Royal Junk Mail

The once steady decline of Royal Mail is gathering momentum this month. Just when you thought the monopoly which exudes ineptitude couldn't get any worse, they stun you with their sheer incompetence.

This is the company that is proud to lose "only" a million letters a day. Apparently, a million letters is just a small percentage of the daily traffic through the company, so it doesn't matter. Well, 365 million letters a year does matter, and would make a mountain many times the size of St Pauls Cathedral, so how can you lose that much? So Royal Mail, if a million is so insignificant a number, I'd like you to give me a million pounds of your profit please, just this once. After all, it's only a small percentage of the total amount - so it won't mater will it? Email me and I'll give you my bank details, I don't trust the company who delivers my letters, if you were to send a cheque...

The postal system has been getting worse for years. This month saw the introduction of a new method of calculating cost. Rather than simplifying the process, and scrapping second class, they have now based letters on size and weight, so a little old lady now has no idea how much it will cost to send out her birthday cards, unless she gets out some postal weighing scales and a tape measure. Not to mention, the huge increased in cost of policing this new system. Very clever Royal Mail.

So now, most people have to take their items to a Post Office to send them. Except, here's the problem. There aren't any left! They sell the buildings and close them down. Many towns are left without one. Wimbledon doesn't have one at all!

Yesterday afternoon, I was in Leatherhead Post Office. This is actually, just a counter area at the back of a newsagent now, because they closed the main post office. I wanted a car tax form. There were only five people in the queue, and 4 members of staff behind the counter. Unfortunately, it took me 28 minutes to get to the counter, because they only had one window open. The one window was staffed by a new starter, who had evidently received no training at all. The other 3 were sitting chatting.

Eventually, a monster of a woman opened another window, and I got served. "Sorry, we haven't got any of those forms. NEXT.." was the response. I told her I'd waited almost 30 minutes for that, and she said "What do you want me to do? Put up a sign for every form we're out of?". No you stupid behemoth - that isn't what I expect, I expect it to take 5 minutes, not half an hour before you tell me you haven't got any. I expect you to move your mammoth arse to the window, and actually serve some fucking customers, instead of sitting around the back shuffling stamps, when there's a queue stretching out the door and into the High Street.

Finally, Royal Mail take the biscuit this week by announcing the suspension of a postie, after he delivered leaflets to his round which told them how to opt out of the unsolicited junk mail programme which they have been thrown into.
Even though Royal Mail lose a million letters a day, rather than paying someone to go and hunt around under mail sacks to see if they can find this ever increasing mountain, they now add to the problem by taking money from private companies to deliver shit through my letterbox. Junk mail and leaflets, of the like that used to be stuffed into free newspapers. Well, I don't want it, and I don't want my postman to have to waste his time delivering it. I'd rather he spent his time getting just the post that is addressed to me, to my door, on time. Is that too much to ask? Evidently.

There is something you can do though. Send an email to optout@royalmail.co.uk and include your address. Then, they will have to stop delivering this rubbish to your house. Not only that, as millions of other people are doing it now too, it will cause them untold problems, having to create massive lists from each of these emails, and having to make sure the junk is not send to you. Perhaps, they might drop the whole stupid exercise. If this was a private company, it would have gone bust ages ago.

All we want is for you to do the job you're paid to do. Why is it so difficult Royal Mail?