An Post

Gloomtastic!

So An Post are increasing their postage rates to €1 from .72c!

My initial shock then turned to meh when I realised I haven't posted anything business-wise in at least a year and personally I only send Christmas Cards nowadays.

All my internet purchases now come via ParcelMotel (what a great business!), I think AnPost, with their heavily unionised staff and restrictive work practices, are too far behind to catch up.

Apart from leaflet drops, the only post we seem to get nowadays seems to be from inefficient govenment agencies incapable of managing their communications online.

10,000 employees is a big wage bill every month and I doubt the mail shot business covers a fraction of that.

What would you do with it?

cros13

They had a scheme a while back (2007 - 2009) that provided very competitive rates for small businesses shipping worldwide. I haven't used them for anything except freepost since they pulled that.

Turning them, particularly in rural areas, into a one-stop-shop for a lot of the stuff you can do online with government like basic income tax / motor tax etc. Citizen's advice.... that type of deal.

Funny enough, I was speaking to a senior manager in An Post in 2007 having returned from living in Bavaria. While complaining about being unable to pick up parcels from my local an post delivery office (as it opened after I left for work and was closed before I got back), I suggested it would be a good idea to copy Deutsche Post who had these stations (since the early 2000s) at the end of the block in the cities or in the local village where you could pick up packages:



She told me there would be no market for it in Ireland and the unions wouldn't stand for it.
I now send and receive up to 50 parcels a month with parcelmotel.

nosilver

An post new management want each division to pay for itself. There should not be any cross subsidisation between divisions.

Direct mail, parcel delivery and their new targeted mail programme are all profitable and busy.

Providing a 5 day letter delivery service to every home in the country is loss making. And it is just this division that is having issues - and the rural offices.

The software they have developed for very targeted direct mail is exceptional and they are now licencing it to other international postal services at a very decent profit.

Overall they are profitable and new management are now running it more like a private company than a semi state - and that is good.

ROVER_1912

there is no way rurals need 5 day post,

at least cut it down to mon wed fri,

that'll save ya a few million dollars

Dades

nosilver wrote: »

Overall they are profitable and new management are now running it more like a private company than a semi state - and that is good.

The problem is you can't run anything like private a company when you have unions.

As soon as they try any cost cutting necessary the placards will be out.

pedroeibar1

Go to the root of the problem. An Post has 13 directors (shades of the Last Supper!) and five of them are employee directors. Another is the rep of the post offices, so effectively almost half the Board has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and protecting or improving their own positions. What sort of idiot minister allowed that type of corporate ‘governance’?

That is why An Post is a dog, and can be viewed as such. At one end is a tail, which is wagging the body. At the other end is a head, containing a brain incapable of original thought because it is choked/starved by a collar and lead that is tugged by a government master in all directions but the one in which it wants to go. Every time the lead is jerked, the middle is squeezed and ‘stuff’ comes out at the tail end onto its customers. One euro to deliver a letter? Is that decision for real? Are they aware that it costs less than 50 cent to send a letter 3000+ miles from NYC to LA? Can anyone imagine for example Ryanair saying “We have all these expensive planes and staff that need more use for delivering passengers to different destinations - I know, let’s jack up our fares by 40% and recoup the cost that way!”

In fairness, An Post has for too long been asked to be a social service, a position both accepted and extolled by its board because it postpones facing the real questions. It is a business, should be viewed and expected to perform as such. Why should it provide ‘homewatch’ community care services to elderly rural residents? Why should the post office in a village be the focal point of the weekly visit of a mountainy person for a chat while collecting a pension in cash? Why should it deliver mail on 5 days a week? Why should it provide banking services, a business about which it knows nothing and cannot properly fulfil? (A bank deals in money, which means accepting and lending.)
Why should rural TDs have a say in how it works? Has anyone followed for example the farce in Kerry, where all political parties and Independents are fighting over the relocation of a sorting office that delivers a couple of hundred letter a month?

It should be closed on a phased basis and the task given to the private sector.

John_Rambo

Rural Ireland has left rural Ireland with a big two finger salute. Towns and villages have been left to fend for themselves and it hasn't been good and it's not going to get better if we keep going the way we are.

