Royal Mail stamp price increases 2023

[didds]

mail collected from mailboxes in the nearest town is all well and good ... IF you have a NEARBY town that is connected by a suitable public transport system for those that do not own a vehicle for various reasons, and the mailbox building is open at extended hours such that the working population can retrieve them, including both weekend days.

How would somebody that is housebound with little support receive their mail?

Not that this is insolvable but it would need to be a pretty huge place to hold several tens of thousands people's mail for a week or more at a time I suppose!

didds

[gryffron]

Frankly if the Royal Mail closed tomorrow would 90% or more of the population notice.

They would when somebody dies. Just been through probate etc for my Dad's estate. Everyone still wants bits of paper. Reckon I have sent & received more mail in the last couple of months than the previous ten years (barring junk).

Gryff

[Dod101]

mail collected from mailboxes in the nearest town is all well and good ... IF you have a NEARBY town that is connected by a suitable public transport system for those that do not own a vehicle for various reasons, and the mailbox building is open at extended hours such that the working population can retrieve them, including both weekend days.

How would somebody that is housebound with little support receive their mail?

Not that this is insolvable but it would need to be a pretty huge place to hold several tens of thousands people's mail for a week or more at a time I suppose!

didds

Yes I think that my idea of alternative delivery days is more practical at least for now.

Dod

[didds]

ruminating... cuyrrently AIUI a letter posted is "legally" accepted as having been delivered two days later (or vetry si,milar).

If there was a move to mailboxes and subsequent collection, this couldn't possibly stand up - there would be a plethora of fully acceptable reasons why somebody may not see sight of that "delivered" letter for many more days .

how would "signed for" mail be handled ?

[Bminusrob]

I expect that sooner or later half of them will be out of a job. It makes no sense when you consider the effort that goes into it for the post van to come down our road six days a week.
It could be Monday Wednesday and Friday and another district Tuesday Thursday and Saturday. That would require half the delivery staff.

Dod

I think the idea of delivery every two days is a very sensible idea, so there is no chance of Royal Mail management or unions agreeing to it, even though other European countries have implemented such a scheme.
An even better idea, along with alternate day delivery would be to scrap the distinction between first and second class mail. Just charge 75p for a stamp - one class. It seems crazy to me to have a scheme which requires mail to be sorted, and some letters deliberately delayed, as currently happens with second class post.
If you really need something to arrive next day, and electronic will not do, there are courier service which will delivery your letter for about £3.

[AF62]

Frankly if the Royal Mail closed tomorrow would 90% or more of the population notice.

They would when somebody dies. Just been through probate etc for my Dad's estate. Everyone still wants bits of paper. Reckon I have sent & received more mail in the last couple of months than the previous ten years (barring junk).

That wasn’t my experience last year with my widowed mother. Sure there were some notifications by post but most seemed to be dealt with by email or phone.

The only increased post resulted from my task of trying to work out which of her friends and relatives were still alive to notify, and if they were what on earth their address was to write to them to let them know. In the end I fell back on whether she had received a Christmas card from them as she hadn’t thrown them away.

[gryffron]

Frankly if the Royal Mail closed tomorrow would 90% or more of the population notice.

They would when somebody dies. Just been through probate etc for my Dad's estate. Everyone still wants bits of paper. Reckon I have sent & received more mail in the last couple of months than the previous ten years (barring junk).

That wasn’t my experience last year with my widowed mother. Sure there were some notifications by post but most seemed to be dealt with by email or phone.

Hmm. Although there’s an online “death certificate”, there appears to be no such equivalent for probate. So I found everyone who wanted probate wanted a paper certificate.

[Mike4]

That's not true as far as I'm concerned. I choose not to have a printer or a smart phone so insist on receiving my documents by post.......legal, insurance, financial etc. The recent postal strike was a real problem.

Easily solved by instead choosing to have a printer, Shirley!

Jeez.

