Losses at An Post.

Scortho

Going Forward wrote: »

Why should as little as one piece of mail (or one piece of junkmail) be personally delivered to my address each day of the week when 3 or 4 could be delivered on the same day??

There is no need for this waste of time and energy in rural areas.

The only thing I can think of is companies who'd have cheques and tenders coming in, but you could probably go down the route of express post for urgent post that needs faster delivery.

Judgement Day

Going Forward wrote: »

Why should as little as one piece of mail (or one piece of junkmail) be personally delivered to my address each day of the week when 3 or 4 could be delivered on the same day??

There is no need for this waste of time and energy in rural areas.

Perhaps this would suit you but a lot of people and businesses rely on daily mail services. A solution that might be better for you would be a process where you could sign a form to opt out of the postal service - sort of like being ex.directory with the telephone. Of course this would result in difficulties for you if you ever wanted something posted to you but that would be your problem.

StillWaters

Is the losses recorded only on their postal services? I would have thought their move into financial services as banks exit the high street would have been lucrative for them, eg NIB customers now use An Post for all their cash transactions.

Pete_Cavan

true-or-false wrote: »

I have to say, as much as I've been less than happy with them in the past (like constantly getting post from the same number house on the next road over), I think that as a semi-state (?) company, people are quick to villainise them and say good riddance rather than actually try to find constructive solutions, which would benefit both the company, the state and the public.

Do you mean constructive solutions, which would benefit both the company, the state and the public like introducing postcodes - because An Post are doing their best to prevent that. An Post, in an act of self-preservation, want a "postal address" system solely for the purpose of helping them to sort mail, as opposed to a postcode which would have wider benefits. An Post are battling their Regulator in the courts (guess who pays for that?) in order to gain more power and continue with their outdated ways. Details of the case here which ComReg are now appealing. Now you might think it doesnt really matter whether their address is Watergrasshill or Rathcormac, but it certainly does if an ambulance is looking for that location. An Post should stop their self-serving protectionism and accept that what the country needs is a unique identifier system which will provide for a speedy response by emergency services, will provide greater efficiency and interaction with GPS technologies, will improve business efficiency and will support spatial planning and coordinating of state services. So personally I see nothing wrong with villainising An Post seeing as they are happy to screw the taxpayers who pay for their company losses.

thebman

StillWaters wrote: »

Is the losses recorded only on their postal services? I would have thought their move into financial services as banks exit the high street would have been lucrative for them, eg NIB customers now use An Post for all their cash transactions.

They are massively over priced on things like insurance from what I can see though.

It seems that way with a lot of their products where you'd consider using them except they are too expensive.

carpejugulum

One half of An Post revenues comes from the welfare contract. So the company would have been bankrupt/significantly restructured if it wasn't for that.
An Post, like RTE and others, keeps wasting public resources and preventing better options for the public.

Rascasse

carpejugulum wrote: »

One half of An Post revenues comes from the welfare contract. So the company would have been bankrupt/significantly restructured if it wasn't for that.
An Post, like RTE and others, keeps wasting public resources and preventing better options for the public.

That isn't even remotely accurate. Postal activities represent nearly 71% of their Irish revenues. Social welfare revenue comes under a bucket that also includes bill payments, AIB etc and totals 22% of revenue.

An Posts problems are efficiency and staff costs. They reduced their head count this year and I imagine that will continue for many years to come. I also saw that stamps will go up each year with inflation which should help too.

What better options are An Post preventing? There really isn't room for more than one postal operator in Ireland.

Going Forward

Judgement Day wrote: »

I wasn't seriously suggesting it as a solution but it seems in line with the nonsensical idea of reducing delivery days.

Theres a new thing now called email, might catch on:D

Judgement Day

Going Forward wrote: »

Theres a new thing now called email, might catch on:D

Yeah and it's really useful for people wanting to send anything by way of a large envelope and bigger.

belcampprisoner

stop rural deliveries,give everyone free post box,once a week they could come to post office to collect mail

put ads on stamps.

put ads on post boxes, and uniforms, and vans and bikes

charge 1 euro to collect pension or other social welfare checks

start selling milk etc in post offices

Going Forward

Judgement Day wrote: »

Yeah and it's really useful for people wanting to send anything by way of a large envelope and bigger.

Part of a solution may be to introduce a business/premium rate for required next day deliveries alongside a lower rate for 'personal" post to be delivered within 2-3 days?

Busted Flat.

Why do they not ask Paddy Power to pay back the money the manager gambled in Gorey. It might ease things a bit. Then again what were the fat cats in on post doing while the manager gambled the money while he was in charge of.
Is he the exception.

Judgement Day

belcampprisoner wrote: »

stop rural deliveries,give everyone free post box,once a week they could come to post office to collect mail

put ads on stamps.

put ads on post boxes, and uniforms, and vans and bikes

charge 1 euro to collect pension or other social welfare checks

start selling milk etc in post offices

Hello! Rural people are taxpayers too and thus are entitled to the same service as those living in urban areas. However, your idea has some merit assuming in return that rural dwellers have their income tax slashed.

Busted Flat.

carpejugulum wrote: »

Postal activities don't generate profit. An Post would collapse without the welfare contract.

An Post spends 72% on its staff so it's obvious what needs to be cut.

