Penguin68

I can assure you that customer satisfaction was taken very seriously. At one time BT (through its Telcare system) was contacting about 1% of customers monthly who had any transactions (fault report, order etc.) with BT to track customer QoS response. That was a huge piece of continuous research (and I too worked in MR, for BT, at the time). Certainly 'mystery shopping' of transactions would be useful, but quite unlikely to pick up the problems we have in SE22. I would guess close to 100% of Sylvester road customers have had at least one missed delivery since mid July - and many probably 2-3 a week. As for timely delivery...! That sort of failure will not be picked up on any sample survey or mystery shop. Neither will the problems at 1 pick-up point in a sorting office. Mystery shopping does not equate to customer opinion gathering. And I have to say that the problems we face at the moment are exceptional. I doubt if any current survey is being designed to pick up the levels of failure we are experiencing. As far as I know there was no attempt to determine customer needs before the office was closed, indeed every attempt to ignore feedback being offered by e.g. our MP. And certainly no attempt to gauge customer experience now. At least none that I have seen. Has any reader of this forum been approached by a researcher on behalf of Royal Mail about this change? I would be happy to stand corrected...

You're just not getting it, are you? The only remedy that Southwark will offer for any road problem will involve the reduction of car parking spaces. The ruling party is on record, indeed it formed I think part of their manifesto, as wishing to reduce private car ownership in the borough - removing car parking spaces is a route to that, as is pricing out car ownership via CPZs. Other suggestions made by residents on this forum do not involve the reduction of private car space in the borough, so are not acceptable to the council. The fact that less parking will tend to increase car speeds (humps notwithstanding) is irrelevant to the great cause, to make us fully reliant on the public transport we don't happen to have at this end of the borough (or to force pensioners and the disabled to take-up biking - which should at least end up freeing up housing in the borough). If the answer is not reducing parking space, then the question was wrong in the first place.

Conways is installing new road humps in Underhill (just passed Belvoir) and in Melford. Which is such a speedway already! No notification as far as I can see to anyone, but then if it was sent by post we wouldn't have received it yet.

I would be happy for Royal Mail to be unprivatised. If that is a word. This is not a panacea. I worked for the nationalised Post Office (in the Telecommunications Division, before BT was privatised) - and poor management decisions were by no means unusual, exacerbated by political interference. The Post Office was a government cash-cow - with revenues being syphoned off for Government Expenditure, hence the complete lack of investment in the Telecomms business. In the 10 years after BT privatising ?20bn was invested in the network (and real charges dropped for customers). Before that BT had had to 'lend' the government ?200m a year from its revenues. BT turned itself around by putting customer satisfaction as its chief performance measure when it came to remuneration target setting. I cannot remember if I have ever been asked my opinion of customer service delivery by the Royal Mail - can anyone? If you don't, or won't, listen to your customers then, private or public, you are likely to fail. And rightly so. The problem is that a failing Royal Mail still has no competitor for domestic postal (letter) services.

attempts to complain on line it seems that a complaint has to be made in the first instance to Royal Mail I believe that is correct, but I also believe that sufficient complaints/ attempts to complain have been made to Royal Mail, together with attempts by our MP to stop this initial move happening (warning of problems) for at least the issue to be raised with Ofcom. An entire community is being poorly served. I know that, in the old days, I (my household) received at least one and often more than one item of mail every day - when I don't receive mail I can be pretty sure that either there has been no postman passing my house, or that the mail is not being sorted. I can't (of course) prove a negative, but when I get 10 or more items delivered together (posted, where that is marked, over a large number of days) after an absence of any deliveries for 2 or 3 days, I can reasonably assume a failure either of sorting or delivery. Neither should be failing.

See my posts above - our next port of call needs to be OfCom - and I believe that a complaint from Councillors in the two wards mainly affected (Dulwich Hill and Goose Green) - possibly supported by our MP, is appropriate, as this is a failure impacting an entire community, rather than just individuals. Royal Mail has an implicit contract (it may even be explicit) to offer postal deliveries to residential addresses on 6 working days, and to deliver first class mail within a day of posting. It is clearly, and consistently, failing on that. Additionally regular one hour waits to collect undelivered mail (outside times of high impact, such as Christmas) cannot be considered acceptable. I would be happy for Royal Mail to be instructed to remedy this situation, and to be fined the value of any profit they have made from the sale of Sylvester Road, as an encouragement not to act so stupidly again.

