After their previous attempts to close the Whitchurch sorting office Adam Crozier and his cabal of money grabbing bastards have finally achieved it. And showing that I’m not cynical enough they laid the foundations with their failed 2005 bid to close it.
It’s clear now that they decided in 2005 to close the office, and were never going to change their minds, just delay it until the anger had diminished1. In 2005 they sold the building, to emphasise – THEY SOLD THE BUILDING, and leased it out after that for £10,000 a year. How the hell does that make sense? It doesn’t, it was merely a way to justify an economic case in the future.
They’re also still claiming the one large truck taken off the road will save money compared to small trucks going to Basingstoke and back, I find it hard to believe, if it was cheaper they’d already be doing it, but they’re not.
Still the ‘good’ news is that they’re waiving the 50p charge to collect anything from the Post Office. So lets look at why that’s a shit idea from someone who’s clearly an out-of-towner. First the obvious bits.
- You have to phone before 5pm to arrange a redelivery, so you won’t be able to sort it out when you get back from work, it’ll have to be the next morning
- And by the next morning you wont be able to re-arrange the delivery for that day, so it would have to be the day after
- Or you can arrange for the post office collection, which has the same problem as above, but you can’t collect until after midday
So these are the obvious issues everyone faces, now the Whitchurch-centric bits. One of the great things with the sorting office were the opening times, from 6:30 to 12:30 (IIRC). So although you couldn’t get get them after work, you could go down in the morning or go for lunch at 12 and walk quickly down the town. At least you had those choices. The Post Office opens somewhen, I’m not sure exactly and neither are the Royal Mail. The times are not on their website, but I’m pretty sure it’s 9-5. So you can’t go before or after work, but you might be able to get there at lunch. If there isn’t a queue, which there always is because it’s a Post Office, not a sorting office.
Except it isn’t a Post Office, here’s the kicker, it’s a fucking cupboard in the back of a fucking Tesco express. At the moment there’s barely enough room for the 2 members of staff, the stuff they need in there and the post to go out. They won’t have a change of fitting in even 10% of the deliveries that come from the sorting office. So how will they inform you that the parcel you’ve arranged to collect after 12 isn’t there? Almost definitely by telling you it isn’t there after you’ve queued for ages to get it. And the queuing won’t be fun, there is only just room for a 1 person queue, any more than that and you get in someone’s way when they’re trying to shop. a 5 person queue fills up half an aisle and will piss off shoppers, post office users and most importantly Tesco.
I’m not taking bets on the Post Office being open in 3 years. It won’t be.
1 It’s the New Labour theory of anger if you fuck up often enough people will get tired of being angry at you (see: Iraq war, the Terrorism act, RIP act, Student fees, Peter Mandelson, more privatisation, special rendition, ID cards etc…)