Changing Post Office (Post Office Counters)

Member Name: sammyboy3

Product:	Post Office Counters
Date:	20/11/08 (166 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Physical place to send your item through the mail

Disadvantages: Has diversified too much

Post office counters is the former name for 'Post office ltd', basically they are the high St arm of the Royal Mail Group and in recent years have been undergoing a change-a BIG change.

In the old days they were there to sell you stamps, send letters and parcels and pay your pensions and allowances in cash over the counter e.g. child benefit etc, these days they seem to do anything but. These services have been steered towards the private sector i.e the government finding it cheaper to pay people their benefits through customers bank accounts. Not only this but bill payments like water.gas and electricity are all now cheaper to pay at services stations and newsagents. The tv licence cannot now be paid at your local Post Office.

Letter stamps are now cheaper to buy at your local pharmacy than they are at your local post office. All this gives people less and less reason to visit their Post Office and thus mass closures which have been going to for the last few years continue. The Post Office has being trying to diversify by launching products such as home telephone lines, credit cards,insurance and even mortgages in the last 4 or 5 years and has tried to push these at every oppurtunity through its branches.

This has resulted in people going in to send their annual Christmas gift and being met with counter staff giving them the sales pitch on car insurance and credit cards etc. Much to my annoyance when the only Post office for miles that hadn't been closed down tries to sell me a service i don't want thus increasing queues.

This practice of trying to sell things like extra insurance and credit cards has been going on for quite a few years in department stores and the like which is why i avoid them and shop online instead now, just wish the good old Post Office hadn't gone down this route.

I yearn for the old days when the Post Office did what it does best, an excellent postal service giving the customer what it he/she wants effectively and efficiently.

Hopefully they can return to that soon and it will find people flocking to its doors!

Summary: Needs to get back to basics