Royal Mail have just made a brilliant move for the many small eBay and Amazon sellers around the country. To make it even more convenient to post with Royal Mail, you can now drop-off items for delivery within the UK, at your local Royal Mail Delivery Office.
This is part of a range of initiatives by Royal Mail to give customers greater flexibility and improve convenience and access to its network.
Now if you might not think this a big step, if your local delivery office is anything like mine they’re only open in the mornings on most days. However I remember in my early days of eBay selling I was holding down a full time job at the same time so every lunch time was a rush to the Post Office and stand in a queue to post my parcels. With drop-off I could easily have driven past the local Delivery Office on my way into work as it’s open from 7am each morning.
With the multitude of ways you can now print stamps for posting your parcels, this is a great new option for anyone still running their business on a part time basis or who needs to be at home later in the day for family or to wait in for courier deliveries.
Royal Mail say that the initiative adds to the existing network of postboxes and local Post Offices and is designed to improve the experience of consumers, small businesses and online marketplace sellers who will benefit from the ease of using their local Royal Mail Customer Service Point as a drop-off point for parcels.
Royal Mail Customer Service Points are now a hub for customers
- A secure pick-up point for items delivered when a customer is not at home
- An alternative and safe delivery point for online shopping purchases
- An entry point into the Royal Mail network for items that need to be delivered
Royal Mail operates the UK’s largest Pick-up and Drop–off (PUDO) network with over 11,700 access points including 10,500 Post Office branches and around 1,200 Royal Mail Customer Service Points. Royal Mail Customer Service Points are currently open six days a week, with around 100 of the busiest offices also open on Sundays.
Nick Landon, Managing Director of Royal Mail Parcels, said: “This is great news for our customers. Our focus is always on improving customer convenience and access to our network. Now our Royal Mail Customer Service Points at our local Delivery Offices are a hub for customers to access all of our time critical, safe and secure delivery services in addition to an already impressive network of postboxes and local Post Offices. Customers can pick up their online shopping, collect parcels we tried to deliver while they were out, drop off parcels for delivery and obtain proof of posting if they need it, all under one roof” .
6 Responses
I can see the appeal of this in some ways.
The problem is that the queues will just shift from high street post offices to delivery offices.
Most of these of not well staffed, occupied mainly with searching for and issuing items left on forms.
Our local office is probably typical, where you have to press a buzzer and wait for ages until someone emerges.
The waiting area is tiny. Four people in there would make it decidedly intimate.
So unless extra staffing and improved facilities accompanies this iniative, I can’t see it helping much.
They should just get shops involved like hermes, etc etc.
This is where hermes wins everytime on the 1kg service as so easy to use.
all very well in theory
though chances are the existing staff at these offices wont like the extra work load and be as jobs worth as possible
Likewise. At my delivery office here in east London they are painfully slow to get to the counter & they are allways so bloody miserable & stone faced that I feel like I’ve just been to see the headmaster. Not only that but they open at 9am & close at 12 noon. If you phone them half the time they don’t answer and there’s absolutley no chance of them answering after 11.30am. They have a different manager every few weeks & one particular postman refuses point blank to deliver my mail to a neighbor. Absolutely awful.
This will in theory help those of us who face sarcastic comments from local post offices about not getting paid for issuing proof of posting, as delivery offices are staffed by Royal Mail employees.
My local delivery office is always helpful, but not so sure how they’ll respond to ebay sellers taking up 20 minutes for issuing pop’s rather than just a couple of minutes to find a parcel, as they are often short staffed due to cutbacks (In order to compete with couriers ?).
My local delivery office have accepted parcels for a while, they just wont issue any proof of postage to go with it.