Irish Postal Service

TheMonster

Not sure if consumer issues but nowhere else seemed appropriate.

Our postal delivery has been crap lately.
1. We are constantly getting post for other people in our road - clearly addressed with their number.
2. We get a lot of post for other roads in the estate with the same number as ours, again clearly addressed.
3. Getting post for people in other estates in the name area, the only similarity being they have the same house number as ours.
4. Getting parcels delivered is a nightmare. They just drop a collection slip in to the letterbox for you to collect it, even though you may be at home. Once I asked him there and then could I have it and he said no I don't have it with me(wtf)

Anything I can do about this? I called the local sorting office and their attitude was mistakes happen.

antoinolachtnai

here's what i did.

(now it might have been easier for me because I am in the house a lot of the day and could be there if the postman called)

If you get mail addressed to a different address, tell An Post to come and pick it up. They will ask you to put it in a letterbox for redelivery. Tell them you will not do this, because it is An Post's job to deliver the mail, not yours, and because you have no contract with An Post to deal with their misdelivered mail. (This is not a completely ridiculous thing to say - if you were run over by a bus while redelivering the mail, would An Post accept liability? Also, it is illegal for you to deliver mail - that is a monopoly reserved to an Post, at lease in the case of items with a low delivery charge. Further, it is official An Post policy that An Post is a commercial service, not a social service, so it makes sense that it should deliver its mail with its own resources, not yours.).

The postman will call within a day or two to collect the pile of misdelivered mail.

You will receive no more misdelivered mail (in my experience).

The thing with the parcel delivery, that happens a lot, and you just have to put the pressure on them to get them to act decently. Basically, half the cost of the stamp goes on the local delivery. If they aren't prepared to deliver it to your home, they shouldn't have accepted it in the first place.

So what you do in practice is you wait until you have actually caught the postman putting the collection slip in the door. You ask him for the mail. He will tell you that someone else is supposed to deliver the packets (in my experience).

Then you head for the sorting office. Get your parcel. Ask why it wasn't delivered to you at home. A number of stupid reasons will be given.

1. You were out. (but you get the docket off the postman yourself)

2. The guy with the packet called before 8am and their policy is not to ring the doorbell before 8am. (Well, why didn't this guy put the collection slip in the door instead of giving it to the letterpost guy?)

Now, ask them who is supposed to have delivered the item, and when you can see him. (They will never tell you, but it's fun to ask.)

Look exasperated and ask for someone in charge. Get names.

They will probably tell you that you need to speak to the inspector. The inspector is never in. But they will give you a phone number and a name if you press them. Leave a message for him too, ask that he call you back.

You may not get an answer, ever, from the number they give you, but ring the An Post line and tell them you were looking for that inspector and that your problem is that your packets aren't being delivered.

This sorted things out for me, in the end. I don't get such an oddbin of mail from various far-flung addresses either.

But be gentle. You should be sensitive to the fact that there are big morale and IR issues within An Post. Basically, the staff don't seem to feel motivated to deliver particularly accurately. So try to be good-humoured about all this.

Paddy20

As a person who buys goods via the www on a regular basis, I always allow allow twice the normal quoted delivery time, and I am always surprised if I receive items 'on time'.

This attitude stops me getting overly annoyed with our local An-Post employee's, as I do believe that here in the N.W. they are taken for granted, overworked and underpaid, and unappreciated by the majority of the population.

The actual delivery to your home is only a small part of the massive workload of your average postperson. They have to do a lot of mail sorting etc, before they even start delivering to remote addresse's located in the back of beyond, and that's a fact.

So, have a go at the Chiefs and not the Indians

P.:cool:

masterK

I've had nightmares the last couple of times I tried to get a delivery from them. The first time the online tracking said the package had been delivered to the 'Imaging Section', after several phone calls and a trip to my local collection office it was finally found in the lorry of one of the drivers. His excuse he didn't get a chance to deliver it and then forgot about it.

At the moment I am waiting on another Parcel from Hong Kong, from the time of placing an order to it arriving in the sorting office in Ireland took 3 days, the time it has taken to get from the Sorting office to my house is 5 days and counting. The online tracking is even more confusing, it says it was sent out for delivery yesterday, I was there all day, no delivery was attempted. The tracking now states that the package is delivered, yet it's current location is my local office. Looks like I'm off on another goose chase, I'll have to wait until 9 to call the office to speak to somebody who won't have a clue, I'll probably have to call into my local collection office later to be told that they don't have it and I should have a collection slip for it.

antoinolachtnai

Paddy20 wrote:

The actual delivery to your home is only a small part of the massive workload of your average postperson. They have to do a lot of mail sorting etc, before they even start delivering to remote addresse's located in the back of beyond, and that's a fact.

This isn't necessarily relevant to this discussion, but have you actually seen this work being done for yourself in the last year?

Mail is delivered from the sorting centres to the delivery office pre-sorted. This has resulted in a lot of big changes in work practices, and there have been a lot of problems as a result.

Paddy20

antoinolachtnai wrote:

This isn't necessarily relevant to this discussion, but have you actually seen this work being done for yourself in the last year?

Mail is delivered from the sorting centres to the delivery office pre-sorted. This has resulted in a lot of big changes in work practices, and there have been a lot of problems as a result.

Must admit that I personally 'have not seen this work being done in the past year, as my information is based on a friend who used to be a postman, but resigned a few years back, because of the workload.

I never knew about the "changes in work practices ", but I did have the impression 'that something' was up, as my local postie has not been looking very happy this past couple of years, and there seem to be a lot of new faces.

So, my info is probably 'out of date' sorry .

P.:cool: