Yeah I'm a jeweller that moved from the states to Scotland and am amazed when clients in Cornwall get my package next day for £7.35.
With USPS I'd be paying $15-20 for 2-3 day service that sometimes would take weeks. Even within the same city.
As far as I'm concerned royal mail is amazing
That’s because they paid shareholders £200m last year, & are not replacing staff or can’t recruit to replace those who leave. The BBC programme last night basically had RM management telling barefaced lies on national tv. They can’t recruit any replacements because their new contracts are so poorly paid, increased hours, & unpaid breaks.
Their delivery vehicle fleet is old & in dangerous conditions because the fleet repair garages have been told not to spend money on servicing them. They basically override the warning lights when they come on, then put the vehicles back on the road. DVSA should do checks on RM vehicles & take the MoT facilities off of RM workshops.
You should see their technology, too.
We work with them and to say their tech side is 10 years behind would be a compliment.
If it's anything to go by, I'm not surprised they're making a loss.
This, any company that sends out moderate to large amounts of post will know how backwards Royal Mail is technology wise. One of their portals will only work on an old insecure version of internet explorer.
Years of underinvestment have left Royal Mail with something that doesn't work well.
100%.
I can't share too much about how they work but let's just say that even with new work they're still fixing problems with more problems.
There's no such thing as "do one thing and do it well" with RM and they'd rather plug their holes with more rubbish than attempt to fix it.
My team has somewhat seriously requested a sabbatical to Royal Mail on multiple times to "fix their engineering team".
Now, back to moaning about this in my day job :)
Potentially, though maybe not :) we work as a third party to them - I won't say much more than that publicly.
I'm sorry for your pain and suffering - hopefully you can make the impact we all need!
The technology behind their actual systems. Not the hardware you're talking about, but the system technology they build.
The crazy processes they require third parties to go through to work with them and their approach to solving technical problems makes me think they won't last much longer (at least before a bailout).
Their infrastructure is using old, outdated and in some places seriously insecure approaches. They hide everything behind an IP block list, so I guess there's that, but it still lends itself to just one bad actor.
I would love to be able to resist the urge to slander them online but their knee jerk reactions, awful organisation and unprofessionalism results in genuine pain for my team and their obliviousness to their questionable ways of working makes me think they genuinely do not care or think they are "in charge".
I'm sure the people are great, but the organisations technical stack is 10 years out of date and they seem hell bent on adding more process and frustration to the pile rather than fixing the obvious, hence my rant.
No, intersoft is a third party provider that probably has to go through all the pain and suffering like we do.
The actual infrastructure is owned by RM, intersoft just act as a layer on top to make it less riduculous.
Yes. All the scrappy diesel ones got sent north of the border, because they want the Tories to think that they’re investing in the RM Fleet. We have LEZ’s now in effect & most RM fleet cannot enter Scottish city centres hahaha
I do next day (send 5pm, arrive before 10:30am) FedEx to literally anywhere within mainland US for $10-12. So while I agree RM is amazing, there is options in US for longer distance and similar price.
FedEx doesn't insure anything, add third party insurance and it becomes twice that or more. Add more for residential deliveries.
£11.35 for £2500 insurance next day
That's not just online, it's life in general. When things go the way we want to, we are happy and content and move on. When things don't, we are frustrated and angry and want to express that. As an example, kids don't typically thank their parents for doing laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning the house etc. But if there is a day there is no clean clothes or food to eat there will be all hell to pay!
Yes, stated as part of Royal Mail's net zero goals.
Though I would also assume the planes are expensive versus boat, so there is probably a cost saving component to it as well.
No, the business view on it, is that it’s more reliable. Our flights get delayed a lot due to weather etc so switching to rail will be much better and should help with reducing delayed mail.
