FAO Oldie

Just when you think they've finally become best buddies!

quote:

You call that a dinosaur ?

Yep it will be extinct earlier than expected.

Howard

quote:

The Post Office now has the best delivery service in Europe (verified by independant audit)as well as being one of the cheapest and is due to make a £500 million profit by the end of the year.

Looks like the Post Office has more effective management since Mick has left

Regards
Clive

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:
Oh Boy!!
Not only are they going to change the fuse, they are going to change the whole unit, to 100 amp.
All brand new stuff should sound pretty special.

Just goes to show that calling them out was hardly a 'rash' decision, was it?

Sorry Mick,
But I have Had to make a urgent visit my not so local hostalry to sample the delights of Nurse Shandy.
But to take up your point,and I'm not against Nationalised Industrys ,you understand. But any Company that has the benifit of what to most people is a total monopoly of it's trade. Can and does, raise it's prices when it so decides. Reduces it's staffing levels, cut's it's services to one delivery a day, and thats usually midday instead of first thing in the morning.If under these "very competative conditions" it Fails to make a proffit then there is not much hope for the rest of Industry, and even less hope for it's Managment team.
We don't even have the abilty/benefitt of being able to boycotting it, for it's appalling service, as there is no where else to go[yet].I will admitt though If your willing to pay extra, [through the nose] their Next Day Parcel Delivery is very good,Ohhhhhhhhhhhh I can remember when that was the service we were promised with first class stamps, now your very lucky to get first class in two or more days. Brighton to Brighton first class stamp up to three days. "Wonderful service" It now has to go via Gatwick, in case you didn't know thats nearer London than Brighton.But cheer up Mick you don't have to make excuses for them now your out of it
oldie.

Oldie

The RM is actually delivering 92% of first class letters the day after they were posted. That is the findings of Postcom (the Regulator) who independantly audits performance.

The second post was abolished because it only represented 3% of deliveries and yet accounted for 40% of costs.

You will be getting the competition you crave for, at around I would guess, in 2008.

The intended competition have made it clear they will only be prepared to offer a same price delivery anywhere in the UK service if the RM actually delivers the letters within their own infra structure. The cost imposed on RM has been agreed at 13p per letter but the new courior can charge, you, the customer whatever he likes.

This will put the RM into an immediate loss of over £1bn pa. This is because the income per letter will be reduced from 29p down to 13p.

This will be unsubstainable and the regulator has already recommended that the RM sorting offices and machinery plus all assets should be sold off to the highest bidder. In effect, the RM will cease to existas it will be split and sold off.

That will bring in a couple of billion and the post will be 100% competitive.

Houses within the M25 area can expect an increased level of service, possibly at a reduced price due to population density. The same will apply to other large cities. The cheapest rates will be for delivery of inner London to inner London. I reckon you might only have to pay 15p per letter.

Outlying villages will not have door to door delivery as frankly it will cost the courior money. They will have to go to a collection point such as a garage or local pub. The cost od delivering from a village in Cornwall to a village in Scotland is estimated to cost £26.00 per letter.

Expect another 4000 sub post offices to close over the next few years and collection of cash benefits will be dis encouraged and pressure put on claimant to use banks or collect via ATMs.

Parcelforce will almost certainly be broken up because there are 4000 delivery companys already in the UK, so a PO owned one is unnecessary.

The Post Office is now realistically at the beginning of the end as you know it.

I doubt if postmen will lose their jobs, but they will be transferred via TUPE to TNT, Parcelinlk etc who will take over.

The regulator considers that 4 competitors will bring about the necessary free market adjustments.

You wanted competition, you are most certainly going to get it.

Regards

Mick

Mick

Reminds of the comedian Lee Evans line - if someone in London gave you a letter and 26p and told you to take it to Scotland you'd tell them to f*** off wouldn't you?!

One thing that strikes me as being really inefficient is parcel deliveries. I buy and sell a lot of vinyl and hence receive a lot of parcels but am lucky to work from home 3 days a week - hence the parcel van man usually finds me in. But how many parcels does he take out, find no-one home, stick a card through their letter box, take the parcel back to the depot and wait for the customer to go and collect? Must be a massive waste of time, effort, fuel, handling etc. (Doesn't help the customer when in my city the pick up point is only open until 12:30 on a Saturday.) Not sure I know the answer though.......

Rich

Rich

What you have high lighted is the changing lifestyle of the average UK citizen.

Now a days, most homes are empty during the day as both partners work. Also they tend to buy more goods online and hence more goods are being delivered via parcel carriers.

There are 4000 carriers and they are in tight competition with each other and operate on very tight margins.

Therefore they cannot afford to deliver in the evenings when most people are in.

