Do we have the worst An Post service ever?

Chillwithcian

I sent a letter within Dublin by 'express' post last Thursday (Morning at 10am). It arrives on Monday.

On another occcasion I posted a letter to go to cork by standard post on Tuesday afternoon. It dosnt arrive till Tuesday week.

Its not the first time or a once off, its daily. I post 2-4 letters each week. Its very fustrating....

Why are we paying a onward rising price in a stamp? Why pay €5 for ''express'' post which isnt actulay express? What extra value is got from increasing the stamp from 48c-55c? and WHY oh WHY does the postman bend my letters despite my eyesoreing Do Not Bend's on SAE's that i post (My postbox is big/wide enough for them not to be bent)?

Is there a postman on board's who would care to cast a light? :rolleyes:

Jesus Wept

. :d

BendiBus

It does lead to the interesting question "Can certain essential services be considered Infrastructure?" I guess there's a strong argument in favour.

Chillwithcian

Why shouldnt the postal service be considered Infastructure? Its responsable for a large part of communication and without it the country would collapse!

GusherING

I think public confidence in An Post will reach a tipping point shortly and nobody will bother using it. It's so ****.

aidan_walsh

GusherING wrote:

nobody will bother using it.

Really? There is a viable alternative?

Chillwithcian

unless you want to pay loads for a courier or FedEx

Prof_V

aidan_walsh wrote:

Really? There is a viable alternative?

We Await Silent Tristero's Empire...
(apologies for pinchin' that reference )

Raskolnikov

I think our postal service is excellent. Using regular delivery, about 75% of my sent/received mail arrives by the next day. 20% then would probably come within two days and 5% within three days. Out of the hundreds of peices of mail I've ever sent, I've only had one case of it not being sent/received (and I think that was my fault for not packing it correctly). One time, someone sending me a parcel included only my name, street address and county, amazingly, the parcel still found its way to me. The only issue I have with An Post is that items often come arrive with the packaging slightly damaged.

Are you sending/receiving from rural locations? Have you correctly (and legibly) labelled all your post?

mike65

The rationalisation of major sorting offices may not be helping, Waterfords was closed for that purpose only a few years after it was opened, all post now goes down the N25 to Cork then back up!

There are 4 main sorting centres

Dublin - Oak Road, Knockmitten, Dublin 12
Cork - Little Island, Cork
Athlone - Dublin Road, Athlone, Co. Westmeath
Portlaoise - Father Browne Avenue, Portlaoise, Co. Laois

Mike.

MDTyKe

Be glad you dont have Royal Mail.. they've done nothing but strike lately - Its been pretty much a week for us since we've last got mail at all.. first day we're meant to get anything is today, but no doubt they'll be backloged god knows how long, and we wont get anything at all for a while. Ther'es another strike planned for next week though; so before half the backlog gets sorted, we'll be stuck again. Yay.

I think we're one of the only few countries apart from the UK though that still has a "door to door" service. Most you have to go and pick it up at the office etc. In that way we're pretty lucky.


Matt

dogmatix

We may already be heading in the "pick it up at the post office" style service. I'm an apartment dweller and An Post no longer deliver parcels to apartments, even if the parcel is easily able to fit in the letterbox. You have to go and pick it up at your local PO - assuming the postie has been kind enough to actually note the location of the pick up office on the non-delivery slip of paper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7070336.stm

Detective work for vague letter



A letter vaguely addressed to a "brilliant violinist" has found its way to a Staffordshire village from the other side of the world.
Postal workers said they were puzzled when a letter from Australia turned up at the Tamworth sorting office with hardly any address. It simply said: "Roy Ashby (violinist - a brilliant one?) living in a village close to Tamworth, Staffs, England." But after detective work, Royal Mail workers found its rightful owner.

SeanW

I've always found the Postal service to be excellent around here at least, and waaaaaaaay better than couriers.

For example, if you bought something over the Internet, the courier will almost always be more expensive, and you have to be waiting at home when they show up - but the postman will always leave a note saying to come pick it up at the local PO.

In addition, as I live out in a rural area, couriers almost always end up having to call me for directions and I have to babysit them on the phone while they spend 15 mins trying to find me.

I remember one particularly bad case where I ordered a computer mainboard from a company in the US, told them at the order time to send it USPS (United States Postal Service) so that I'd get it in the post and avoid all the above - and more as it would turn out.

But after putting me through a bunch of hoops and waiting 2 weeks, the bo***xes finally send it FEDEX. :mad: (They didn't earn the nickname "FedUp" for nothing).

Well I've never had a more stressful experience doing anything as trying to get the delivery from FedUp as the whole thing was a *costly* comedy of errors.

Nowadays I only ever buy stuff online or over long distance if I can get it Posted.

1huge1

Thank god for emails thats for sure, the only time I ever use an post is when I order stuff online and they have to deliver it, usually off ebay and cdwow so an post make no money out of it, they don't deserve any of it, it takes longer to go from dublin to limerick than hong kong to dublin sometimes like.

Etnies

Chillwithcian wrote: »

I sent a letter within Dublin by 'express' post last Thursday (Morning at 10am). It arrives on Monday.

On another occcasion I posted a letter to go to cork by standard post on Tuesday afternoon. It dosnt arrive till Tuesday week.

Its not the first time or a once off, its daily. I post 2-4 letters each week. Its very fustrating....

Why are we paying a onward rising price in a stamp? Why pay €5 for ''express'' post which isnt actulay express? What extra value is got from increasing the stamp from 48c-55c? and WHY oh WHY does the postman bend my letters despite my eyesoreing Do Not Bend's on SAE's that i post (My postbox is big/wide enough for them not to be bent)?

Is there a postman on board's who would care to cast a light? :rolleyes:

I work in one of the sorting offices in Dublin, just to tell you that express post is actually express, its separated from the normal mail when found with the red express stick on it, then it is brought to a small office which handles all express and registered letters.

There could be any number of reasons why your letters takes such a long time to arrive to Limerick, a small number of letters become lost by falling down behind machines or getting left in the mail bags or simple being mis-sorted, also if you hand write the address on your letter it will normally take longer than if its a printed label simply because the sorting machines cannot read some hand writing and it then must be "video coded" which is basically the staff entering in the town and county on a computer in another part of the building thus telling the machine where to sort it to.

Hope that cleared it up abit.