Royal Mail....royally sucks?

[hech54]

OK all you Brits....answer me this? This package arrived TODAY:

As you can see it was sent "Air Mail" from the UK to me here in Germany....just across the channel on 12/08/04.

This is not the first time a package this size (VHS tape) has taken this long. It wouldn't be SO bad except I received another package today from Amazon.com FROM THE U.S......it was mailed 12/09/04.
That is pretty pathetic considering the Amazon package also got nabbed by German Customs and I had to pay €5,70 extra for the taxes....so it COULD have been here sooner.

[Craig Tucker]

Yes Royal Mail does suck, but the US package must have gone through a worm hole or something.

[Hardcoreruss]

Royal mail is without a doubt the lamest service on earth. They lose (and this is an acutal figure) 3,000,000 items per week, yes thats right 3 MILLION. Where the **** do they all go.

The only reason royal mail is still around is because there was a law past back in the dark ages that states that any other mail carrier must charge more than £1 for a stamp. Because of this you have two extremes a reliable courier who is expensive or a shite slow ass system that is cheap.

I got Highlander Immortal edition the other day from playusa.com it costs £18.99 and I got charged £7.46 tax, they charged me a £3 processing fee. So basically they charged me for charging me tax.

[hech54]

I lived in the U.S. and we always cracked on our mail service but SO many people from other countries have told me that the U.S. Postal Service is one of the best in the world. The more I travel and the more I mail stuff around the world....the more I tend to believe them.
My family sends me DVD's of home movies...Air Mail from the U.S. and it usually takes about a week...and NEVER over two weeks. That is pretty damn good.
It also takes the same amount of time from here to the U.S. via Air Mail so it CANT be Deutsche Post mucking things up after Royal Mail.
I sent a package from here to Hungary...no air mail...and it was there in two days.
The only package the U.S.P.S. ever lost was a "Registered" package that I would have needed to sign for...amazing....the cheaper packages are more reliable.

You guys MUST be getting the shaft.

3 MILLION??????
I just re-read that...are you sh|tting me?

[Hardcoreruss]

Nope that is a correct figure

[VCDHunter]

Royal mail is without a doubt the lamest service on earth. They lose (and this is an acutal figure) 3,000,000 items per week, yes thats right 3 MILLION. Where the **** do they all go.

The only reason royal mail is still around is because there was a law past back in the dark ages that states that any other mail carrier must charge more than £1 for a stamp. Because of this you have two extremes a reliable courier who is expensive or a shite slow ass system that is cheap.

I got Highlander Immortal edition the other day from playusa.com it costs £18.99 and I got charged £7.46 tax, they charged me a £3 processing fee. So basically they charged me for charging me tax.

3 mil a week ? Care to provide a link to that figure ?

Postwatch shows RM lose 12.4 million a year - of those 60% are delivered to the wrong address. The £7.46 tax is a customs charge is it not ? This is collected by RM on behalf of Customs and Excise - do you really think they'll be doing this for fun ?

British law currently states that the monopoly held by RM only applies to items up to the weight of 350g and below a delivery charge of £1, courier services can charge what they bloody well like for anything above 350g in weight.

Apart from that you're spot on

[Cobra]

I can vouch for it. The number of important letters and packages that they have fumbled...

The Royal Mail are awful, and they have the cheek to go on strike?

[flaninacupboard]

royal mail/normal post i've found to not be too bad.

parcelfarce on the other hand..........

[VCDHunter]

Oh and hech you do realise that Royal Mail don't deliver in Germany - that'll be Deutsche Post. If it was sent Airmail on the 12/8/04 (which is only a week ago today) you may wish to ask Deutsche Post why they took so long delivering it. The US post we just can't compete with I'm afraid - there's no way we'd be able to deliver stuff almost a month before posting.

[Craig Tucker]

I still dont understand how hech54 recieved a package from the future.

[VCDHunter]

I still dont understand how hech54 recieved a package from the future.

The US Postal Service must be really good

[Doramius]

i say they need to revamp some laws, so other carriers can lower their prices. Or they do like the US, and have one single private mail company that is federally watched, but not controlled by the government. If postal workers were to strike without full just cause and meeting above a specific audit level, then they are immediately terminated. If they try and boycott the SCAB carriers, the compettitors (FedEx, AirBorne, UPS) won't mind it at all, because they are also unioned and have bitter rivalry with the USPS system as well as each other. They had a strike with UPS back in 97' and it ended after about a month, and UPS lost a ton of business 'permanently', and 62% of the striking people were dismissed from the company. They only hired back like 14%. FedEx almost did a major strike near that time, but the union worked things out quickly to avoid the UPS fiasco.

