Post Office to open in the evenings in New Year

Speaking at the ECMOD conference yesterday, Mike Newnham Royal Mail’s Chief Customer Officer had some welcome news regarding opening times. In the early part of 2013 both Post Offices and Royal Mail Delivery Offices will have longer opening hours extending the time customers can access Royal Mail services into the evening.

Extended opening hours for Post Offices and Delivery Offices

It’s planned that out of the 11,000 Post Office network that some 4,500 Post Offices will open early and stay open late. Some may even operate from 7am to 11pm and that’s great news for casual online sellers who will then be able to post items in the evening when they get home from work.

Local Royal Mail Delivery Offices will also have extended hours with plans for many to stay open until 8pm on Wednesdays. Typically Delivery Offices are only open in the mornings until 1am, so a mid-week day has been chosen so that people at work can collect parcels on Saturdays or on Wednesday evenings.

Returns

Royal Mail are also working on tracked returns solutions for businesses. This is to include cross border trade with planned solutions to make it not only easy for consumers outside the UK to purchase, but also if needed to be able to return items at a reasonable cost with certainty that the items will get back to the merchant and they’ll get their refund.

We’ll update as soon as we have more information on both extended opening hours and returns services from Royal Mail.