James You will be aware of the problems surrounding the closure of Sylvester Road sorting office and the consistent failure of Royal Mail to deliver (in more ways than 95) to its service commitments. http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?5,1804279,page=8. I believe that the failure is sufficiently widespread that a community response to Ofcom is justified, and believe that this might best be addressed through an approach from local councillors (in yours and Dulwich Hill ward) acting for the community, as it the whole community and not just individual customers who are being let down. I have linked to the most active thread discussing this on the forum. Our local MP, who has been sympathetic towards the problem, might also wish to join in such a community response, and her name and position would carry weight.

I was so fed up with virgin media that I ditched them a year ago for EE broadband - Which uses (EE) BT infrastructure in the ground, though it may have 'its own' racks in the exchange. EE is of course now owned by BT Group.

I am clear that we need, collectively, to complain to OfCom about this (I posted a link earlier). The entire community in ED is being badly let down by an enterprise which is required to deliver daily, Monday to Saturday and to deliver first class post 'next day'. Occasional lapses are forgivable but this has been a consistent problem in this area at least since the end of July. This seems an ideal moment for our elected representatives in the council and Parliament to jointly or severally raise this issue with Ofcom. The problems involved with missed deliveries and the failure to properly staff the Peckham Office is another dereliction of duty. This is ceasing to be 'teething problems' and becoming a total failure to plan. The option of 'redelivery' isn't one when postman are not visiting or passing houses daily. And it is one which is impacting all those (mainly in SE22) formerly served from Sylvester Road. This is a community issue and should have a community response.

One problem is that we have few (any?) outlets now open 24/7 in ED. Probably our best location would be a late opening pub. Interestingly we resist applications for 24/7 opening - although this does often offer benefits.

I think you have to recall the density in SE London of both urban foxes and domestic cats. The apparent number of incidents around us may be explained simply by that statistic. Lots of cats in built up areas with traffic and lots of foxes. And once the suggestion of 'attacks' was made incidents that would otherwise have gone unnoticed began to be aggregated as a pattern.

I think there are three issues here which are being confounded. (1) Was it right to close Sylvester Road? ? The sorting office is Edwardian, is no longer fit for purpose (as claimed by the PO and not disputed by the unions) and does not offer staff the sort of facilities they would now expect. Closing the sorting office and disposing of the asset is not an unreasonable business decision. PO staff who will now receive Inner London weighting through being Peckham based also clearly benefit and that, with improved staff facilities, may well explain the low key union response to this change. (2) Can people in ED be delivered mail from a sorting office in Peckham? ? Again, it seems entirely possible to do so ? problems in current delivery may stem either from backlog from the closing Sylvester Road or normal teething problems of changing a system. I would give it a month (say to mid October) to allow changes to bed-in and only pursue the PO for failure to meet standards (6 deliveries a week, Monday to Saturday to domestic premises, first class mail delivered next day) if they are continuing to fail then. (3) Is Collection of undelivered mail from Peckham an acceptable substitute for collection from Sylvester Road? Here it is clear that the location, lack of parking and long queues already being experienced suggest that an alternative collection point more local to SE22 is an immediate requirement. It is this issue which most effects people and where it is unlikely that time will prove any remedy. This is the area where ED people have and will continue to suffer a significant degradation of service. It is here that effort (assuming the issue at (2) is resolved) should be focused. Amended to say that although I have had deliveries (and slightly better than immediately before the move) they are still intermittent and late. The 'service' received since late July from the Post Office has been a disgrace, for whatever reason. These should be our first port of call at this stage. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/postal-services The Post Office is failing in its duties to us.

The report suggested clear evidence of blunt force trauma in many cases consistent with auto injuries. The foxes weren't killers but scavengers. The majority of deaths probably were directly caused by humans, but accidently in vehicles. I'm rather relieved there is no malicious intent.

BT, directly or via 3rd parties as a wholesaler, is the only other company that provides actual infrastructure. It's either a cable company, Virgin, or BT. Nobody else is in the business for domestic customers.

Teddy Roosevelt's maxim ('speak softly and carry a big stick') might be entirely, and literally, apposite here.