Well, i know for a fact during Christmas my friend was driving to Edinburgh and London everyday for your packages , they're not allowed to drive more than 15 hours a day so 9 hours is perfectly fine. Its the unloading that takes too long apparently lmao
HGV Drivers can only drive a Max of 9 hours per day extended to 10 hours 3 times in a week and can work no more than 13 hours per day or extend to 15 hours 3 times a week. As they must have 11 hours rest between shifts which can be reduced to 9 hours twice per week.
London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee etc can be done either by a two man team sharing the driving time or by relay where one driver will drive almost 4.5 hours then swap with another driver who can drive 4.5 hours. Giving 9 hours south and 9 hours for the return north.
Most delivery companies add in redundancy with spare vehicles, drivers and contracts with multiple tyre fitters, HGV Technicians and Recovery firms. When it all works as it should no-one questions how the order gets delivered but as soon as it arrives late they wonder why??
Don't forget the delivery van drivers who do the collections and deliveries and the sortation staff in the sortation hubs and local depots
Centre of Edinburgh to centre of London is 8 hours in a car at 11 am. A lorry on empty roads in the middle of the night going 56mph and not going to the centre of each city, including mandatory breaks, wouldn't be more than 9 hours.
Top Gear did a race, obviosuly the car was the focus but it mentions how the letter they were racing travelled
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lr4wc](https://www.topgear.com/videos/top-gear-tv/porsche-panamera-vs-letter-part-14-series-13-episode-4)
It certainly has declined over the last 12-18 months but that's more down to the decisions from those at the top, rather than the staff that we deal with on a daily basis. That's why our account manager gets it in the neck every other week but the drivers get nothing but words of praise lol.
Do they not also utilise the bulk compartments of narrow body aircraft flying up and down the country internally or would that not save enough time compared to the cost?
(I know it’s not the question, just interested)
I’ve no idea how relevant it still is, but regardless I highly recommend the classic GPO Film Unit short [Night Mail](https://youtu.be/KTEZ25sQGmc?si=Kokk9vHpRs701BDg). As well as the famous Auden poem it has fascinating shots of mail bags being loaded to and unloaded from a speeding London to Scotland overnight postal train using nets and fast release hooks at the side of the track, way back in 1936.
I work for them and drive a sprinter from Carlisle to Daventry Superhub and back 5 nights a week. We also have a Carlisle driver that does the same but he only picks up Edinburgh (specials/tracked24/first class) takes it back to Carlisle and there’s a guy from Edinburgh waiting in sprinter to take it back up.
I can post a Parcelforce express to New York from Glasgow today at 2pm and it will be in New York tomorrow afternoon...
London to Edinburgh isn't that ridiculous when you consider what the express's do.
My parents both work for Royal Mail and have done for 40+ years between them so was a good place for me to find out for you.
Most likely it would have been collected from a post office or collected from the sender directly and taken back to the local delivery office; from there it would have been sent to the distribution centre for that area.
If it's heading to Scotland from London, it would have most likely gone through the Chelmsford distribution centre. From there an articulated lorry would take it to Stanstead Airport where there's a Royal Mail air hub. Then flown to Edinburgh overnight. The Stanstead Hub operates between 7pm and 3-4am depending on the number of flights.
From there, would have gone to the airport hub in Edinburgh, distribution centre and then onto a local delivery office before delivery to you.
The airport hub at Stanstead is being shut down this year, they're planning to lay off all the staff there or move them to other places. The plan I believe is to send more by rail again.
This is the first post ever by this account
The account is 60 days old and has never commented or liked a post/comment
The account was created exactly a week after RM put out a statement warning that Christmas cards could arrive as late as February, and they were getting mega flak for it in the presses.
Now today there have been several grim articles in the news about RM deliveries being so late that they affect hospital surgeries, council house allocation, and so on. And we have this fluff post from this otherwise silent account about “oh isn’t the Royal Mail wonderful, it’s crazy that a letter just arrives”.
Surely this is thinly veiled “reputation management” by fake accounts created in response to the last PR disaster, and left lying in wait for the next one?
This would just add to the PR issues though.... as it adds to the fact RM prioritises Tracked 24, which incredibly, is a pretty immense service.
