Royal Mail - Are you getting post?

[zb]

Trying to find out if this is a local issue or a national scandal.

A few months back I was waiting on an important document, should have been received in 3 working days, didn't arrive. Requested a replacement and both sets arrived, at the same time, a further week later.

As an experiment, I posted myself a letter in the post box around the corner, it took 6 days to get back to me.

Today my local Facebook page is filled with people missing hospital appointments, jury duty etc. In many cases, mail arriving weeks later than it should.

The rumour is the sorting office has been told to concentrate on parcels.

Are you getting mail regularly and in a reasonable timeframe?

[Gary29]

North East Wales, seems to be running as intended here, xmas cards and some other mail/letter I was expecting arrived in a timely manner.

Seems to be nothing for a few days and then a few arrive at the same time, as if they're banking it up to minimise delivery rounds. Not sure if that is a strategy they use or not.

[geeks]

Mostly fine in the fens though we have had some oddities. 2 x Christmas cards both sent to us same postbox at the same time one arrived in 2 days the other in 5

[BoRED S2upid]

Yes no issues here.

[Liamjrhodes]

Based in west Yorkshire and letter deliveries have been none existent, was waiting for a new sim card and it never turned up ended up cancelling it and going with a company that offered an esim
then two days later i got 3 weeks of letters in one hit.

Parcel deliveries have been frequent and on time so the above post suggesting they focus on these makes sense

[47p2]

I took a parcel to my local sorting office a couple of weeks ago and was speaking to the chap behind the counter. I was told parcels get priority over letters and there is a huge backlog of letters waiting to be sorted. Reason being, they make more profit from parcels. While on the subject I asked him if my birthday card my daughter had posted with a first class stamp back in April was in the 'waiting to be sorted' pile and he said it was quite possible...

[alangla]

Yes, but letters do seem to turn up in large piles after a few days of nothing or parcels. It does definitely look here as though parcels are going every day and letters perhaps every 2 or 3. Not enough to cause any real issue and I’d be perfectly happy getting letters 3 days a week.

[K87]

The postmans van parks near my house before walking round the 30 or so houses. Only three days awake now, Whenever he delivers one letter he stuffs junk mail adverts for food deliveries and small supermarkets at the same time, often ten at a time.

[Jazoli]

South Cumbria

Our mail service has deteriorated massively in the last 12 months, we are lucky to get mail once a week now, the volume of mail is the same, but it is no longer delivered daily.

[JoshSm]

The service is extremely variable.

And they're busy talking about how the letters business is shrinking when it's heavily self inflicted - people avoid it because it doesn't work. And the performance grows ever worse regardless.

[alscar]

Delivery times also appear dependent upon the quality or otherwise of the postie themselves and whether they have sufficient other staff in the sorting office to avoid having to spend a large part of their time doing that themselves when they could be delivering.
Parcels are definitely given priority so at this time of year the issue just gets magnified.
We are lucky in that our postie is great but I can always tell when she is away as her stand in qualities vary from rubbish to completely useless.

[ikarl]

South Lanarkshire and people are saying the same, that they're concentrating on parcels

On all the social media pages that you need to go to the sorting office and queue for your mail if you want it

I received a first class letter, last night at 8:30, that was posted on the 1st of December

[Ussrcossack]

Seem to get ours on a weekly basis in W Yorkshire

[Mr Peel]

Been poor in Warwickshire for months. Common to get only one delivery a week.

[MattsCar]

I think it is about time they scrapped the whole 1st and 2nd class system. They persistently miss the deadlines for both. Rather they had a single service and were honest and said "it might arrive next day if you are lucky and we are not busy, but it might take 10 days, so don't rely on this service for urgent items".

The only reliable thing has been the arrival of twice weekly Farmfoods posters through the door amongst a mountain of other crap.

[MC Bodge]

In our area of Greater Manchester, The Royal Mail service is good.

[FlyVintage]

North Kent: Just for balance, we’re still getting daily deliveries here.

[Jamescrs]

The NIP I received from North Yorkshire Police came very promptly.

I do see the postal workers on my street pretty much every day I am at home though, haven't noticed any issues.

[Spare tyre]

The old boy next door gets loads of post, he writes to friends, does mail away stuff and all correspondence by post as he doesn’t do electric

He thinks our postman has three rounds, he does a different round each day

Makes a bit of sense, but not if you get your hospital appointment after the day

[Mr Penguin]

I send a lot of post abroad and I know more or less when it is delivered.
Recently it took one month to send a letter to Finland and two or three weeks to Germany is now typical (usually about a week). I have letters to the USA/Russia/Japan still pending at six weeks.

When I send a batch, they all take a while but often seem to arrive on the same day, so I think the bottleneck is getting them out of the country. I don't see such an issue with post coming here and there is usually about a week between someone in Germany sending it and me receiving it.

Royal Mail international standard should take 3-5 working days in Europe and 6-7 working days elsewhere. IME with the exception of Russia this has always been pretty accurate until the last two or three months.