Royal Mail have launched a trial of evening deliveries within the M25 as part of their drive to give online shoppers more choice and flexibility in their shopping.
House of Fraser and beauty product specialist L’Occitane are both taking part in the project and Royal Mail are talking to other retailers about taking part in the project. Customers will be able to to ask for items to be delivered between 6pm and 10pm.
This is the latest initiative by Royal Mail to make it even easier for people to receive items they have ordered online or from a catalogue. Royal Mail is currently extending the opening times of more than 600 of its busiest delivery offices until 8pm on a Wednesday to make it even easier for people to receive items that could not be delivered during the day because no-one was at home.
Talking of the trial, Mike Brown, Royal Mail’s Fulfilment Director, said: “Consumers increasingly want more control over when and where they receive their orders and Royal Mail is looking to fit the online delivery experience around the shopper – enabling them to select, rather than being told, when their goods will be delivered.”
This is just the sort of initiative Royal Mail should be doing, and it’s one that I can’t see any downside to apart from their own costs paying delivery staff to work out of their current normal hours. Personally I’d prefer to receive all my post in the evening when I’m at home rather than during the day when I’m at work anyway. The convenience of having items that need to be signed for, or items that won’t fit though my letter box delivered when I’m at home would be superb.
Disclosure: Royal Mail advertise with TameBay
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Another Royal Mail announcement this week: from 1.12 their T&Cs will change for Special Delivery. Claimants for late/non delivery will have 3 months to get Special Delivery claims in (changing from current 12 months). Just in case anyone else is as inefficient as us, bundles their claims together & submits them about every 6 months…
Last Friday, we made a bit of a ‘C**k up’ with our post, hence it never actually left us till 8 PM.
Feedback started coming in Saturday AM.
Got to say, well done RM.
Sorry but I don’t want my post delivered in the evening.
I want deliveries delivered pre 1pm workdays, if i’m not in then take it back to the officer and try the next day.
After 1pm i’m getting my own post ready to send and going to the pub after the post office.
I work out of my home so it doesn’t make much difference when the mail comes but for the vast majority who leave home to go to work this would be a wonderful thing.
Where I live the PO is doing exactly the opposite, cutting down hours and counter staff, talking about closing on Saturday.
How in the heck is anyone who works a regular job supposed to get packages mailed and pick things up if the PO is only open M – F 9 – 4?
And we wonder why the PO is losing business to other carriers! Not everyone has a scale or knows how to print postage online.
I am sure that burglars will pay a premium price to dodgy postal staff, for the CD Rom, containing addresses of properties that are unoccupied during the day.
The Royal Mail needs to copy what the The privatised German post office did – namely to introduce ‘Packstations’ (Do a search on wikepedia for detailed info).
Essentially these are similar in size to bottle banks.
People can have packages delivered to a packstation close to their home or close to their work. They get an email / text telling them that packages are awaiting collection. It makes the mailing system more efficient – no need to take undeliverable packages back to the depot, and buyers don’t have the hassle of going to the sorting office for packages that will not fit through a letterbox.
The beauty for Ebay /mail order sellers, is that although Packstations cannot be used for packages that require a signature;- for the vast majority of mail order goods under £50 in value, that are usually delivered by Non-trackable means – there is a record of customers accessing the Packstation & obtaining goods – which should minimise INR claims.
(Although determined scammers will insist on home deliveries to circumvent this.)
sounds like the normal dual standard UK
they should put border controls round the m25 and issue passports
aye we can dump the scots now their oil and gas is running out
No matter how they arrange it there will be some in favour and some against. But it sounds like an interesting experiment. Hope it works and is spread across the country. I also work from home. The problem I find is that I have spent the morning packing and I slip out to the Post Office to do the days post and in the perhaps an hour that I am not at home ALL the Delivery Services turn up with packages for me. Not usually the Postman because I know what time he turns up and try always to be in but just about everybody else. I sometime wonder if they all have my house bugged just like you slip into the bath for a long soak and the front door bell rings.