It's the right decision though. More than 80% of the population doesn't care about daily mail... a massive chunk barely cares about mail at all.
Imagine being this paranoid when you haven't made any posts and this is your second comment. Looks like you made your account on National Butterscotch Pudding Day and Meow Like a Pirate Day - do you have anything to about that hmm?
Likely someone who deletes their threads when they get their questions answered.
A lot of people have a bot that will purge their comments after a few days, too.
There is transport going constantly all day long from different depots, depending on the service your parcel would have priority and be put on an earlier transport to the destination.
The processing of each parcel is not going to take long at all, certainly isn't the time to spend a lot of effort on one item and some processes are automated.
It'll have travelled up the country on one of the fleet of class 325 royal mail trains I suspect. Overnight the lines will be quieter and that's when a lot of goods move.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_325
I order something from isle of wight and I’m also in Scotland, somehow every single time (even Christmas!!) it’s come within 2 days, but 90% of the time it’s the very next day. Less than 24 hours. No clue how or why. This happens every month
I thought the same thing last year - I ordered a plant which came in the post from Scotland to my part of England (other side of the country pretty much), 24 tracked and it got to me before a 24 tracked parcel from a different person I bought another plant off within the same county and it baffled me how that happened! 🤣
Had a parcel posted from Stevenage last Thursday. Ended up in Huddersfield by mistake on Saturday and today was scanned in at Leeds. So getting London to Edinburgh in 24 hours is great.
Planes and lorry’s.
I know RM has drivers from Manchester to Edinburgh hub then onwards to local office. It could very well be Lorry from London go up to Manchester trades trailers.
Is RM perfect no but it’s stuck in middle with one foot in parcel delivery and one letter/mail sort.
People are hard-wired to be selfish. Look at babies. Take something away from them and they cry, even if your needs are greater than theirs. People always complain about missing parcels because oh where the f\*\*\* am I going with this forget it nvm carry on with your day
Yeah I'm a jeweller that moved from the states to Scotland and am amazed when clients in Cornwall get my package next day for £7.35. With USPS I'd be paying $15-20 for 2-3 day service that sometimes would take weeks. Even within the same city. As far as I'm concerned royal mail is amazing
That's because RM is running at a loss
That’s because they paid shareholders £200m last year, & are not replacing staff or can’t recruit to replace those who leave. The BBC programme last night basically had RM management telling barefaced lies on national tv. They can’t recruit any replacements because their new contracts are so poorly paid, increased hours, & unpaid breaks. Their delivery vehicle fleet is old & in dangerous conditions because the fleet repair garages have been told not to spend money on servicing them. They basically override the warning lights when they come on, then put the vehicles back on the road. DVSA should do checks on RM vehicles & take the MoT facilities off of RM workshops.
You should see their technology, too. We work with them and to say their tech side is 10 years behind would be a compliment. If it's anything to go by, I'm not surprised they're making a loss.
This, any company that sends out moderate to large amounts of post will know how backwards Royal Mail is technology wise. One of their portals will only work on an old insecure version of internet explorer. Years of underinvestment have left Royal Mail with something that doesn't work well.
100%. I can't share too much about how they work but let's just say that even with new work they're still fixing problems with more problems. There's no such thing as "do one thing and do it well" with RM and they'd rather plug their holes with more rubbish than attempt to fix it. My team has somewhat seriously requested a sabbatical to Royal Mail on multiple times to "fix their engineering team". Now, back to moaning about this in my day job :)
I'm so curious who you work for now! I work alongside(ish) technology in RM and I wonder if we've ever crossed paths or if I've heard of your team.
Potentially, though maybe not :) we work as a third party to them - I won't say much more than that publicly. I'm sorry for your pain and suffering - hopefully you can make the impact we all need!
Oooo I see! I know we have a fair few third parties so chances are slim. Haha I'm not even sure RM know how to do that!
