Royal Mail new collection times

[Nigello]

Lots of the pillar boxes I’ve seen recently in SE22 each have a sticker saying that collection tiles will change to “no earlier than 09:00” on weekdays. It’ll be 07:00 on Saturdays.

This is compared to the usual 17:30/18:00 now. So, seeing as most people send mail during the day and often in the afternoon, their sent mail will be take one more day to arrive. 

 

[Burbage]

They've done this for a lot of postboxes, if not most of them, already. And, as you suggest, it's a smallprint way of delivering a second-class service at first-class prices, while saving Ofcom the trouble of having to hand Royal Mail its customary annual fine and, entirely coincidentally, boosting sales of the highly profitable premium services that keep its griftily indolent managers in yachts and bacon.

However, it might have broader implications. For example, the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Appeal and, by extension other courts, currently harbour the quaint 20th-Century belief that:

"The court will assume a document was served.. where it was posted by first class post or equivalent, the second working day after it was posted."

Or, to cite one of the examples from Practice Direction 6A of the Civil Procedure Rules:

"Where the document is posted (by first class post) on a bank holiday Monday, the day of deemed service is the following Wednesday (a business day)."

Which means that, should anyone post anything that matters by first-class post, the courts will presume that it arrived on the second working day after it was posted, regardless of whether it did or not, and it may be up to you to prove that it didn't, with all the no evidence you've got.

[Mabaker]

Can the service get any worse? I'm still waiting for my first class posted plants that were sent out seven days ago. No doubt I will eventually get them......dead! I thought I would try going to the sorting office to ask them to look. It is closed during the day between 10 and 4. How I long for the days when I could just go to Silvester Rd, more or less any time.