Post Office to test new parcel service
THE Post Office is to trial a new parcel delivery scheme, which will take advantage of its extensive local network.
The scheme will allow home shopping customers to nominate a Post Office near their place of work and have the parcel waiting there for collection. A Post Office spokesman said: “People who order goods on the internet and don’t want to wait at home for delivery will be able to pick them up in their lunch hour. Our intention is to trial this in the next couple of months.”
Parcelforce, the Post Office’s parcel division, already has an agreement with over 50 home shopping companies, allowing people to specify a time slot in which their mail will be delivered. This allows for evening delivery. The Post Office is the biggest retail network in the country, with 18,500 offices up and down the country, which is more than all the high street banks added together, and 94pc of the population live within one mile of a post office.
The spokesman said that the new scheme would help the Post Office to compete against other parcel delivery groups such as DHL. He said: “We have never had a monopoly on parcel delivery so it is vitally important that we compete.”