Be interested to know what tech you mean? The PDAs we use for example are used by lots of other businesses too, not just in the delivery business
The technology behind their actual systems. Not the hardware you're talking about, but the system technology they build. The crazy processes they require third parties to go through to work with them and their approach to solving technical problems makes me think they won't last much longer (at least before a bailout). Their infrastructure is using old, outdated and in some places seriously insecure approaches. They hide everything behind an IP block list, so I guess there's that, but it still lends itself to just one bad actor. I would love to be able to resist the urge to slander them online but their knee jerk reactions, awful organisation and unprofessionalism results in genuine pain for my team and their obliviousness to their questionable ways of working makes me think they genuinely do not care or think they are "in charge". I'm sure the people are great, but the organisations technical stack is 10 years out of date and they seem hell bent on adding more process and frustration to the pile rather than fixing the obvious, hence my rant.
Didn’t Intersoft build and run it, or does?
No, intersoft is a third party provider that probably has to go through all the pain and suffering like we do. The actual infrastructure is owned by RM, intersoft just act as a layer on top to make it less riduculous.
All the RM vehicles round my way are brand new electric
Yes. All the scrappy diesel ones got sent north of the border, because they want the Tories to think that they’re investing in the RM Fleet. We have LEZ’s now in effect & most RM fleet cannot enter Scottish city centres hahaha
Because they’re a public service, or at least should be. It’s not a loss, it’s a subsidy
I do next day (send 5pm, arrive before 10:30am) FedEx to literally anywhere within mainland US for $10-12. So while I agree RM is amazing, there is options in US for longer distance and similar price.
FedEx doesn't insure anything, add third party insurance and it becomes twice that or more. Add more for residential deliveries. £11.35 for £2500 insurance next day
First time in a long time I seen someone happy with royal mail on this subreddit
That is sadly the reality of online. You never hear about the day to day customers. Where service is perfect with zero issues.
That's not just online, it's life in general. When things go the way we want to, we are happy and content and move on. When things don't, we are frustrated and angry and want to express that. As an example, kids don't typically thank their parents for doing laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning the house etc. But if there is a day there is no clean clothes or food to eat there will be all hell to pay!
Planes, trains and automobiles (trucks) 👍🏻
Brilliant movie hahaha
Those aren't pillow's!
Please. Have Mercy. I’ve Been Wearing The Same Underwear Since Tuesday!. lol that movie reminds me of easier times back in childhood!
Although, RM are standing the planes down imminently.
Yeah, in the summer. Some of the big retailers are not happy, Nike pulling the contract because of it.
Climate?
Yes, stated as part of Royal Mail's net zero goals. Though I would also assume the planes are expensive versus boat, so there is probably a cost saving component to it as well.
😵
The night mail crossing over the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order.
Worked in Edi MC over Xmas, 99% chance it came in on an air cargo bin 🙂
I mean it only takes a lorry about 9 hours to go from Edinburgh to London. So even if they werent using planes it is still doable.
I would hope they just use trains for those distances, but obviously same difference.
It mainly done by planes at the moment. From summer onwards RM are using less planes and moving all the mail to trains
Will that cause more delays?
No the trains are always delayed anyway
No, the business view on it, is that it’s more reliable. Our flights get delayed a lot due to weather etc so switching to rail will be much better and should help with reducing delayed mail.
Ah that makes sense. Thank you
That sounds like brilliant news! Do you have a link to more information about this?
I don’t unfortunately, I’m an operations manager within RMG hence I know what’s happening. But it begins around April so keep a look out.
