break

5) ...and finally, the classic: despite the mile long queue, staff are trying to flog the new credit card/phone card/insurance offer to some grandma at the front who is willing to listen to all the spiel because she's a bit lonely

Encompassing all of this is an incredible display of full on, Little Britain style service culture attitude combined with seemingly working at "half speed".
Sorry to any posties here, I think we've got at least one, and I know that most people have fairly few complaints about the delivery side of things so hats off to you for braving the wind and rain etc, but I'm afraid your post office co-workers are letting you down.

And now, to add insult to injury, they've decided the best way to get paid more is to deliberately inconvenience us for a week. People, you p*ss us off all year round, do we really need a specially designated week?

Seemingly they don't realise that we don't have a choice but to use Royal Mail, so it's not like they're losing the company customers to other competitors, and they will be on the receiving end of just as much frustration towards Royal Mail as the execs who decide on their wages - probably more. Surely there's some other way to make their point?

Discuss

What pi$$es me off even more is where 'punters' lay the blame...

1. on the humble postman himself
2. on the retailers

Our postman doesn't deliver until gone midday at the best of times

Carlos75 wrote:Our postman doesn't deliver until gone midday at the best of times

I spoke with our postie today.

He's majorly peeved at the latest strikes.

He usually starts work at 5am, and is *paid* until 1pm. We rarely get our post until 1.30pm - 2pm.

That means he's working, but not getting paid for it.

The di**heads who are posing the strikes probably don't do a decent solid day's work.

Our postie has a conscience, but he never fails to get to our rural drop off, come rain, snow or high water.

He now reckons it's pointless posting owt today and expecting it to get to its destination before next Thursday.

Add to this that the rules for him are changing, and he's going to be getting into work (by request) 2 hours later, and finishing later. We probably won't get our post till 3pm.

And with Xmas round the corner, it's a great shame that the third party companies such as TNT etc. who also handle UK mail have to subcontract out to Royal Mail.

The monopoly RM has in the UK is crazy. We rely on them. And they rely on us.

However, they've been s4itting on us from a great height for years now, complacent that we have no choice.

How knackered would THEY be if the public posed as strike against them, and didn't use the service for a whole week??!?!?!

Great, i read this just minutes before im off to the post office!

holding us to ransom really...same as the tube lot...

poor service, slow, lazy and inpolite...not all, but the overall impression is that...and how did that happen? by example...

someone, somewhere has to take responsibility of who "owns" the post when it's in transit and being delivered...it should be seen as a contract of sorts...

i've had recorded delivery stuff just left on my doorstep in full view of everyone..i've had parcels ripped open, pulled apart, not understood, i once had one not delivered cos "they couldnt understand" the address..

when i collected it, it was printed out in about 78pt Arial...what wasnt there to understand? all in the correct address standard too...

how do parcels get "Lost"?

i ordered the heroes dvd set from america, fair enough, it took a month to get here, but when i get a letter saying "we cant deliver, theres a customs charge...go online to pay..." i did...couldnt track the parcel, cos they didnt fill in the code properly...i ring up to re-arrange delivery..they say "oooh, its due back out for delivery for thursday..."

today - nothing...i've checked...

my dad is going to go down there for me as he's out that way...but really, incompetent fools alot of the them, and let the ones who do a good job down...

toolboxes

Big problem that we're going to have is that we buy locusts for our lizards via mail order as the ones our local shop sells are such poor quality. How are we going to get the food for them with the post strike?

the nits in your hair?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: weekdays my post arrives at any time from noon - 2pm. On Saturday (when they all want to knock off and go home) my post arrives by 10am. Funny that.

Bah! And there's me waiting for my Scorpion!
Blooomin posties. Can't stand unions and all their 'everybody out' attitude. Watch "Carry On At Your Convenience" to see an insightful satire on the ridculousness of unions.

Lord Freddie wrote:Bah! And there's me waiting for my Scorpion!

Yeah, I'm waiting for my son of mindscan. It must be most infuriating for those with on-line and mail order businesses.

Here Here, Freddie...

My wife's bezzy-mate's husband is a union rep for the local rail service. And he's also been a Labour local spokesperson.

And what a c...ountry this has become...

I don't mean to paint union folk with a broad brush, but in my general dealings they always appear to have a massive sense of self-importance and selfishness... which is pretty much contrary to what you'd want from a 'team player'.

In general, I would imagine this postal strike will cost NUMS about £500-£600. And NUMS is only a very small business. This one-week strike could end up costing large companies major amounts of dosh.

Always the same with strikes... they're not hitting the right people where it hurts... just the innocent bystanders. Pretty much the same as just about every war of any kind since the dawn of time.

Typical socialist double standards. All for the workers but screwing them over at the same time. I also have a Pan and James DVD box set coming from Japan and the strike had better being over when that's due ot be delivered or I'll, as our friends across the Atlantic say. 'Go postal'.

I work for London Underground and if it wasn't for the unions we would not have the pay or the benefits that we enjoy today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them entirely; God knows Bob Crow could probably do with a good kick up the *rse sometimes. And I don't always agree with the reasons why they ballot for a strike. But if it wasn't for the unions fighting on behalf of its members, the company would just do whatever they wanted, fair or otherwise, and we would just have to sit back and take it. Either that or leave the job. Obviously I'm referring to the transport unions here (RMT, Aslef, etc.) and I don't know anything about the post office strike or their reasons for doing so. I know it's a huge inconvenience for many people and businesses, not to mention the large sums of money in lost business, but I do sympathise a bit with the workers. Unless you work for the company in question and getting a decent pay rise/pension/whatever would affect you directly, be that LU or the PO, it's easy to slag off the unions. But like I said, unions are not always right and could do with looking at the way they do things (for example, Bob Crow is in dire need of a good PR team because the whole of London hates him - and for good reason).

abraxus wrote:the nits in your hair?

Nah, they'd eat the poor lizards alive