Dispatches: Post Office Undercover, Monday 8pm, C4

Posted by Stewart Turner

After a few months out of the limelight courtesy of their brothers and sisters over at British Airways, it was the turn of that other British business behemoth to be thrust back into the public consciousness last night. Some six years after they exposed the full horrors of your average Royal Mail sorting office, the Dispatches team returned to see if things have improved.

The answer was a predictably resounding ‘No’. It’s still a place where greetings cards are routinely torn open in the hope of snaffling some birthday money; and the back office is still a throwback to the bad old days of industrial strife, where workers will stage a wildcat strike if the management so much as propose changing the brand of teabags in the staff canteen.

A couple of undercover reporters posed as casual workers to dig the dirt, and did a sterling job, never once taking delivery of a fist in the face despite giving every member of staff a Paxmanesque grilling. They witnessed parcels frequently left under rose bushes and in the rain to enable posties to do their rounds quicker; rounds abandoned due to the merest smatterings of snow, and almighty backlogs of mail in the sorting offices as a result of an unofficial “go slow”.

But it wasn’t all one way traffic. The investigation also found that staff routinely have to do their rounds with substandard equipment, doing a job which is changing beyond recognition with the boom of online retailing and the back-breaking parcels and packages this entails. There was also some bizarrely localised bargaining on display, with one sorting office changing the working week from four days to five days and back again within the space of a week.

The overriding feeling is that Royal Mail needs someone to grab it by the balls and get it working as a unit. Local management having the power to switch shift patterns in such a slapdash fashion is frankly ludicrous, and despite the usual rogues’ gallery of bad apples, one feels that the posties’ concerns are grounded in at least some form of reality.

All in all, it was compelling viewing for anyone who’s ever been left in tears when Aunt Flossie’s birthday card turns up two weeks late with size 10 footprints all over it. Let’s hope Dispatches won’t have to head back again in 2015.

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Comments

[watchman2]

you are giving the postman a hard time for no valid reason I accept that there are unscrupulous people in every walk of life having been a postman my self I know whats involved in the job but I've got to ask WHY do you order goods from an online co knowing that full well you won't be in when your goods are delivered? but you're to ready to blame the mail

[julia]

The programme was spot on - I have started a file on my mishaps with the royal mail . Some fridge magnets sent to me arrived already rifled through - someone at the sorting office no doubt thought they were credit cards!

[jan]

the mamagemnet need a kick up the backside and get rid of the agency staff. London is a shambles and so are some of the other inner cities sadly again down to management and agancy staff , which could be put down to poeple not wanting to work in such cities. The general postie takes the brunt of all this being on the front line, ours is great and so are the surrounding villages posties so im told. they worked right through all the bad weather. Dont tar them all with the same brush, how come you dont get up in arms so much about the money thieving MP's or over paid management.

[lynn]

Posted my grandaughter's birthday card on 16th Jan first class to West Wickham Kent still not arrived. After watching last night programme it looks like it's not going to be delivered. Is mail for West Wickham sorted through Nine Elms, a hotbed of thieves highlighted in last nights programme.

[andy]

The public in general need to realise the blame lies clearly with the very poor management running the Royal Mail who are some of the best paid civil servants in the country. Why are they rewarded huge sums of money when clearly the service hasn't improved in the last 6years all they have achieved is a huge cash saving excercise by slash and burn. All intensional in order to privatise the Royal Mail as the only answer to the problems( yeh right ) come on people wake up to the real villians.

[Robbo]

It's a pity the Royal Mail gets all this flack when my postman and service is brilliant. Can't speak for the rest though.