The worst of these carriers is AirBorne Express. If you send something overnight to arrive early morning the next day, they've have to give so many refunds of money because it arrived after the noon local times or they lost it all-together. The gurantee for morning delivery is before 10am. FedEx has similar policies, but they don't lose any packages. The package may arrive late on very rare occasions, but they gaurantee a full refund, even if the item is only 5 minutes late.

[hech54]

Oh and hech you do realise that Royal Mail don't deliver in Germany - that'll be Deutsche Post. If it was sent Airmail on the 12/8/04 (which is only a week ago today) you may wish to ask Deutsche Post why they took so long delivering it. The US post we just can't compete with I'm afraid - there's no way we'd be able to deliver stuff almost a month before posting.

I understand that that Deutsche Post takes over at the border...but they also do the same with packages from the U.S. which "almost" arrive at the same time as a package of similar size from the U.K.
I also know that the postage you pay in your home country is "to the border"....the receiving country does not have any obligation to deliver it at all....they are getting no money out of the deal.
The destination country delivers it because the sending country also delivers "their" mail.
The biggest "LIE" I heard in America was the "Registered Mail" scam that the US Postal Service offers to overseas destinations. This is total bullsh|t....the US Postal Service CANNOT track an item once it leaves the country....yet people (like my parents...once) fall for this extra fee constantly.

[VCDHunter]

This is all well and good but how do you account for the stuff you get delivered from the future ?

[thayne]

The only complaint I have agaist the US post office is the long lines when you need to send something and them always raising the price of stamps!

[Hardcoreruss]

Maybe I got my figures wrong but I am sure I read that in the Times a few months a go.

The tax has the Customs charge and then a processing fee on top

[Capmaster]

The only complaint I have agaist the US post office is the long lines when you need to send something and them always raising the price of stamps!

The only complaint I have about the US Postal Service is the price of stamps .......and the long lines in the substations .....and the fact they deliver only whenever it doesn't interfere with their personal schedule ...... and that they get paid too much for the work they do ....and that they almost can't get fired .....and that they demand cluster boxes on all new construction - even single family homes, and individual house delivery is just too difficult ......and that the are rude, arrogant, worthless

[thayne]

cluster boxes suck. Luckily my house is old enough that I have my own mail box.

I think they're pretty polite, especially concidering all the asshats they have to deal with on a daily basis. I was in line once and this guy was bitching and complaining about every little thing. Being a real prick, and the postal employee was completely nice to the guy. If it were me I think I would have reached over the counter and ripped his throat out!

[Capmaster]

cluster boxes suck. Luckily my house is old enough that I have my own mail box.

I think they're pretty polite, especially concidering all the asshats they have to deal with on a daily basis. I was in line once and this guy was bitching and complaining about every little thing. Being a real prick, and the postal employee was completely nice to the guy. If it were me I think I would have reached over the counter and ripped his throat out!

Must have been a Post Office noob that hadn't yet bought his Chinese copy AK-47

[Doramius]

cluster boxes suck. Luckily my house is old enough that I have my own mail box.

I think they're pretty polite, especially concidering all the asshats they have to deal with on a daily basis. I was in line once and this guy was bitching and complaining about every little thing. Being a real prick, and the postal employee was completely nice to the guy. If it were me I think I would have reached over the counter and ripped his throat out!

Must have been a Post Office noob that hadn't yet bought his Chinese copy AK-47

They only do the cluster boxes in the new developments. A cluster box for 15-20 homes cuts about 30 minutes off a regular route. That's why IN SOME areas, the mail is dropped at the condo and apartment complexes first (after businesses get delivered to first). One apartment complex I used to live in was on a route of nothing but complexes. I wouldn't get my mail until about 4:30-5PM. If there was a substitute, sometimes it would be around 6PM.

[hech54]

What happens if you owe Customs Duty(tax) on a package arriving in America?
1) It will never happen...
because
2) Mailmen and women don't carry money and RARELY are c.o.d.'s allowed anywhere anymore in America.
Here in Germany the mailman carries money and collects any money owed....AND gives you change back provided you don't hand him a €100 bill.
All this and my mail arrived daily BY 1 in the afternoon (1300...13 Uhr....sorry).
But Germany is the size of Wisconsin...Hmm..
Has anyone in America ever owed money for an import package valued over $50 on a package not marked "gift"?
I never did when I lived there.

