Mohammed Attractive Serpent wrote: » I can't remember the last time I needed to use a post office. With communications and services increasingly delivered online, and packages delivered by private couriers, why do we need a state-funded postal service? Why are closures of these unnecessary offices always described as a "great loss to the community"?
jjbrien wrote: » There are some towns and villages in Rural Ireland that the banks have also closed and older people use the post office to get their pension and do their banking. My dad being one of them and he keeps going on about saving the local post office. He lives in Kilbeggan so would have to go to Mullingar or Tullamore to use a post office. Me i do most of my stuff online id only use a post office or bank branch once or twice a year.
jjbrien wrote: » There are some towns and villages in Rural Ireland that the banks have also closed and older people use the post office to get their pension and do their banking. My dad being one of them and he keeps going on about saving the local post office. He lives in Kilbeggan so would have to go to Mullingar or Tullamore to use a post office.
Cabaal wrote: » The Post Office on the other hand provides Ulster Bank & AIB banking services and allows use of cash. If we lost the post office this means everyone would need to travel 10miles to deal with cash in a bank.
Post Offices are very important social hubs and important for news and keeping an eye on people. if for example Mary collects her pension every week and the suddenly doesn't show up the people in the local post office are likely to notice this and may follow up with somebody to see if they've seen Mary and is she ok.
seamus wrote: » People still need stuff. There is a thriving and growing postal system, it's just delivering more packages than letters. The problem with An Post is that they've failed to identify the trends in the market and seize them and be open to them. Services like Parcel Motel launched five years before An Post got the finger out and delivered an expensive and worse solution. They still won't get it. A national postal service will always be needed, but eventually it'll be a subsidised niche thing that very few people use. All of the other crap bundled into post offices; billy paying, pensions, etc; can be done anywhere. They don't need a post office.
ohnonotgmail wrote: » where?
Turnipman wrote: » Sitting in front of one's laptop or desktop.
draiochtanois wrote: » This post has been deleted.
ohnonotgmail wrote: » I must not be looking hard enough for the slot that dispenses cash.
Mohammed Attractive Serpent wrote: » You're right that post offices are often used, frequently by older people, to collect state benefits or to do banking transactions. But in those cases they're just operating as extensions of social welfare offices and banks, not as post offices. Surely people can have their benefits deposited into their bank accounts, and the banks themselves can provide better networks of branches and ATMs. As this older generation die off, the last remaining rationale for keeping post offices will disappear.
Mohammed Attractive Serpent wrote: » But surely that's a problem with inadequate banking services, rather than a rationale for keeping post offices open? Additionally, having the post office be the only facility locally that deals with cash will only make it a magnet for robbers, even though many of them have minimal security.
seamus wrote: » Newsagents, online, etc.
ohnonotgmail wrote: » OAPs should pick their pension up in a newsagents? So the newsagent would need the same IT system currently in place in post offices. You haven't really done away with post offices then, just moved them next door in a lot of smaller towns.
seamus wrote: » Most newsagents will do cash back. If someone really, really, doesn't want their pension deposited in a bank account, maybe they should have the option of a debit card that allows them to spend their pension directly? This is an old, tired and ultimately baseless argument that anachronistic processes should be held onto for the sake of "OAPs". Old people are perfectly capable of using cards, of doing stuff online and using new technology. My mother is an OAP and doesn't stop sending bloody whatsapps. Tradition is the main reason they do it; as per Cabaal's anecdote. People still queuing in the post office, and clinging onto it just so they can continue to queue.
BrianBoru00 wrote: » No it won't. If there was any foresight or ambition in the civil service/ government there would remain a single public services office preferably attached / co located with the local school. There you could have postal service / garda desk / doctors surgery and possibly even a local shop which would (1) satisfy one of the reasons for closure (wasted resources) and (2) have a social hub in villages and towns with footfall on a daily basis and (3) have garda presence in the location at least some hours daily even if its just a 30 minute window five days a week for example.
ohnonotgmail wrote: » So your alternative is to force people to go cashless?
seamus wrote: » Nobody's being "forced" to go cashless. If they want cash, they can go and withdraw it somewhere. Why should the state be forced to maintain and pay for archaic delivery systems because some people like queuing in a post office?