The cheapest way is to leave a postcard in the door, saying " you were out so come and collect".

The best way out is to arrange delivery to your place of work.

Regards

Mick

Mick,
First of all, as you well know, because you are always quoteing it at me,I am catagorically and whole heartedly a supporter of Nationalised Industrys and all that,that entails.But for the rest of your post and at the risk of loseing any Credibility that I might have had, all I can say is in this instance is, BL--DY HELL.
If what you discribe is correct ,and I have no reason to doubt you, there is something drasticly wrong here. My idea of free and fair compation [ well I don't actully beleive there is such a thing]is that all competing Companys provide their own infrastructure, not Steal
someone else's .Again ,sorry to get political but it seems Blair is following in his mentors foot steps again, and allowing whats left of the family silver to be sold off/given away to appease the magnates of power.
On this one occasion, because of what you have said, It's a far to serious subject , no p-ss taking from me.
oldie.

It happens in the telecoms industry though, doesn't it? Rival companies using BT's infrastructure?

Jon

Oldie

I think we are agreeing for once.

I am a great believer in privatisation, but only up to a point.

There is no doubt that we have all done well out of the privatisation of BT along with the electricity and gas services. The service is up and prices are down, even allowing for recent increases.

I think privatising the Railways was a major mistake because there is reatively little competition. You still have to go to the same railway station, jump on the same train and use the same rail lines. The consumer and the nation have suffered rather than benefitted.

The same applies to postal deliveries. At the moment one organisation delivers to 26.8 million addresses. The number of addresses is fixed and has been for years. If you bring more players into the field, you lose the benefits of economy of scale.

However, Blair made it clear he wanted deregulation and was given a healthy mandate, so it is democracy in action.

Regards

Mick

Yes the privatisation of the railways was utter madness and was done purely as a sop to the radical right of the Tory party at that time. History has shown what a disaster it has been. And before privatisation Inter-City was actually turning in an operating profit!

Regards,

Jon

Jon,
Add to that list,Water Companys,Electricity generating Companys, British Gas[that like the Electricity Companys is a Company vertualy in name only, it's all sub contract labour etc]British Waterways, Road Maintainance, it's all been sold off or hived of to Sub Contract, just another man in the middle
oldie.

...and some of them plain lie to you to get your business, like one particular company whose door-to-door salesman insisted I would save on my electricity bill. The first bill I got from this new provider turned out to show an increase in rate on my old provider. I soon switched straight back!

Jon

Oldie

Gas and electricity prices are lower now than before derugulation. That even allows for recent price increases.

Telephone choice was ludicrous under BT. Two or 3 models only. You had to pay £80.00 just to have your phone connected and that was back in the seventies. Also a 5 month waiting list was common.

The water boards never invested in maintenance and the new private owners are having to sort out their legacy of neglect. The quality of water is better today than ever before.

During the seventies when inflation almost ran out of control, the price increases served by the state run industries were running at nearly twice the rate of the privately run companies.

The old state run industries were not as good as you imply.

The major mistake has been the rail system. That was a mistake.

Regards

Mick

Mick,
We will have to part company at this point , I thought it might last a bit longer but there you go. I don't just measure things by profitability for private comanys ,as far as I'm concerned they are makeing far to much profit as it is.My measurment is by service and convenience[ to me the customer] things such as, Me telling them when it's convenient to visit not them telling me, this is when we will come take it or leave it.Not having to collect my own mail from the depot[ although from what you say I had better get used to it]Having the full Gas Board service on our heating system as agreed when we tok out the contract,not the " is every thing alright ,have you noticed any problemswith the system" I'll just stick my sensor in here Oh it seems ok we get now.I don't need fifthy differant electricity companys vying for my money. AFAIA the drinking water is more highly chorinated than ever before, to the extent that now if you keep KOI CARP you have to add dechorinators to the water before the fish.OK I'll conceed on BT we had to wait 12months for our first phone.Lack of investment by successive Goverments was the cause of overpricing/inefficency , not Natonalised Companys,I could tell you a few tails about some of them that I was employed in including Rolls Royce
The one person I fear more than you ,Mick has just called me [ to take her out] so I have to obey, so you can now take full advantage
oldie.