Butchers, victuallers, grocers, mongers, drapers etc... were decimated. But nobody really cared, but they still wondered why their towns were dying.

Nobody wants to support the market towns and villages that were once the backbone of rural Ireland.

Everybody wants their house built a few miles from the villages and towns and now car dependency is the norm, even though most are not dependent or have no affiliation with the land, soil or agriculture. Nobody walks or cycles to the shops anymore. They all drive to the outlets in their cars. The cars are like wheelchairs!

Historically only farmers and people dedicated to the land, the soil and the beast were the people that were dotted around the hinterland of the country. They were living off the land.

Now, it's become very difficult to service massive areas of a dispersed population of people that aren't farming. They're living in one-off spacial housing with awful or no planning.. Policing and postal services have become very difficult to maintain.

And they have to by paid for by everybody else.

So, while lots of people live their little utopia in rural Ireland, the elderly farmer gets punished.

I'm sure they'll thank you.

Victor

Cheaper way to post: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057715101

Victor

ROVER_1912 wrote: »

there is no way rurals need 5 day post,

at least cut it down to mon wed fri,

I wonder if Monday is a busy day for post and therefore delivering on Monday is more expensive.

ROVER_1912 wrote: »

i beg your pardon but An Post haven't taken in permanant staff since 2007,

Are you disagreeing with the post you quoted? The points don't seem to match.

ROVER_1912

Victor wrote: »

I wonder if Monday is a busy day for post and therefore delivering on Monday is more expensive.

Are you disagreeing with the post you quoted? The points don't seem to match.

the most important thing from my pov is to secure the jobs of the postal workers,

but as i said earlier anpost haven't signed a perma-contract since 2007, so eventually the amount of postal0people will balance out with the 3-day rural-delivery

EndaHonesty

ROVER_1912 wrote: »

the most important thing from my pov is to secure the jobs of the postal workers,

but as i said earlier anpost haven't signed a perma-contract since 2007, so eventually the amount of postal0people will balance out with the 3-day rural-delivery

As with all state bodies there are too many employees being paid too much money.

An Post is being run for the employees rather than being run as an efficient public service.

They increase the price of the stamp by 40% rather than trim the fat!

Bobby Kerr the self professed business guru was the head of the review committee, "Am I right in thinking you fcuked this one up Bobby?" :rolleyes:

Impetus

SwissPost financial summary:

http://annualreport.swisspost.ch/15/ar/en.htm?shortcut=annualreport

Even if you take out the banking figures (Swiss post offices have ATMs and full banking services) they still make a profit on communications and logistics.

SwissPost deliver Amazon type online ordered stuff, because you can pick it up at your local Post Office if you are out, when the delivery agent called. DHL can't compete with them. They even offer pre-delivery warehousing services for online vendors - ie the order goes electronically from the customer to the online store, and the online store sends the delivery data electronically to Swisspost (who hold the physical item to be delivered).

Brick and mortar retail is failing, or at best replicating its offering online. A nationwide logistics company such as An Post is in an excellent position to take advantage in the change in shopping patterns.

An Post don't need management consultants - they need to look at how SwissPost operates.

SwissPost prints mass mailing stuff (eg insurance renewal notices) for insurers and banks and other large mailers in their regional sorting offices in pre-sorted order - taking the data over the internet from the customer. They use high speed printers that can do the job far faster than an individual company. Switzerland has a proper addressing and postcode system which uses a non-published serial number for each point of delivery (allowing the documents to be printed in delivery order).

Items posted in Switzerland take 1 or 2 days for delivery virtually all over Europe.

Swisspost is not alone. Belgium's post.be has a range of value added services which includes grocery collection and payment
http://corporate.bpost.be/operations/additional-sources-of-revenues?sc_lang=en

Victor

Impetus wrote: »

SwissPost prints mass mailing stuff (eg insurance renewal notices) for insurers and banks and other large mailers in their regional sorting offices in pre-sorted order - taking the data over the internet from the customer. They use high speed printers that can do the job far faster than an individual company.

Where do you think your electricity bill comes from? An Post, not your electricity supplier.