[AF62]

Frankly if the Royal Mail closed tomorrow would 90% or more of the population notice.

They would when somebody dies. Just been through probate etc for my Dad's estate. Everyone still wants bits of paper. Reckon I have sent & received more mail in the last couple of months than the previous ten years (barring junk).

That wasn’t my experience last year with my widowed mother. Sure there were some notifications by post but most seemed to be dealt with by email or phone.

Hmm. Although there’s an online “death certificate”, there appears to be no such equivalent for probate. So I found everyone who wanted probate wanted a paper certificate.

Only her bank wanted a copy of the probate certificate, and that was only because the balance was slightly over the amount they would have released it without probate.

And even then it didn’t need to be posted, just taken into the nearby branch so they could scan it and email it to the bereavement team.

[richlist]

* Have you tried buying or selling property without using postal services ?
I've bought & sold quite a few over the last few years and there are lots of papers that go back & forth.

* Have you tried opening any savings or investments accounts.....many building societies still operate passbooks.

* I've never accepted all my insurance documents being online, I prefer to have the certificates and I'm not going to buy a printer just because they want to email the documents to me.

[swill453]

* Have you tried buying or selling property without using postal services ?

Last time I bought and sold, my signature was required on a physical piece of paper once only. And I was sent a bundle of old obsolete title deeds and other paperwork.

Other than that, everything was done by email or telephone.

Scott.

[Bminusrob]

* Have you tried buying or selling property without using postal services ?
I've bought & sold quite a few over the last few years and there are lots of papers that go back & forth.

When you are buying a house, using a courier service to deliver pieces of paper at £3 a go is peanuts. If Royal Mail prices keep going up, the amount of mail sent will fall further, as people look harder for other ways to do business.

[didds]

Once its gone - its gone. It will never come back.

My aged mother in law has no internet, no email, a point and click mobile phone for "emergency use" only. She is effectively housebound.

take the postal service away and she is now cut off from everything requiring comms aside from speech on a landline.

She will not be unique in this situation.

S'all.

[SteelCamel]

An even better idea, along with alternate day delivery would be to scrap the distinction between first and second class mail. Just charge 75p for a stamp - one class. It seems crazy to me to have a scheme which requires mail to be sorted, and some letters deliberately delayed, as currently happens with second class post.
If you really need something to arrive next day, and electronic will not do, there are courier service which will delivery your letter for about £3.

The mail isn't "deliberately delayed", it's prioritised. Special Delivery post goes on first. If (somewhat unlikely) there's no room for it all, extra transport needs to be arranged. First Class goes on next. If there's no room, some of it will have to go the next day. Then Second Class goes on if there's space, and if not it waits until there is - extra transport is only an option if the backlog is building up. That's why a lot of the time Second Class gets there just as quick as first - if there's enough space on the truck (or train, or plane) all the Second Class post will go on as well as the First Class.

The mail has to be sorted anyway to send it to the right delivery office and round, and the postage has to be checked to make sure it's not underpaid, so it's not really too much extra effort to have the sorting machine put the post into two bags for each destination rather than one.

[CliffEdge]

I sent a postcard to someone two years ago instead of a Christmas card. They stopped sending me a Christmas card after that. This year, I believe there was a strike. Several people sent email cards instead of card cards. Very inferior to the real thing.
Standard of living for us proles is in terminal decline. No-one seems to care about us though.

[stevensfo]

I sent a postcard to someone two years ago instead of a Christmas card. They stopped sending me a Christmas card after that. This year, I believe there was a strike. Several people sent email cards instead of card cards. Very inferior to the real thing.
Standard of living for us proles is in terminal decline. No-one seems to care about us though.

Try cancelling a few standing orders, direct debits or just don't pay any bills.

You'll soon find that somebody does care about you.

Steve

PS Due to sms messages, Whatsapp, Signal, Facebook etc, we send and receive a fraction of cards these days, which is fine by me since fewer trees chopped down.