[Doramius]

What happens if you owe Customs Duty(tax) on a package arriving in America?
1) It will never happen...
because
2) Mailmen and women don't carry money and RARELY are c.o.d.'s allowed anywhere anymore in America.
Here in Germany the mailman carries money and collects any money owed....AND gives you change back provided you don't hand him a €100 bill.
All this and my mail arrived daily BY 1 in the afternoon (1300...13 Uhr....sorry).
But Germany is the size of Wisconsin...Hmm..
Has anyone in America ever owed money for an import package valued over $50 on a package not marked "gift"?
I never did when I lived there.

CODs are still allowed, but have cost a lot of companies much $$, because carriers don't carry change (so cash must be exact) and if someone doesn't pay, the item gets shipped back and the company is required to cover all charges. The company then has to reinventory the item and stock it back on a shelf for another buyer. The cost makes it not worth the hassle for any company to do. You can still send COD to family members and friends as long as you let them know you're doing it. You have to show a valid ID and Credit Card to send it, even though you're not paying. If it gets returned, they then charge you.

When the US carriers deal with customs and duties taxes, they are usually figured into the package cost already. If you were to send a package to the US and ask what the cost would be, all of those figures are usually already included. It might be the same in Canada, if I remember correctly, depending on where the package is being sent to or received from.

Here's another interesting tidbit you can find by browsing through www.postal-service.com . When you pay for something via regular USPS, you are actually paying 1/3 more than it's actual cost to send it here in the US. This is because the extra 1/3 is to cover it's return if there needs to be. Most US mail gets delivered without return. most of the time the 1/3 ends up becoming profit to the USPS.

[lordsmurf]

The biggest "LIE" I heard in America was the "Registered Mail" scam that the US Postal Service offers to overseas destinations. This is total bullsh|t....the US Postal Service CANNOT track an item once it leaves the country....yet people (like my parents...once) fall for this extra fee constantly.

No scam.

This is only offered to certain locations. Again, part of delivery agreements. I get overseas parcels here that require signatures or scan tracking. It jumps tracking systems. You'll see 1-3 packages codes on it, a scan from each country it hit. They defer back to the original scan number.

[hech54]

Let's try this one more time:
The Unites States Postal Service CANNOT track ANY package once it leaves the continental United States....period.
This is the best that the United States Postal Service can provide:

Recorded delivery is the international service equivalent of domestic certified mail. It provides the mailer with a numbered mailing receipt. It also enables the sender to obtain confirmation of delivery through the purchase of a separate return receipt for an additional fee. The foreign post office retains a record of the delivery for each transaction. However, no mailing record is kept by the U.S. Postal Service.

I would hardly call that "tracking".
If you want true tracking....go U.P.S.

[Craig Tucker]

Lets try this (just one more time)
How the hell do you recieve a package one full month before it was even posted.

[VCDHunter]

Lets try this (just one more time)
How the hell do you recieve a package one full month before it was even posted.

Been wondering and asking this myself :P

[hech54]

It tough trying to combine the American way and the European way of dd/mm/yy....
The Amazon package was mailed a day before the VHS tape.....12/09/04 should have been 11/08/04(European) and 8/11/04 (American).

[Doramius]

Let's try this one more time:
The Unites States Postal Service CANNOT track ANY package once it leaves the continental United States....period.
This is the best that the United States Postal Service can provide:

Recorded delivery is the international service equivalent of domestic certified mail. It provides the mailer with a numbered mailing receipt. It also enables the sender to obtain confirmation of delivery through the purchase of a separate return receipt for an additional fee. The foreign post office retains a record of the delivery for each transaction. However, no mailing record is kept by the U.S. Postal Service.

I would hardly call that "tracking".
If you want true tracking....go U.P.S.

There is a tracking number, but there is also a card that gets signed by the recipient when it's received. This card is sent back to the initial sender. When the card hits back to the United States it is recorded as received by the recipient and noted in the USPS system. THe card is then continued on it's way to the sender. There is a tracking number and it can be traced, with a little time, in other countries. I've had to do this several times when I traveled to different countries for work related issues.