[mike.allen]

i agree with some of the comments about not tarring all posties with the same brush as i am shore that the vast majority are very good.
however the programme showed me the two sides to the problem.
1.the greed of the workers at these centrers.
2.the poor management.
3.dispite the cost of the mail there was a total lack of funding to modernise these centrers although we are paying for them.
4.in the private sector if your working day is 8 hours then you work your 8 hours and not go home when you fed up.
5 what was worring also was the lack of security at the centres,how easy was it for some one to place a bomb or letter bomb to who ever it was to go to.
all in all this was not a good advert for both sides of the royal mail last night.
i feel sorry for the real hard working members of the royal mail.
lastly i to have been at home and had a can't delivery notice placed through my letter box,even though i am disabled.

[chas]

This programme shows us the downside of a powerful trades union. Just like the Seventies when the unions held the employers to ransom,sending businesses to the wall. Of course there are good postal workers out there,but I got the impression that theres a hard core of bolshie slackers who couldnt care less. As for the mostly useless agency staff,it's a shame they were needed in the first place.

[Tim]

Flush the union out of the RM and re-interview all of them for their jobs!

[Mitch]

PAT: Love it!! Can you apply for Prime Minister please!!

[Em]

My husband used to work for Royal Mail but things changed for the worse due to poor management. Lots of bad decisions, cutting services and quality of service. Glad my husband got out of there. A lot of the posties now just look physically drained.

[Jim]

Can't slate our postman here in St Helens. Not once in all of the bad weather we had did he not deliver, and our road was pretty bad.

[Slimfast Shady]

I watched Dispatches last night. It seemed to me that the majority of the dishonest postmen were Agency Workers. If that's the case, then there should be some repercussions on the Agency. What really worried me was the amount of casual workers who didn't seem to be able to speak English properly - how are they ever meant to read the addresses and know exactly where the post should go??!!!

[jimbob]

Up here in newcastle our local postman Mick is just brilliant.If we are not in he puts any parcels were we can find them, normally pre arranged,and any recorded he does his best to find us and not take it back to the depot

[David]

There are bad eggs in every type of job and with Royal Mail being the 2nd largest employer in the country (2nd only to the NHS), there are bound to be more than a handful of untrustworthy, lazy sherkers. Most postmen and women are honest, hardworking and trustworthy, and are willing to go that extra mile to provide an excellent service.
I work in a delivery office in the North of England and over the Xmas period the amount of wrongly and inadequately addressed undeliverable mail was shocking, running into many hundreds of items each day, all of which gets classed as 'missing' or 'stolen' by the customer.
People like those depicted in the Despatches programme represent a very small minority in a workforce of honest hardworking people.

[ang]

My postie here in Yorkshire is great! Makes great effort to ensure parcels are delivered, even using cat flap in back door to ensure delivery....if I am not in he calls on his way back to depot to try again...He is out on his bike in all weathers and even his cover provide an excellent service. yes sometimes mail can go astray, but please dont tar all posties with the same brush, many are excellent hard working members of the community

[HS]

Hey Simon the postman - don't know which part of England you live and work in, but you wouldn't consider relocating to my part of Liverpool, by any chance? Could do with someone like you here: we did not get mail for a staggering 10 consecutive days during the cold spell! (10 days in which I managed to get to work just fine, walking the same streets as the postie)and we don't live down some far off country lane but pretty close to the centre. One important letter we finally received on Jan 18th had been posted Dec 17th - quite some time before the snow, even taking Christmas into account! And we've had the 'mail left in bushes' scenario, parcels thrown into communal stairways (judging by the angle and distance of their landing) and I can't even remember the last time anyone in this building actually had to sign for a 'signed for' letter - a service senders pay premium for! No, it is not fair at all to tar all posties with one brush, but the lottery of service the customers are currently exposed to is equally unfair. Maybe we really do need to all relocate to Norwich?

[sue]

I found the programme to be terrible. London managers need to pull up their socks and get there staff organised and tell them what they need to be doing, Not the staff telling them.
I am a postie and where i work the staff are great and the management does a great job.

