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The shortcomings of Royal Mail’s out-of-home delivery offering has been highlighted in a Daily Telegraph report that claims 50% of the company’s collection points are only open for 2 hours a day.
According to the English newspaper, 50% of Royal Mail’s 1,200 collection points are only open 2 hours during the week and 4 hours on Saturday.
Of those only open for 2 hours on weekdays, the opening times are from 08.00-10.00 from Monday to Friday and 08.00-12.00 on Saturday. The Telegraph adds that some of the collection points are also open between 14.00 and 16.00 on Thursdays.
Prior to covid, many of these collection points were open until 2pm. Naturally, even with these extended hours, persons with standard working hours will struggle to access a collection point during such a narrow time window.
In response to the Daily Telegraph’s report, a Royal Mail spokesperson said:
“We understand the importance that some customers attach to customer service points (CSPs) as one of a number of ways in which they can access our services. An increase in doorstep services, such as Parcel Collect and Safeplace, are helping us to enhance customer convenience and deliver more parcels first time. In May this year, we also introduced automatic redelivery of parcels the next working day across the UK for customers who are not at home when posties attempt to deliver the first time. Over 99 per cent of parcels are now successfully delivered to customers on the first or second delivery attempt. This is reducing the need for customers to collect parcels from CSPs. To keep pace with the changing behaviour of our customers, we have amended the opening hours of CSPs. We have a range of options free-of-charge for customers who want to arrange for an item to be redelivered.”
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