The Post Office Buffoons of Britain What's wrong with them? They're considering making a charge to have your post delivered before 9am They want to stop the second delivery You have make your way to a post office, and then wait up ot 20 minutes just to buy a stamp. Not accepting credit cards, or other payment options. You can't tell if a postbox has had its last collection of the day What should they do? Hint: Provide a service that people want Make postal deliveries compete better with email: Ensure one delivery early in the morning Move the second delivery to before the end of business Offer an email-to-post service. Lots of people don't have email, so stick a colour printer in every sorting office, and let people send full-colour printed letters. Since email costs a fraction of the collection and distribution charge, there is not reason why this shouldn't cost fairly close to a full-class stamp. And you'd get lots of international customers too. Now you can send those digital photos to aunt May, and have them printed and delivered SAME day! Provide stamp vending machines Accept credit cards, online electronic payments. Sell postage over the Internet which you can print on your inkjet printer In the old days, postboxes used to have a number displayed which indicated when the next collection was due. If it showed a "1" then the first collection of the day was next, and the last collection had gone. The Victorians realised it was important for people to know that if a postbox had had its last collection, then people could make alternative arrangements... such as visit a post office or another postbox. The Victorians could also tell the time, but these days, collecting the post 10 minutes before the last shown time on a postbox just doesn't seem to matter to the post office. If necessary, increase the cost of first-class postage so that it will pay for the service that's wanted. What can you do? Contact the Post Office and tell them that you would have written a letter, but: It takes five minute to write the letter A couple of minutes to put it in an envelope and address it 15 minutes to walk to your local Post Office 15 minutes walk back from the Post Office and another 24 hours wait because the Post Office was closed (half day) Another 15 minutes to walk to the Post Office 20 minutes to wait in line to buy the stamp A grumble because you couldn't pay for your stamps by credit card. And finally, you could have done all of this in 6 minutes, and cost you less than 1p if you'd sent it by email. But you appreciate that there are times when only a letter would do... and what is he doing to make the Royal Mail competitive? ...and when was the last time he went to a Post Office to buy a stamp? More Information Postal shake-up here to stay (BBC News)