Post Office Rant

[Salazaar]

They're just as bad as the rest of Royal Mail, a terrible service run by idiots and staffed by jumped up prats who think they're far higher status than the bloody till jockeys that they are.

It took half an hour for me to get from one end of the queue to another just to send my sister her birthday present (already belated by late delivery to me). This comes after the stunning ideas of closing most of the other city center Post Offices, and of reducing the number of tellers in the remaining main Post Office.

The guy serving try to sell me more expensive delivery options on account of the strike, brilliant plan, totally screw up your regular deliveries in order to pimp your premium service. He then, in the face of a massive queue, didn't call the next customer but tried to sell me a new credit card. If I wanted to get another credit card I'd ask, I don't want to get delayed any further because everyone and their dog is getting offered all sorts of services they didn't come in for.

Quick tip post office, if you want to make money improve your basic service rather than trying to hawk crap.

/Rant

[DeludedGuy]

staffed by jumped up prats who think they're far higher status than the bloody till jockeys that they are.

No need for that, but I agree with everything else.

In the Aldwych branch I can’t understand why they would have 2 tills out of 6 open between 1200 and 1400, it’s obvious that it’s going to be a busy period as everyone is on lunch and uses that time to post personal mail off.

[Salazaar]

I'd probably feel a bit better about the staff if the guy who served me hadn't wasted loads of time trying to sell me a load of crap I didn't want.

If you assume that happened to everyone in the long queue you've got an awful lot of time wasted.

[DeludedGuy]

I'd probably feel a bit better about the staff if the guy who served me hadn't wasted loads of time trying to sell me a load of crap I didn't want.

If you assume that happened to everyone in the long queue you've got an awful lot of time wasted.

I understand, but you have to understand that they've probably been set targets by someone higher up, unfortunately for them they have to try and meet these targets if they want to keep their job, and they also have to deal with the abuse from irate customers.

[Stringent]

Indeed and they have to push this new stuff on you too. Someone is probably watching them.

[Lucio]

Let's face it, the world sucks entirely and every company is badevilwrongwrongwrong.

Seriously, IMO consumers are *far* too used to people going above and beyond the realistically affordable options in business

[Salazaar]

Hence that they're nothing more than till monkeys, if they want to step up and take a proactive approach to customer mangement (i.e. not wasting time and just serving people who're waiting) then I would applaud them.

I don't recall seeing any of them taking any abuse by the way. As far as I could see we were quite a civilised queue

Let's face it, the world sucks entirely and every company is badevilwrongwrongwrong.

Seriously, IMO consumers are *far* too used to people going above and beyond the realistically affordable options in business

There's reasonable business practices and then there's Royal Mail, it's basically mismanaged from top to bottom.

[DeludedGuy]

Hence that they're nothing more than till monkeys

Please get off your high horse.

[Salazaar]

Please get off your high horse.

Do you think I've not done my time behind a till? I'm perfectly aware of the 'challenges' they have to deal with. I don't know of any other shop which makes you wait so long for so little, and staff who haven't got the good sense to ignore the crap when they've got people queuing to the door are no better than the idiot managers who hand down the dictats in the first place.

[TooNice]

Not enough staffs. I am sure the trying to sell you stuff that you did not ask for takes out additional times, but the few branches I've been do not try that, yet queues are still massive due to the place being too small, or the number of empty tills.

[father smurf]

My local post office kept trying to sell me all kinds of nonsense every time i went in.

I asked them to stop bugging me - they didn't - i went to another post office which doesn't push - and has now taken over a lot of customers from my old one.

[jim]

Do you think I've not done my time behind a till? I'm perfectly aware of the 'challenges' they have to deal with. I don't know of any other shop which makes you wait so long for so little, and staff who haven't got the good sense to ignore the crap when they've got people queuing to the door are no better than the idiot managers who hand down the dictats in the first place.

When I used to work behind a till, I remember being asked to sell junk to customer for Red Nose Day, and was told how I could say things like "Would you like to save a child by purchasing this £1 pencil?". I said nothing, and never made any attempt to sell any of it to anybody because whilst I thought the ethos was passable, I certainly didn't like the methods - I was pulled up about it 3 or 4 times and accused of things like "a lack of confidence in front of customers", and life certainly wasn't made easy for me as a consequence. I can't help but feel sorry for certain people working behind tills because I think the unlucky ones are watched over intensely to make sure that they do what they've been asked, irrespective of circumstance.

It's all ridiculous though.

[DeludedGuy]

Of course its annoying when you have to deal with sales people, but a firm "no thank you" as soon as they get into their sales pitch usually works, if you stand their listening to them knowing fully well you aren’t going to buy anything, you are just as bad for wasting time.

I'm pretty sure most of us here on Hexus are intelligent enough to find what we need and dont need a sales person to help, but unfortunately we should be expecting it from every company we deal with, thats not to say we have to accept it.

We really should be writing our rants to the managers instead!

[Salazaar]

To be honest this side of the argument has blown out of proportion. It certainly is management decisions that closed the sub-offices and that under-staff the offices remain, and that's where the problem really lies. The time wasting was just the feather that tipped the scales for me today.

I'm certainly considering writing to the post master of the Oxford branch; this wasn't a one off, it's like that most of the time in there.

[Mike Fishcake]

Has anyone else used the "print postage online" service? I've used it several times now to send large letters of varying weights, and if you can shove it through the post box's slot, it saves a lot of time cacking around at the Post Office (making sure you don't under-weigh it though).

[jim]

Has anyone else used the "print postage online" service? I've used it several times now to send large letters of varying weights, and if you can shove it through the post box's slot, it saves a lot of time cacking around at the Post Office (making sure you don't under-weigh it though).

I do it for eBay, but I still have to take them to the post office. Makes life a lot easier though, all they have to do is stamp all of the certificates. The only thing that frustrates me is that they check all of them now, to make sure that the certificates match up with the parcels you're dropping off, and that takes forever.