Royal Mail's Guaranteed Next Day Taking The Piss Service

Yet again, I have fallen victim to this scam, which will no doubt befall thousands of other people today.

It was a low value item (rear Mazda badge for a fiver) which I need sharpish, and as I have to take today off work anyway, I paid the £7.45 for "Guaranteed next day delivery" i.e. today.

It is a small parcel, so it would have fitted through the letter box, and just in case it doesn't, there's a big sign at the side of our front porch that is not visible from the pavement saying "Please leave parcels here", which other delivery services take literally.

Not the fucking Royal Mail, oh no, they wait until your back is turned for two seconds, sprint up to the front door and instead of knocking or ringing, shove a card through saying "Sorry we missed you, hope you don't mind taking another hour off tomorrow morning to drive to the sorting office and pick it up yourself!"

Apparently they wanted me to sign for it. So this is the Trade Misdescription from Hell. I didn't pay extra to be messed about like this, I paid extra for "next day delivery", which in the ordinary meaning of the words means, er, today.

If you compare the Royal Mail's shitty behaviour with the competing private delivery companies who apply common sense, you can only assume this arrogance is a hangover from the days when there was a state monopoly on parcel delivery and they could pretty much do what they wanted.

They did this to our neighbours recently. Even more bizarrely, their postcard said that the parcel was at house number 99. There is no house number 99 on our road.

Royal Mail Rent-Seekers

From the BBC

Royal Mail boss Moya Greene told the BBC that increased competition was threatening the company's ability to deliver letters to all parts of the UK - a service mandated by law.

She added that the "cherry-picking" of urban mail routes by competitors "undermines the economics" of its nationwide delivery service.

Royal Mail has long called for the regulator, Ofcom, to consider expanding the Universal Service mandate - which ensures mail is delivered across the UK, six days a week, at one fixed price - so that it includes rivals such as Whistl.
...
In response, a spokesman for Ofcom said the regulator's own evidence "clearly shows that the service is not currently under threat".

"We would assess any emerging threat to the service quickly, in the interests of postal users," he added.

The "economics" of their service is that they had this requirement as part of floatation and are still doing it. That's all we care about, not feathering the nests of Royal Mail shareholders. Good to see Ofcom are of the same mind.

BTW If I was a single bloke, I wouldn't bother with home delivery of parcels. I'd send everything to a pick-up point where I can pop in on the way home from work. I suspect it's the future of parcels.

Another privately collected tax

I have just found out the hard way that if you have anything posted to you from abroad that attracts import VAT or customs duties, the carrier pays these on your behalf and can then charge you a "handling fee" for doing so, which, in my case, at £8, was just under twice the cost of the VAT charged, and that's the Royal Mail, the cheapest of the carriers.

What makes this a privately collected tax is there is no option for the receiver of the goods to pay HMRC direct, they have to have the carrier pay it for them and have no control over what the carrier may charge for doing this. Up until last year, the government at least had the excuse that the Royal Mail was part of the state, but now, of course it's just the usual business of legalised extortion, albeit in a very small way, but on the other hand, as one of their friends says, "Every little helps".