Royal Mail: ‘a calculated step to run down the postal service’

• EARLY this year Royal Mail posted notice in small print on most of their convenient side-street pillarboxes to the effect that their only guaranteed weekday collection of letters would, in future, be made at the pointlessly early hour of 9am.

The 4pm collection (itself already too early for many private and business customers) would go. At that time I protested to them by letter and verbally encouraged others to do so. I would not know if this had any effect because my protest was not acknowledged and I saw no public announcement about a change of mind.

But the 4pm collection did, in fact, continue, until this week, when, without further notice, collections were suddenly and silently restricted to 9am only on weekdays.

Royal Mail, of course, knows that this timing for a collection, combined with the increasingly late delivery of mail, all of which makes a nonsense of first-class postage rates, is a calculated step taken to run down the postal service.

I urge everyone who values that and wants to save it to get in touch with Royal Mail at: Royal Mail Customer Services (Freepost) or by telephone at 03457 740740, where there is a labyrinth of options but reasoned complaints will eventually be heard with courtesy and passed on.

ALAN BROWNJOHN
Belsize Park, NW3