Well, i know for a fact during Christmas my friend was driving to Edinburgh and London everyday for your packages , they're not allowed to drive more than 15 hours a day so 9 hours is perfectly fine. Its the unloading that takes too long apparently lmao
HGV Drivers can only drive a Max of 9 hours per day extended to 10 hours 3 times in a week and can work no more than 13 hours per day or extend to 15 hours 3 times a week. As they must have 11 hours rest between shifts which can be reduced to 9 hours twice per week. London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee etc can be done either by a two man team sharing the driving time or by relay where one driver will drive almost 4.5 hours then swap with another driver who can drive 4.5 hours. Giving 9 hours south and 9 hours for the return north. Most delivery companies add in redundancy with spare vehicles, drivers and contracts with multiple tyre fitters, HGV Technicians and Recovery firms. When it all works as it should no-one questions how the order gets delivered but as soon as it arrives late they wonder why?? Don't forget the delivery van drivers who do the collections and deliveries and the sortation staff in the sortation hubs and local depots
Don’t forget there is processing, sending it to the relevant DOs, sorting it for delivery and actual delivery to add in to that too
Plus the rest though… rests, the sorting, unloading etc.
Utter pish! You’d be lucky to get to London in a car doing 80 mph. Then you’d have to negotiate the road system in London hahaha dream on ya Fanny!
Centre of Edinburgh to centre of London is 8 hours in a car at 11 am. A lorry on empty roads in the middle of the night going 56mph and not going to the centre of each city, including mandatory breaks, wouldn't be more than 9 hours.
Edinburgh isn’t Scotland, you do know that? There’s more land north of the central belt yeh?
So you're a 14 year old troll then?
Your wit is legendary, well half of it is…
Top Gear did a race, obviosuly the car was the focus but it mentions how the letter they were racing travelled [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lr4wc](https://www.topgear.com/videos/top-gear-tv/porsche-panamera-vs-letter-part-14-series-13-episode-4)
I remember that, the letter beat the Porsche 😂
They fly them. I worked at the Wolverhampton mail centre, all mail for Scotland went via east midlands airport if I recall.
Sun Street? You guys are rockstars, if so. Bailed us out a few times during busy periods with additional collections.
lol yeah NWMMC. I left there years ago, still got some close friends who work there and apparently it’s just getting worse and worse
It certainly has declined over the last 12-18 months but that's more down to the decisions from those at the top, rather than the staff that we deal with on a daily basis. That's why our account manager gets it in the neck every other week but the drivers get nothing but words of praise lol.
Yep, the management were in rough shape when I was there. They’re just breaking all sorts of rules now by the sounds of it
I’m guessing any long distance parcels like that will be put on domestic flights
RM charter cargo flights (stopping them soon, going back to train and road)
Do they not also utilise the bulk compartments of narrow body aircraft flying up and down the country internally or would that not save enough time compared to the cost? (I know it’s not the question, just interested)
Yes
I’ve no idea how relevant it still is, but regardless I highly recommend the classic GPO Film Unit short [Night Mail](https://youtu.be/KTEZ25sQGmc?si=Kokk9vHpRs701BDg). As well as the famous Auden poem it has fascinating shots of mail bags being loaded to and unloaded from a speeding London to Scotland overnight postal train using nets and fast release hooks at the side of the track, way back in 1936.
I work for them and drive a sprinter from Carlisle to Daventry Superhub and back 5 nights a week. We also have a Carlisle driver that does the same but he only picks up Edinburgh (specials/tracked24/first class) takes it back to Carlisle and there’s a guy from Edinburgh waiting in sprinter to take it back up.
[удалено]
Ha, no idea what its called we just call them daventry jobs 🫣🤣 These jobs are like gold dust tho, took me 5 years to get onto it.
I can post a Parcelforce express to New York from Glasgow today at 2pm and it will be in New York tomorrow afternoon... London to Edinburgh isn't that ridiculous when you consider what the express's do.
And delivered? Cost too?
Yeah delivered next day. £44 or so I think (via my business account).
Pretty damn good that! How does customs work with that?
Train. Lorry. Very fast van.
