Should the postal service be opened up to competition?
Post with your pinta OUR milkman delivers between 3am and 7am. I would not wish to be woken up in the early hours to sign for a parcel.
Our postman comes between 1 pm and 3pm. I would not want milk that had been around all day until that time unless it came in a chilled van, so I would buy it from the supermarket instead.
Mike Shelton, [email protected] Worried about security AS A sub-postmistress, I must declare an interest, but my main concern about anyone other than Royal Mail delivering the post is security. There are many people who slip a Pounds 5/Pounds 10/Pounds 20 note into a birthday card. Very occasionally, these cards either do not arrive, or are found to be cut open and emptied.
When the sender completes a complaints form, Royal Mail is able to build up a pattern and find the culprit. However, if the post is "farmed out" to self- employed deliverymen/women, to whom are they accountable? There will be no system for tracking the mail's route.
Secondly, even milkmen do not know where every address is located. The Royal Mail has allocated postcodes to the UK in order to be able to locate properties and its postmen are trained to learn the nuances of their routes.
Lastly, I wish to be assured that my mail is not left on an open vehicle while the milkman is delivering to other nearby properties.
Jane Full, St Austell, Cornwall Who wants mail at 4pm?
WHAT a farcical idea. I am a milkman and I start deliveries at 5.30am, finishing about 1.30pm. Given all these letters and parcels Express Dairies are going to give me, what time will the last customers receive their mail? I would guess around 4pm. Not a lot of good for anyone.
Dave Hughes, [email protected] We're too out-of-the-way AT THIS edge-of-town address we receive a first-class postal service, and this could only become poorer if the company is weakened by competition. On the other hand, our place is apparently too out-of-the-way for either milk or newspapers to be delivered, and we would be only too glad if the postman would deliver milk and newspapers.
Anthony Davis, Harrogate It has worked elsewhere I HAVE an imperfect recollection that in the late 1960s or early 1970s in rural Victoria, Australia, the Post Office used to put mail delivery out to tender. As I recall it wasn't just the milkman who delivered mail, but the baker, and so forth, as well. I appreciate that this isn't quite what is being suggested here, but the idea is not all novel.
Hedley Harrison, Alford, Aberdeenshire Even more disruption IN OUR quiet cul-de-sac we are woken regularly any time between 12.05am and 5.30am by two dairy deliveries. They deliver to no more than six houses, starting and stopping noisily all the way up and down the road. Just as we fall irritably back to sleep, along comes the next one. Imagine how much more disturbing having the addition of letters being shoved through letterboxes will be: even more stops and starts, crunching up gravel paths and barking dogs…and I like my postman anyway.
Carol Freeman, [email protected] It won't save money MILKMEN already work ridiculously long hours to make their rounds pay. If most milk rounds currently deliver to fewer than one in five houses on their route, where are they going to find the time to stop at every house to deliver mail? They'll have to reduce the size of their round which means more milkmen for more deliveries, ie, higher overheads cancelling out the cost benefits.
Back to square one.
Gary Jackson, [email protected] Collecting the mail AS WE do not have our milk delivered, would we have to go to Sainsbury's for our mail?
