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Your postman

Miss Chicken

Miss Chicken

Little three legged cat with attitude
Admiral
According to this article in an effort to cut cost Royal Mail have told postmen to walk faster (4 mph instead of the previous 2.4 mph).

I gather from the article that in Britain most postmen deliver by foot. Also they have to walk up to people's front doors to put mail in the slit. Is that so?

Here in Australia we have to have a letter box at the front of our property and the vast majority of deliveries are done by a postie on a motorbike. The only exception to this is the the CBD where the postman is on foot pushing a trolley.

I also gather that in the USA you can leave mail in your letterbox and the postman picks it up. Is that so? We don't do that in Australia but years ago when the postman used to be on foot we could hand him a letter that needed posting.
 
You can leave a letter in the mailbox and they will pick it up for you. I am in NY nad they deliver on foot. Most people have mailboxes on the house itself. Some suburbs have the mailbox by the curb and get delivery by truck/van.
 
Where I live, the posties walk or use a bicycle as it's a small town with it's own sorting office. But in more remote areas vans are used. And yes, we mainly have letterboxes in our doors here in the UK.
 
Miss L. Toe said:
According to this article in an effort to cut cost Royal Mail have told postmen to walk faster (4 mph instead of the previous 2.4 mph).

I gather from the article that in Britain most postmen deliver by foot. Also they have to walk up to people's front doors to put mail in the slit. Is that so?

Here in Australia we have to have a letter box at the front of our property and the vast majority of deliveries are done by a postie on a motorbike. The only exception to this is the the CBD where the postman is on foot pushing a trolley.

I also gather that in the USA you can leave mail in your letterbox and the postman picks it up. Is that so? We don't do that in Australia but years ago when the postman used to be on foot we could hand him a letter that needed posting.
Click to expand...

Small town, apartment complex. Our postman drives a postal truck to deliver mail, and walks inside our apartment complex to deliver mail. In our particular complex we can't send outgoing mail (which is annoying as I have Netflix).

J.
 
In my neighborhood our postman (Steve) walks because it's an older neighborhood with all the mailboxes on the houses.
 
Parcels in Australia are delivered by van and rhe postman brings it to the front door though if the parcel is small and the letter box isn't locked the postie might leave it in the letter box. If no-one iis t home that a note if left for you to pick the parcel up at the nearest post office.
 
Instead of telling them to walk faster they should try and get them to make sure the mail actually gets to the customer.

It's unbelievable how many times my mail has been lost and just out of sheer laziness how often they'll come with a package during the day and have the 'Sorry we missed you...' slip written out before they even knock on the door.

On a day I was waiting for a parcel, I actually watched a mail van park outside, write the note in his van then towards the door.

And I've sent out paperwork to customers, paid for next day delivery (which should really be a first class stamp) and on multiple occasions it'll take a few days to get there.
 
You can leave mail in your box to be picked up??!!!?? I'll be damned! I wonder if they'll do that for me.
 
In my neighborhood, which is a VERY large subdivision, we have community mailboxes, which are the end of the block. I only have to walk past one house and go around the corner to get my mail. It has an "outgoing" slot also, and they will pick up mail from there for us.

The postal worker drives up in a mail truck, puts all the mail in the boxes and then shuts the main cover. Our individual keys will open up the personal boxes, which are just numbered but don't always correspond to the house numbers. (1-20, etc). Often, packages are left in the large "package" drawer, and the postman drops the key in your box, so you know to go get your package. Sometimes, if the package is too big or the boxes are already full, he'll just ring the doorbell, drop the package and run.

It's a good thing my front door is hidden from the street. I don't know how many times I've come home to find a package just lying by my door.
 
auntiehill said:
In my neighbourhood we have community mailboxes, which are the end of the block. It has an "outgoing" slot also, and they will pick up mail from there for us.

The postal worker drives up in a mail truck, puts all the mail in the boxes and then shuts the main cover. Our individual keys will open up the personal boxes, which are just numbered but don't always correspond to the house numbers. (1-20, etc). Often, packages are left in the large "package" drawer, and the postman drops the key in your box, so you know to go get your package.
Click to expand...

This is how it works for us too.
 
The postmen in my area always look really stressed, like they've too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Also, we live in a hilly area, so they are always slogging uphill with heavy sacks.
 
You know, I think Royal Mail do a pretty good job.

Leaving aside the ridiculous tendency for our local depot to go on strike (which happily seems to have subsided over the past couple of years), they're good at their job. I send lots of stuff out (part-time online sales business/hobby) and receive a fair bit too, and they're good at both sides of the equation. I'm out most of the day so I have a verbal agreement with the Special Delivery/Parcelforce guy to just leave stuff for me at the local Post Office rather than making me go through the while-you-were-out-card redelivery procedure and that works out well since I pop in there regularly. And the regular mail gets delivered fine too. So yeah, I'm happy with the service I get. This is despite my city of Oxford being listed in the article as a "problem area". Maybe I'm just lucky with the local guys.
 
Miss L. Toe said:
According to this article in an effort to cut cost Royal Mail have told postmen to walk faster (4 mph instead of the previous 2.4 mph).

I gather from the article that in Britain most postmen deliver by foot. Also they have to walk up to people's front doors to put mail in the slit. Is that so?

Here in Australia we have to have a letter box at the front of our property and the vast majority of deliveries are done by a postie on a motorbike. The only exception to this is the the CBD where the postman is on foot pushing a trolley.

I also gather that in the USA you can leave mail in your letterbox and the postman picks it up. Is that so? We don't do that in Australia but years ago when the postman used to be on foot we could hand him a letter that needed posting.
Click to expand...

Yes, in Britain, post is delivered through a slot in your front door ('letterbox', although on most houses not in any sense a box) by a postman on foot, although he may have a pedal cycle to get between roads and carry the post. Parcels of significant size are delivered by van by a separate company called Parcel Force.

I doubt 'postman' is politically correct anymore. Mail Delivery Technician, probably.
 
As far as I know, our postpersons are rotated, and we hardly ever get the same one twice. The upside to that is, if there's a crap one who delivers to wrong doors, you won't be stuck with him forever...
 
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