Losses at An Post.

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?

Farmer Pudsey

I sometime think that we are gone overboard with this fixation with competition. If you look at the electricity and telecoms I see little or no advantage in what we have done in the interest of competition. While in aviation it is a success and I could see advantages in Bus Eireann having competition the electricity competition is a farce, in telecoms we have gone from one of the best in Europe to one of the worst in 20 odd years. In the case of An Post I see little or no advantage of competition in the letter market.

Yes it needs reform as the ESB needs but setting up a competitor may not be the answer it may just see a reduction of service.

n97 mini

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

in telecoms we have gone from one of the best in Europe to one of the worst in 20 odd years.

That's not really true. While we won't (and shouldn't) have 100Mb broadband in Achill Island any time soon, the urban areas are different. In addition, selling the network with eircom was a disastrous decision.

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

In the case of An Post I see little or no advantage of competition in the letter market.

I would agree if competition is shackled like it is with the "deregulated" electricity market, where again, ESB's competitors have no choice but to use ESB's network.

Chris_5339762

Xenophile wrote: »

While in the office one morning the post man arrived to deliver the mail and while he was there he collected the outgoing mail.

My parents live rurally and their current postman would do this, no problem. A previous postman let them know in no uncertain terms he would do no such thing. So its an individual thing. While they had the grumpy postman they'd have to drive 4 miles to the nearest postbox.

Going Forward

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

My parents live rurally and their current postman would do this, no problem. A previous postman let them know in no uncertain terms he would do no such thing. So its an individual thing. While they had the grumpy postman they'd have to drive 4 miles to the nearest postbox.

Interesting points which raise couple of questions: who do you complain to and what is the protocol for postman "obliging" collecting your mail for posting.

An Post in my experience is not very pro customer service, plus theres sure,y room for an improved parcel service facility for rare general public users.yes there are other providers but its nigh on impossible to work out what it will cost

Going Forward

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

I sometime think that we are gone overboard with this fixation with competition. If you look at the electricity and telecoms I see little or no advantage in what we have done in the interest of competition. While in aviation it is a success and I could see advantages in Bus Eireann having competition the electricity competition is a farce, in telecoms we have gone from one of the best in Europe to one of the worst in 20 odd years. In the case of An Post I see little or no advantage of competition in the letter market.

Yes it needs reform as the ESB needs but setting up a competitor may not be the answer it may just see a reduction of service.

Agreed, competition for the sake of compliance, resulting in duopolies and cartels.

The Muppet

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 rural dwellers have their income tax slashed.

It's obviously more expensive to deliver mail etc in rural areas over urban areas. I'd say an increase on those taxes for rural dwellers would be more to the point, no one's forcing them to live out in the sticks. Other services could follow suit.

Urban Dwellers now pay more property tax than rural dwellers on a similar principal.

TouchingVirus

Xenophile wrote: »

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?

It happens in our office, we even have a collection scan point so the postie can use his handheld device to record when he picks up our post.

Xenophile

TouchingVirus wrote: »

It happens in our office, we even have a collection scan point so the postie can use his handheld device to record when he picks up our post.

Is this An Post? What kind of bar code does he scan? This being the beginning of the month many companies are sending out hundreds of statements of account. Is every envelope scanned individually? Your reply is appreciated!

ardmacha

This being the beginning of the month many companies are sending out hundreds of statements of account.

I think if hundreds of items are being sent, the company might reasonably be expected to bring them to the office.

markpb

Xenophile wrote: »

Is this An Post? What kind of bar code does he scan? This being the beginning of the month many companies are sending out hundreds of statements of account. Is every envelope scanned individually? Your reply is appreciated!

In our office, there's a barcode on An Post headed paper inside the front door. There's a notice that says (something like) it's to be scanned by AP staff when collecting post. I presume it's to track when they were at my office rather than anything to do with the post itself.

Xenophile

markpb wrote: »

In our office, there's a barcode on An Post headed paper inside the front door. There's a notice that says (something like) it's to be scanned by AP staff when collecting post. I presume it's to track when they were at my office rather than anything to do with the post itself.

A good idea, makes great sense in many ways.

donkey balls

People saying that An Post does not have any competition clearly don't know much about the postal/express parcel/freight industry,There are loads of companies operating here in Ireland one even dedicated to snail mail the majority of them use sub contractors known in the industry as (owner drivers).
Now some of these companies charge a fuel surcharge when calculating the cost of shipping/posting something the same as haulage companies and airlines,So a big cost for AN post would be diesel& maintenance for the trucks(which I used to see on a nightly basis in a previous life) and the up keep of the four main sorting hubs in Athlone/Dublin/Portaoise&Cork.
Also any time I get a package delivered by An Post it is scanned and I sign on the pda/scanner device,And I don't and have never worked for An Post but I know a lot about transport&logistics.

SPDUB

Going Forward wrote: »

Interesting points which raise couple of questions: who do you complain to and what is the protocol for postman "obliging" collecting your mail for posting.

You can't complain because a postie on deliveries is not allowed to pick up post .

Any obliging postie doing so is technically breaking the rules and could be disciplined for doing so

There are a number of duties where a postie delivers to an address in the morning and then does collections from post offices and postboxes in the afternoon and may do a collection from some of the bigger companies on his morning route

But they are the only ones allowed to collect from some people and only then in the afternoon

I presume it's to track when they were at my office rather than anything to do with the post itself

Correct and also to prove they were there even if that day they didn't pick up anything from that office

People should be made have a post box in a cluster with other houses and reduce delivery time

Comreg won't allow it

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

In fact it's to stop Comreg trying to do a power grab themselves by demanding that current ambiguous addresses be delivered to by two different delivery offices if necessary .Guess who will pay for that .

The High court judge agreed with An Post that it's not Comreg's function to tell An Post had to organise it's delivery routes on an individual office basis