It could help, to cut out online gambling, and internet connection, to Paddy Power.

carpejugulum

Judgement Day wrote: »

Hello! Rural people are taxpayers too and thus are entitled to the same service as those living in urban areas. However, your idea has some merit assuming in return that :rolleyes:rural dwellers have their income tax slashed.

Rural services are subsidized by urban taxpayers.

Busted Flat.

carpejugulum wrote: »

Rural services are subsidized by urban taxpayers.

Does that mean, equality does not exist in this Kip. Try and remember, most people living in Dublin have culchies as parents. Cop on.

spank_inferno

Busted Flat. wrote: »

Try and remember, most people living in Dublin have culchies as parents.

Dont mean to sidetrack, but no..... most dubs have dub parents.

Most cork people have corkonion parents... etc.

Xenophile

carpejugulum wrote: »

Rural services are subsidized by urban taxpayers.

Urban dwellers but especially companies and organisations based in Dublin have an on going need to send mail to rural addresses.

Judgement Day

Xenophile wrote: »

Urban dwellers but especially companies and organisations based in Dublin have an on going need to send mail to rural addresses.

Surely companies can use DHL or some such, and the urban dwellers can send the mail down monthly with the V d P food parcels. I have to say that some of the contributions in this thread are so daft that I keep checking that the thread isn't in AH. :rolleyes:

carpejugulum

Xenophile wrote: »

Urban dwellers but especially companies and organisations based in Dublin have an on going need to send mail to rural addresses.

Which is rapidly diminishing. The biggest regular senders of mail - e.g. banks and utility companies - try to sign up everyone to email delivery.
Parcels can be send by competitors, who would be much cheaper if they did not have to compete with such an unfair competitor.

L1011

ted1 wrote: »

They've a huge fleet of modern vans surly if the extended the life of the vans they would save a packet say replace every 5 instead of 2 years

Maintenance and possibly even insurance costs rise hugely on older vehicles. This is why my occasionally hugely penny-pinching employer gets shift of vehicles after three years. Fuel consumption also rises slightly, and newer vans will generally have slightly better performance anyway, could be 2-3% but that's quite significant with the volumes used.

I also believe that An Post now lease a lot of their vans where the lease rates will remain much the same whatever the age.

carpejugulum wrote: »

Parcels can be send by competitors, who would be much cheaper if they did not have to compete with such an unfair competitor.

Does not compute. Think that one through again - they could be cheaper if not competing with someone cheaper?

Xenophile

carpejugulum wrote: »

Which is rapidly diminishing. The biggest regular senders of mail - e.g. banks and utility companies - try to sign up everyone to email delivery.
Parcels can be send by competitors, who would be much cheaper if they did not have to compete with such an unfair competitor.

I agree, see my opening post.

n97 mini

Busted Flat. wrote: »

Does that mean, equality does not exist in this Kip.

It doesn't exist because it can't exist. All of Dublin is covered by an urban bus service. Should it be extended to cover the whole country?

carpejugulum

MYOB wrote: »

Does not compute. Think that one through again - they could be cheaper if not competing with someone cheaper?

They are not competing on An Post's scale.
And they won't compete because they won't risk going against someone supported by the government, especially in rural areas.

L1011

carpejugulum wrote: »

They are not competing on An Post's scale.
And they won't compete because they won't risk going against someone supported by the government, especially in rural areas.

Not a bit of that explains how removing a cheaper (by any means) competitor from the market will make the existing competitors cheaper. When Business 101 shows that the exact opposite would occur.

carpejugulum

MYOB wrote: »

Not a bit of that explains how removing a cheaper (by any means) competitor from the market will make the existing competitors cheaper. When Business 101 shows that the exact opposite would occur.

I already said they are not competing on An Post's scale and won't if An Post is propped up by the taxpayer. They would be cheaper because they would be competing with other private companies and be able to take advantage of economies of scale.
More importantly, the taxpayer would not have to subsidize a wasteful semi-state.

ardmacha

As always in this forum, a lot of the comment here is over the top and some of it is plain ridiculous. This was An Post's first trading loss since 2003, in recessionary times, when subject to changing technology which affects your business (see Xtravision). An Post may not be absolute paragons, but neither is it the most inefficient publicly owned organisation in Ireland. Royal Mail charge 60p for a letter, An Post 60c, if all Irish costs had this relationship then things would be much better.

carpejugulum

ardmacha wrote: »

As always in this forum, a lot of the comment here is over the top and some of it is plain ridiculous. This was An Post's first trading loss since 2003, in recessionary times, when subject to changing technology which affects your business (see Xtravision). An Post may not be absolute paragons, but neither is it the most inefficient publicly owned organisation in Ireland. Royal Mail charge 60p for a letter, An Post 60c, if all Irish costs had this relationship then things would be much better.

They will not make a profit without the welfare and TV licence contracts.

hfallada

I can't understand why postman have to drive to deliver post in the arse hole of no where to one off housing. People should be made have a post box in a cluster with other houses and reduce delivery time. Also an post could encourage a greater use of machines. In Germany you can buy stamps 24/7 from a machines outside a post office. Here you have to queue up for ages to buy a stanp

Xenophile

About forty years ago I was in the South of England in a small rural village which hosted seminars for people from all over the world. While in the office one morning the post man arrived to deliver the mail and while he was there he collected the outgoing mail. Has anyone seen this arrangement in Ireland for any office or organisation or company with outgoing mail?