I think there's quite a difference between parking across a drive and parking on it. But if you parked on someone else's drive they would need to take a private prosecution out for trespass - neither the council nor the police can respond to otherwise legal parking - which all parking on private property would be, unless otherwise stated. If you had a problem as a drive owner I would put a notice saying cars parked without permission on your land would be clamped and released only after payment of a ?150 fee, or seized and disposed of if left for 7 days or more. And buy a clamp and do it. The law then would be entirely on your side, I believe.

You cannot drop a curb at will. The local authority must agree to do the work for a fee. So if they are doing the work then permission will have been granted. It's not part of the building planning permission bureaucracy however I believe, but Highways department. So neighbours will not be consulted. As I understand it.

Mugging of school children around the fee paying schools locally has a long history, certainly as long as my 30 years living around here. It comes in waves. It's awful when it happens to you or yours, but it is not a new phenomenon, and certainly not one which might lead you to think that 'things' are suddenly going downhill from some former halcyon era.

Do be careful what you wish for. TfL and Southwark combined have an amazing capacity for creating the worst possible solutions (taking the most time and costing the most money) to any traffic problem - I can't imagine what the worst solution for this very real problem will be, but trust me, 'they' will find and implement it.

Unless you have a tracking number there is no point in pursuing undelivered mail in Sylvester Road over the last few days there - apparently there is too much unsorted mail and they can't be bothered with looking through it out of order. Let's hope they clear the backlog before they move! My postie today was seconded from North London - nice guy but the walk was entirely new to him. He did suggest to me (he didn't directly say this) that the lack of union enthusiasm in disputing this move may be associated with the fact that the staff moving will be moving to Inner London - which offers a further ?1,300 on London Weighting for them - together with better staff facilities in the Peckham office. Can't blame them really.

The failure to patrol properly, or at all, well pre-dates any budget cuts locally - even when we did have a part-time police station in LL. I can recall 15 or more years ago widespread mugging for phones of school children. Both my children were mugged for their phones, almost all their contemporaries were as well. This lawlessness is neither new nor a symptom of 'Tory cuts'. Both children were mugged during Labour's tenure. Bike and moped robberies may be new, but robbery itself certainly isn't.

I spoke to my postie yesterday - he had been away on Thursday and Friday (his leave isn't covered) and on Saturday there was too much post to carry for his whole walk - so he delivered half his walk on Saturday and the remainder yesterday. When the sorting office moves to Peckham he (sadly) won't be on my walk, although still delivering in ED. I too have a political journal which is meant to be delivered on Friday's - a Monday or Tuesday delivery does make it somewhat outdated.

When we had regular deliveries I would expect at least one item a day, frequently more. Recently our postie has had to make two deliveries in a day (on a couple of occasions) because there was so much undelivered mail on his walk he couldn't take it all out in one go (because of no deliveries on days he wasn't on duty). It will only get worse when the move from Sylvester is completed, I fear. The 'contract' we have with the Post Office is that they deliver to all mainland UK addresses on 6 days a week. That contract has now been significantly breached in ED over this summer (previously deliveries were generally good except at times e.g. of flu epidemics etc.). Outwith issues of moving the sorting office I feel that our elected representatives might wish to take the Post Office to account for failing in its basic duty. There is no point in requesting re-delivery when even first deliveries are frequently failing. Amended to add - my post has just been delivered (!) - 19 items of mail and a parcel. A ridiculous load for a hard working postie if my delivery is typical. But this is what happens when you are only getting 2-3 deliveries a week.

We only get 2 or 3 deliveries a week on Underhill, below Langton Rise. Nothing since Thursday. It's getting ridiculous.

Sorry, but isn't it unusual for personal bank customers to have much need to pay-in cash? Perhaps emptying change jars annually (and there is a change sorter in Sainsbury's on DKH I believe). Cheques are different, but mainly these can be paid in on-line over smart phone aps. and some banks (e.g. Lloyds) have cheque readers for deposits inside the branch if you don't have a smart phone. Clearly there are the un-smart-phoned (I have already noted) - but cash paying-in tends to be a business issue, and DF said there was a business customer counter in the bank. Withdrawing cash is a different issue, but this seems to be catered for. Or am I missing something?