[mark]

i must say that having done some temp work at a sorting depot in the south-east a few years ago i was amazed at the blatant theft and bad attitude to work shown by a small minority of the workforce but 95% were good at their job as is my current postman who delivers whatever the weather,it`s a shame that a small percentasge of the workforce tar the rest with the same brush. we also used to walk in and out of the premesis with absolutely no checks made at all.

[Simon the postman]

I watched the program last night - no surprise there - dispatches find a few bone idle postmen and try to slate us all for the same thing!!

the postie that came back after 40 mins claiming it was too icy - should have been suspended for 'wilful delay of the mail'. as postmen and women we have the right to postpone delivery of mail if our safety is of concern (nobeody can argue with that) but it seemed obvious from the footage that the weather was not too bad there! myself, like many, many of my colleagues delivered mail over thye xmas period - KNEE DEEP in snow - and still managed to complete EVERY delivery!!!!!

please do not tar ua all with the same brush!

and this may sound like a stupid observation to an above post but DEEDEE - if you do not trust Royal Mail, you state we are all thieves, then why did you send a package via us?????

[Dave Bibby]

The programe was not an honest view of Royal Mail. The offices shown where probably some of the worst delivery offices in the Country, and Royal mail needs to address the dispatch programes findings imeadiatly.
I work in a delivery office in the south west and most of those postman would have been dismissed!
As for all the "I posted" comments we get thousands of letters and cards daily that havent been addressed properly ie only the recipients name (no address) or a completey miss matched address's! (are you sure you didnt mean to add the address later, when you had looked it up?) these items unless there is a return address in or outside the envelope, dont go anywhere!
as we have no idea where they came from.
Also there are dishonest people in every job, not just royal mail alone.
Most postmen work extreamly hard. If your that bothered about the service find somebody else to post your items with! and pay a massive premium!

[James, London]

I did some temping with the Wandsworth delivery office over Xmas, Dispatches brought it all back. Some great characters in the Royal Mail, helped me settle in quickly and gave great advice. BUT, some of the workers and management are a waste of space, total disregard for customer service. Some workers moaned about trivial things when there are a lot of people out of work. Management on a daily basis threatened temps with no pay if they didn't get the walks done and anyone with common sense could see they were overloading temps with way too much work and didn't set out any schedule regarding breaks, etc. Those trollies would be overloaded, bundles of mail and packets falling off yet they were eager just to get the mail out. As for security checks on the 1st day, forget it. And everyday going out was countless complaints from customers. Royal Mail needs to stop behaving like a bunch of children in the sand box and sort it out.

[Garvin]

I watched the program as many people did and feel I have to stick up for my postman. It is wrong to tar all postman with the same brush as the majority are honest and hard working. In the recent times with the snow and bad weather my post was delivered regardless of the conditions. I ask the question of how many people would be a postman, think of it, delivering in ALL weathers, good or bad. Seems to me the people that were highlighted last night were lazy with no concious.

[margaret]

You want good postal service and brilliant posties come to Norwich (or we would rather you did not as its getting a bit crowded here !!) if you want first class service thats where its at !!!!!!

[Ian]

I have worked for Royal Mail for the last 21 years in the south west and we are hard working and very trustful, our customers in the rural areas that we deliver to are very grateful of the quality of service we give, we are not all tarred with the same brush! Give us a break!

[DeeDee, London]

Listen to this! I sent a package on 18th January by 1st class recorded delivery and signed for, it is not as yet being delivered today is 9th February. Bunch of thieves are out there, i don't trust any of them.

[stephen halford]

what a joke should go all over the uksee what is like not just london post where iam has been bad for at least 10 years and is still as bad

[chris]

My postman posted a pair of ladies shoes through my letterbox, breaking the letterbox and ruining the shoes.Over a month later i have still not received any compensation.Their letter said that despite their investigations they cannot tell how the problem occured!They also stated that I had not included proof of posting, which I had.They have now promised me a cheque, but I am still waiting.

[David, Northern Ireland]

My mother posted a letter on 30th December 2009 and it still hasn't been delivered to the recipient!!