Better Than Walking the Streets

A slump in the number of stamped letters being sent in the UK has seen Royal Mail's losses widen to £279m in the year to the end of March. The company said it faced a time of "difficult challenges" after the opening up of the postal service. The results included its first loss from its stamped letters business - which is handling about three million fewer letters each day than a year ago.
BBC business editor Robert Peston said that the results were "pretty grim".
The Mail made a loss of £10m in the 12 months running to the end of March 2007.

From the BBC News website.

Well, strike me down with a recorded delivery. Apparently, three of the worst postal service areas are Dundee, Falkirk and Edinburgh. Now to the good people of Dalkeith this isn't a major surprise. We can get our mail delivered anytime between 10.00am and 2.00pm. No second delivery, of course - it's just the one. But if you expect your mail delivered before you head off to work in the morning then you may wish to nominate yourself for a Comedy Award at this year's Edinburgh Festival.

It's not the first time that I've had mail go missing. Both sending and receiving. I posted a birthday card to my mother the year before last and foolishly enclosed a £20 gift voucher for Marks and Spencer with the card. She never received it.

I've lost count of the number of times people have asked me if I've received mail they've sent me, only for me to give them a quizical look. On one occasion, the postie shoved a recorded mail letter addressed to me through the letter box. Without knocking for a signature. Problem was, he pushed it through my neighbour's letter box. And she was on holiday...

The postal service in this part of the world is, to put it mildly, shoddy. I've complained to Royal Mail in the past but have got nowhere. Apparently my complaint got lost in the post...

I e-mail friends and colleagues now rather than use snail mail. I pay much of my bills on-line, thus avoiding the need for a lethargic postie to think about whether he/she can be bothered to deliver my cheque. A decision helped, incidentally, by Royal Mail's decision to remove the post box from the end of my street meaning it's even more of an effort for me to post mail.

So the news that Royal Mail is losing millions of pounds is hardly startling. But I can already hear the rumblings of discontent among the trade unions who'll doubtless be discussing ballot papers very soon.

And if posties consider strike action through a postal ballot then who knows what may happen....