Switzerland has a proper addressing and postcode system which uses a non-published serial number for each point of delivery (allowing the documents to be printed in delivery order).

Many countries do this. Eircode is it's public manifestation.

StupidLikeAFox

Victor wrote: »

Where do you think your electricity bill comes from? An Post, not your electricity supplier.

Mine comes from gmail which is probably a part of the problem as well

readytosnap

Victor wrote: »

Where do you think your electricity bill comes from? An Post, not your electricity supplier.

I have a prepaid meter and get 1 statement a year.
The biggest problem with An Post is the way they run the mails centres.
too many iop's (idiots on patrol) walking the floor pointing here and pointing there, you do this, you do that.
So you have somewhere like the AMC sorting (machine and manually) over 300k a night, the same people doing the same work day in day out, yet An post feels the need to have 4,5 even 6 iop's (supervisors) walking around scratching their bo llox or female equivalent, on a little power trip. I have witnessed these idiots moving people from one section to another (oh, there's Mary, I don't like her, even though she can sort 5 trays an hour I'll put her out on the loading bay in the cold, and I'll bring someone in from the cold that is not as familiar or fast (2 or 3 trays an hour) as Mary) Nothing to do with increasing productivity, just depends on what side of the bed people get out off.
Another example is not keeping adequate amounts of staff to clear the mail, Fred thinks he will impress his boss by only keeping 2 part timers late to help clear the mail when in fact everyone knows (except Fred) that you are going to need 6 people (this is obviously volume based), but Fred want's to impress with the lower (OT) wage bill and his incredible leadership and organisational skills, which is all very well until the mail isn't cleared then it is the fault of the workers, this creates a bad atmosphere and also one of resentment from both sides, turning the whole place into a "Them & Us" (regular staff & iop's).
Too many cooks spoil the broth. the AMC,DMC and PMC could be run much more efficiently with half the number of iop's and I have never worked anywhere else where the supervisors just walk around or sit down in the eye in the sky twiddling there thumbs, if they did a bit of work along with their colleagues then the environment within the building would be much better and the work would be done quicker.
Getting paid 60k + to walk around with your hands in your pocket is a complete joke, yet there has been several rounds of redundancies and more to come, also the hours have been cut and cut and cut. The amount of iop's is never cut just the actual workers.
There was a time when the overtime was endless, especially when we did the cigarettes and the rem runs. but poor management is responsible for the downfall, not poor workers (though there are a few of those as well, that I know personally). The AMC has been threatened with closure since the day it opened, stupid gossipy BS going around the building like a virus. I guess it is just the nature of some people.

*Fred and Mary are example names, they do not refer to anyone called Fred or Mary who might actually work in the AMC

Impetus

Victor wrote: »

I wonder if Monday is a busy day for post and therefore delivering on Monday is more expensive.

post.nl does not have street deliveries on Mondays. However they do deliver on Saturday. Very little is posted on Sunday - so Monday is the obvious choice for a free day. A Monday off is far more useful - when combined with Sunday as a weekend in that one can attend to many more domestic matters.

I suspect that the geographic costs use the 80:20 rule - and the 80 refers to the cost of delivering post to rural addresses.

SwissPost do not charge an annual fee for a PO Box - to encourage people to collect their mail when doing other things. It also provides SwissPost with a big advantage in delivering packages of goods shipped by Amazon and others - the customer picks it up at their local PO.

Impetus

readytosnap wrote: »