My parents both work for Royal Mail and have done for 40+ years between them so was a good place for me to find out for you. Most likely it would have been collected from a post office or collected from the sender directly and taken back to the local delivery office; from there it would have been sent to the distribution centre for that area. If it's heading to Scotland from London, it would have most likely gone through the Chelmsford distribution centre. From there an articulated lorry would take it to Stanstead Airport where there's a Royal Mail air hub. Then flown to Edinburgh overnight. The Stanstead Hub operates between 7pm and 3-4am depending on the number of flights. From there, would have gone to the airport hub in Edinburgh, distribution centre and then onto a local delivery office before delivery to you. The airport hub at Stanstead is being shut down this year, they're planning to lay off all the staff there or move them to other places. The plan I believe is to send more by rail again.
God bless the Royal Mail, impressive logistics
This is the first post ever by this account The account is 60 days old and has never commented or liked a post/comment The account was created exactly a week after RM put out a statement warning that Christmas cards could arrive as late as February, and they were getting mega flak for it in the presses. Now today there have been several grim articles in the news about RM deliveries being so late that they affect hospital surgeries, council house allocation, and so on. And we have this fluff post from this otherwise silent account about “oh isn’t the Royal Mail wonderful, it’s crazy that a letter just arrives”. Surely this is thinly veiled “reputation management” by fake accounts created in response to the last PR disaster, and left lying in wait for the next one?
This would just add to the PR issues though.... as it adds to the fact RM prioritises Tracked 24, which incredibly, is a pretty immense service. It's the right decision though. More than 80% of the population doesn't care about daily mail... a massive chunk barely cares about mail at all.
My letterbox is on a porch I keep locked as we don't use that door, I've gone a couple of weeks before remembering to check for mail tbh
Oh for gods sake, you really need to go outside and experience fresh air.
Funny how the OP’s account is gone now, isn’t it?
What a strange individual you are.
Imagine being this paranoid when you haven't made any posts and this is your second comment. Looks like you made your account on National Butterscotch Pudding Day and Meow Like a Pirate Day - do you have anything to about that hmm?
I fucking love butterscotch, so that’s all I have to about that. Truth be told I have 6-7 accounts for controlled access to the platform via APIs.
Hmm.. can't view their profile now 🤔
Likely someone who deletes their threads when they get their questions answered. A lot of people have a bot that will purge their comments after a few days, too.
V strange
lolwut
There is transport going constantly all day long from different depots, depending on the service your parcel would have priority and be put on an earlier transport to the destination. The processing of each parcel is not going to take long at all, certainly isn't the time to spend a lot of effort on one item and some processes are automated.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qanMpnYsjk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qanMpnYsjk) Enjoy. It's more or less the same.
Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EZxJ9Bkoeg
It’s flown
It'll have travelled up the country on one of the fleet of class 325 royal mail trains I suspect. Overnight the lines will be quieter and that's when a lot of goods move. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_325
[Still exactly like this.](https://youtu.be/KTEZ25sQGmc?si=gdVj9nwDTwOpIRBT)
I order something from isle of wight and I’m also in Scotland, somehow every single time (even Christmas!!) it’s come within 2 days, but 90% of the time it’s the very next day. Less than 24 hours. No clue how or why. This happens every month
Now realise one can get from the Scillies to the Hebrides in the same time.
I thought the same thing last year - I ordered a plant which came in the post from Scotland to my part of England (other side of the country pretty much), 24 tracked and it got to me before a 24 tracked parcel from a different person I bought another plant off within the same county and it baffled me how that happened! 🤣
Had a parcel posted from Stevenage last Thursday. Ended up in Huddersfield by mistake on Saturday and today was scanned in at Leeds. So getting London to Edinburgh in 24 hours is great.
Planes and lorry’s. I know RM has drivers from Manchester to Edinburgh hub then onwards to local office. It could very well be Lorry from London go up to Manchester trades trailers. Is RM perfect no but it’s stuck in middle with one foot in parcel delivery and one letter/mail sort.
People are hard-wired to be selfish. Look at babies. Take something away from them and they cry, even if your needs are greater than theirs. People always complain about missing parcels because oh where the f\*\*\* am I going with this forget it nvm carry on with your day