11:45 Powered down for my 12-2.00 appointment.
1:15 the man arrives is here for just 10 minutes and gone – simple as that.
Improvement – have not heard it yet, but then again he didn’t do anything, because he was the man from Siemens who Powergen booked to do the job, but “Oh no Sir, we don’t do that we are just responsible for the cables (tails) and the meter, we don’t do the thing you want, you need to speak to EDF, we will be changing your meter at some stage to the new 100 amp meter, because you only have the 80A, but I can’t do that now, its all part of an improvement program they are rolling out”
“So can you change the tails now?”
“No, I can’t do that now, EDF have to do there stuff first and they will probably do the tails then”
Powergen then said that Siemens do it some areas and not in others, and they gave me the number for EDF.
I waited 20 minutes for EDF and they then told me that they could not fit a 100A in without the tails being changed first, they said they would send me a form to fill in and that I should get in touch with Powergen to sort out the tails.
I could not get though to Powergen for 20 minutes and they eventually rang me back and after 3 more phone calls said that Siemens would come and fit new tails and a new meter and would give me a six hour time slot in the afternoon but the fxxx would have to be changed by EDF before the mains could be reconnected. A couple of phone calls later we managed to get it down to a 2 hour time slot to give EDF a chance to get round on the same day. The person who had the decency to follow up the calls said that it was too much to expect a mere call centre worker like her to know all of this information and I said that it is also a bit too much to expect a member of the public to try and coordinate it but perhaps if she could give me the phone number for Siemens I could try.
Of course she was not allowed to give me the number of her subcontractors, so I then asked if she could call EDF and she said that EDF would only deal with the householder directly.
So I called EDF to discuss this and they explained that you need a new meter and tails to cope with the greater power that could be allowed to flow by having 100A instead of 60A, and not vice versa and therefore they would not need to coordinate the visit just as long as they came afterwards and they could not give me a date until I fill in the form they will send and return it, thereafter another department will contact me to arrange a suitable time.
Perhaps I can convince Powergen over the phone and the Siemens man when he calls who knows but it’s for free right so why am I complaining?
Well because it seems that I actually need to have the job done as I had a high KW power shower fitted last year and I have only found out about the requirement due to my interest in hifi – I guess I have been lucky not to blow the fxxx,

So who are the players again?
Powergen are an electricity generating company who I pay for my electricity – who I think were originally Eastern Electricity before privatization – who were the local supplier.
Siemens – one of their many divisions have a contract with Powergen to provide meters and meter reading services to Powergen’s customers
EDF – The merged name for London Electricity board and Seeboard – I thought I knew why they were involved but actually I don’t have a clue – I guess they think they are the local electricity board and not Powergen.

So that’s the afternoon gone – will my system sounds better- this remains to be seen – but I had better hope that we don’t have some kind of power surge whilst all the machines are on.

My god Chunny, you must have been tearing your hair out after that experience - I know I would have, but then again perhaps I have a rather short fxxx

Earlier this week British Gas came to service my boiler. The gas man said it was chucking out loads of carbon monoxide fumes and that if he couldn't get the boiler below the pollution limit, apparently something like 0.0080 parts per million, he would have had to switch the boiler off completely and I would have no central heating! As it is he managed to get it to 0.0074 parts per million, just within limits, but he said that though I could continue using it, it's unlikely to pass another pollution test at its next annual service next year. So of course I'm going to need a new boiler - surprise surprise!

According to the Kyoto Agreement, apparently we've all got to have condenser boilers so the British Gas mechanic gave me his mobile phone so I could speak to British Gas about arranging for someone to call round for a quote.

Except it wasn't British Gas I was speaking to but a woman from some call centre British Gas had outsourced for arranging appointments and service and the like. Anyway my experience of speaking to this woman was that she had a flow chart in front of her and was reading verbatim everything to say in response to what I said! The result for me was a soulless, depressing conversation which made me want to cry!

That was what your post reminded me of

Regards,

Jon

JonR - be very careful in choosing who will supply and fit the new boiler - British Gas did a good job for us but their costs were aproximately 5 times the raw cost of the boiler - I have seen work done by a local man and no doubt he was a lot cheaper but did not finish off the job so well

RE Condensing boilers - Gas surveyor who came to size the job told us to steer clear of condensing boilers as they had a reputaion of cloging up the exhaust water pipe

Derek,

Thanks, I will try to keep your sage advice in mind.

Regards,

Jon.

Jon R - It sounds like the maintenance man has been told by British Gas he has got to shift condenser boilers.
Sounds like you could use a second opinion.
I had a new boiler fitter 5 years ago and the firm that did it like Derek's man were not keen on condenser boilers and gave the impression that no one wanted them any more because they were too much trouble

Chunny,

I did happen to look up condenser boilers on the net and I found out that one of the disadvantages with them is that they are indeed a bit problematic, so yes I agree further research is definitely required.

Regards,

Jon

Jon

From April of this year, only condenser boilers can be fitted. So we are stuck with them.

I have an old cast iron boiler and will keep it for as long as I can.

I think we need another couple of years to sort out the teething troubles that are still there.

Regards

Mick

Mick,

I'm afraid you've confirmed my worst fears.

Oh well...

Regards,

Jon