Since the closure of Cleveland Terrace and other Post Offices around Darlington, queues at the main Post Office on Crown Street have grown to gargantuan proportions. No business that cared about its customers would require them to stand for over half an hour, just to post a parcel. It's absolutely appalling and yet they seem totally oblivious to the cost of their inadequacies in terms of stress and lost productivity. Post Office Ltd just doesn't give a damn!
Setting out today at 11am to post my weekly parcel to Will in Afghanistan, my colleague (if you think I'm going to queue up that long, you've got another think coming: I know what it's like) arrived back at my shop at 11.46. It's a two minute walk in each direction. You do the maths. Normally, the whole thing takes about half an hour, which is totally unacceptable anyway. Today, it took over three-quarters of an hour: that's a cost to me of over £5 in wages.
There were FIVE service points open. FIVE!!! So it wasn't as if they were manning the whole counter to try to serve customers properly. They only put five staff on duty at 11am one week before Christmas. Are these people stupid? Probably: they certainly don't give a damn about customer service.
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6 comments:
I spent a similar amount of time in the que last week to post an important letter with signed for service...I managed to catch up on all my calls to family and friends and still had time to play on my PSP... to add insult to injury I then had to go pick up my xmas presents/parcels at the big depot (on foot), to be told I could have posted the letter there anyway (and there was no que)!
Almost every week I, as the owner of a small/medium business, get a mailshot from Alliance and Leicester, offering considerably better terms for my business than I get from HSBC. If I moved, it would save me well over £1000 a year in bank charges.
The problem is: I would have to pay my cash takings in at the Post Office! The cost to my business in lost wages queueing up in Crown Street would exceed the savings I'd make in bank charges.
At HSBC they have plenty of self-service machines and a business quick-serve counter. Ok, I object to their excessive profits, but at least I get good customer service from HSBC.
Post Office Ltd should realise it's bad for their business to show such blatant disregard for the needs of their customers.
Mike.. will you behave?
Yet again I have to agree with you on this one... not yet a closet lib dem though!!
Not good for a life-long labour supporter!!
A friend of mine lost his business in the last round of post office closures (hopetown in case you're wondering) despite it being a profitable branch AND increasing the turnover year on year for the past three years.
Post office ltd gave two examples of alternative branches to use.. Albert road and Cockerton..
just try to park at either of those two branches an carry in parcels, (such as Will's). Cockerton shares a very busy stretch of parking spaces with several other businesses and at Albert Road the parking is very limited and to the rear, also, if no spaces are available, to go back round it requires the driver to negotiate TWO sets of traffic lights, which is far from ideal, I think you'll agree.
(my password's still missing so I'll just sign this now as ian chandler or disgusted of darlo etc)
Not hiding behind technology, just struggling with it!!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9_7FNkPmWKA
Not sure if you saw it, but there was a letter about this blog post in The Echo yesterday.
I'm not sure why anyone would write a letter about a two week old blog post to a newspaper, when they haven't even commented here, but there you go.
Haven't seen it: I'm not in Darlo at the moment and it's not available on-line.
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