I have a prepaid meter and get 1 statement a year.
The biggest problem with An Post is the way they run the mails centres.
too many iop's (idiots on patrol) walking the floor pointing here and pointing there, you do this, you do that.
So you have somewhere like the AMC sorting (machine and manually) over 300k a night, the same people doing the same work day in day out, yet An post feels the need to have 4,5 even 6 iop's (supervisors) walking around scratching their bo llox or female equivalent, on a little power trip. I have witnessed these idiots moving people from one section to another (oh, there's Mary, I don't like her, even though she can sort 5 trays an hour I'll put her out on the loading bay in the cold, and I'll bring someone in from the cold that is not as familiar or fast (2 or 3 trays an hour) as Mary) Nothing to do with increasing productivity, just depends on what side of the bed people get out off.
Another example is not keeping adequate amounts of staff to clear the mail, Fred thinks he will impress his boss by only keeping 2 part timers late to help clear the mail when in fact everyone knows (except Fred) that you are going to need 6 people (this is obviously volume based), but Fred want's to impress with the lower (OT) wage bill and his incredible leadership and organisational skills, which is all very well until the mail isn't cleared then it is the fault of the workers, this creates a bad atmosphere and also one of resentment from both sides, turning the whole place into a "Them & Us" (regular staff & iop's).
Too many cooks spoil the broth. the AMC,DMC and PMC could be run much more efficiently with half the number of iop's and I have never worked anywhere else where the supervisors just walk around or sit down in the eye in the sky twiddling there thumbs, if they did a bit of work along with their colleagues then the environment within the building would be much better and the work would be done quicker.
Getting paid 60k + to walk around with your hands in your pocket is a complete joke, yet there has been several rounds of redundancies and more to come, also the hours have been cut and cut and cut. The amount of iop's is never cut just the actual workers.
There was a time when the overtime was endless, especially when we did the cigarettes and the rem runs. but poor management is responsible for the downfall, not poor workers (though there are a few of those as well, that I know personally). The AMC has been threatened with closure since the day it opened, stupid gossipy BS going around the building like a virus. I guess it is just the nature of some people.

*Fred and Mary are example names, they do not refer to anyone called Fred or Mary who might actually work in the AMC

Your posting is un-surprising, but it is the sort of bahaviour one suspects from a poorly managed state enterprise. An enterprise who has a blank cheque to increase charges until it forces itself out of business.

Impetus

I have a PO Box from An Post because I do not live in Ireland, and don't want to 'come home' to a few dozen items on the mat.

While SwissPost don't charge for a box - An Post do and the annual fee for a box (ie travelling to some warehouse in an industrial park) is EUR 295.00 - yet another increase this year.

SwissPost PO Box locations are in the centre of villages, at shopping centres and other places that are convenient to the customer.

When the idiots allocated Eircodes, they appear to have forgot about assigning Eircodes to PO Boxes.

Incompetence at every corner.

Impetus

Victor wrote: »

Where do you think your electricity bill comes from? An Post, not your electricity supplier.

Many countries do this. Eircode is it's public manifestation.

Actually I find it very difficult to get paper utility bills in the post - they all want to email me. And of course it is not an email with a bill, it is an email to say that there is a new bill, which involves logging into an account using password and ID to see how much they have stolen from your bank account. How many people bother logging in to find out the charge this month? I suspect very few - allowing them to escalate prices for services. At least if it was a paper bill in the letterbox one would be more inclined to open it.

On the other side of the coin, in countries with no ID card - ie Ireland, need people to have recent utility bills to 'provide their identity'. This is probably reducing competition in various markets because people don't have the necessary ID to switch supplier.

"Eircode is it's public manifestation." ??? Nobody uses it.

Victor

Impetus wrote: »

post.nl does not have street deliveries on Mondays. However they do deliver on Saturday.

And I suppose that means people can be more likely to be at home for certain deliveries.

Very little is posted on Sunday - so Monday is the obvious choice for a free day.

It's not just Sunday, potentially it's everything posted since last collection on Thursday (Ireland) / Friday (Netherlands). In the Irish case, most post boxes don't have any collection after last collection on Friday.

recedite

I was using An Post "addresspal" service for parcels coming from the UK.
A few weeks ago they contacted me to say the post office was closing, and I'd have to pick another one further away, then designate that as my collection point. Which I did.

Now they have contacted me to say the price for me to collect my parcels is going up. So now I'm switching to parcel motel.

If you keep crapping on customers, eventually you drive them away.

BTW "a non-published serial number for each point of delivery" as per Swiss postal system has been used by An Post for many years, for electronic sorting. But this has nothing to do with Eircode, which is a different code. Also we already have MPRN numbers (the ESB's version of a unique identifier) and Loc8 codes (which work with sat navs, have a logical predictable sequence, and were offered to the govt. for free, to be used as a possible national system)