Everyone knows what the Royal Mail is and what they do or well try to do which is deliver post for people who live in the UK. They offer a number of options for the delivery of mail across the UK and also for international delivery.Royal Mail Group plc is a public limited company and is owned by the Government. The Royal Mail group offers you various options for delivering your various letters and parcels.

On their website the company states :"Our vision is to be demonstrably the best and most trusted postal services company in the world."

Recently the Royal Mail has been in the news because of various disruptions to postal delivery caused by strikes by their workers. This has led to them having to hire 30,000 members of temporary staff to deal with the backlog. During the strikes earlier this year, figures show the backlog of mail reached around 30million. There are threats of strikes which could cause Christmas chaos. Other figures show that around 120million letters and parcels are sent every day during the Christmas rush, compared to a 'normal' volume of around 75million. This obviously means the backlog of post would be even higher then normal. Online retailers were hit hard by postal strikes during the middle-half of October, according to the latest research from internet industry body the IMRG suggests that the cost to these online retailers was somewhere around the £53 million mark.

My personal experience of the Royal Mail has been quite mixed. They do the job of delivering mail but not always effectively. Recently items I have purchased online as well as others have been delayed by the strikes. Another issue is the time of delivery of post. The idea of having your post delivered in the morning is no longer really expected. If you get your post before lunchtime that is probably a bonus. The service from the Royal Mail has certainly reduced in quality and if it wants to be the best postal service in the world that it sets out to be then huge improvements will have to be made and also an end to all these strikes and major disruptions.