Check your change at the Post Office!

[seahermit]

Some strange and very sloppy service today at the main post office in London Road, St Leonards. I had to pay off a British Gas bill, was served grudgingly by a man who looked very much as if his grandmother had just died. When I walked away and checked the receipt, I found that he had made a mistake with the bill, entered an amount £3.60 over the total due. I had to queue again and he was painfully slow with his next customer, so in fact I was twenty minutes in the post office instead of about five!

When I finally challenged him, there was no apology (bar a grunt) and, instead of cancelling the payment and putting a new one through (maybe that wasn't possible after the original payment had been processed?), he merely gave me back £4, pulled out of the post office cash till.

BUT .. he made no record of the £4 (surely that would slightly cock-up the post offices's book-keeping at end of day?) and in any case I was only owed £3.60. AND any refund was due from British Gas, not from the post office! So, in effect I am not only £3.60 in credit with British Gas but I have "won" a further £4 courtesy of the post office - I wish it was always as easy as this to make some undeserved cash!

The amount involved of course is completely trivial, but I sincerely hope they are not so careless and sloppy when transactions go into the hundreds .. even if my four quid was intended as some kind of goodwill payment, it all seems very unprofessional and I cannot imagine this would happen at a bank where service these days seems to be very slick and polite (whatever else one thinks of banks).

Moral: check everything and don't trust anyone's reliability. I was overpayed by a post office once (they were bewildered when I was honest enough to walk back in and tell them!) and there were underpayments a couple of other times - don't remember it happening at banks.

[Richard]

I had a similar experience up at the sub - P.O. in Malvern Way.
After weighing my thin parcel it was deemed too fat to squeeze through the slot in the plastic contraption - I then suggested it just needed a little push.
It does annoy me that the P.O. tries this sort of thing on to make a higher postage charge.
Even when it was accepted that it could pass through I was charged too much, which I complained about.
Then I was offered more back than I should have been.
I pointed this out and was just met with a shrug.

[seahermit]

The status of the Post Office is so complex these days that I have no idea whether it qualifies as a government agency or a commercial company - even so, in practice it still delivers a public service and that should be efficient, geared very much to the public's needs and not shackled by profit-motives as its sole indicator of performance. I am aware that I am going into fantasy-land here and the way things might have been done long ago!

Even so, the sloppy service which we have to put up with is bad and particularly so if it comes from a main high-street branch (are little privately-owned sub-post offices under a lesser duty to be efficient and trustworthy?). Businesses great and small rely upon banks and post offices to enable them to function.

The Royal Mail, Parcel Force and all the rest (largely hived off from the Post Office) have a long back-history of union disputes and resistance to change. In my experience, they don't compare well with private delivery companies - a card was put through my door the other week to say that Royal Mail could not deliver a package. The truth was that I was at home waiting for it but they didn't even bother to ring my doorbell - and it took another three days before I could get hold of the item AND I had to pay a fee at the London Road post office branch!

[Richard]

I posted a birthday card three weeks ago that still has not arrived.
It is the first time I have experienced this and the P.O. just say that it has been happening a lot lately!
Okay, so covid and staffing disruption to normal service is the excuse.

[seahermit]

Instead of issuing a bland excuse for poor performance, has it occurred to the post office to do something about it? Unbelievable. I wonder how many important communications also go missing ..

[1 quart]

i think the postal service is there just to cheer us all up. the other Friday afternoon i sent something from the post office in George Street and i was so pleased to hear that it was received in London the following morning, and then last week i was laughing for ages, i received a Christmas card from friends in Somerset

[Richard]

I think the P.O. should only be paid if they actually manage to deliver an item.
But, of course, they want you to pay a lot extra for the privilege of 'recorded delivery'.
We are now paying for a service that may deliver or provide a very late delivery or no delivery at all.

Payment 'up-front' is always a risk.

[seahermit]

The Times yesterday said that the Post Office has an enormous backlog, is still delivering pre-Christmas post. Because of Covid.

Well, ok, but they have had many months to work out solutions and could they not be more honest about it being a poor and unreliable service? And overpriced for the offhand, grudging service on offer?