Amazon & alt. providers during strikes (was:Royal Mail loses £25m Amazon contract)

[Gingerman]

um, who else will deliver amazon stuff? I have only ever seen post office delivery people round here? How does that work then

DHL,Citylink etc,shame this is happening,usually get my Amazon stuff delivered by RM and when theyre unable to deliver its only a 10 min walk to the collection place,dont fancy having to trapse all over the place to collect from some private delivery co.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

What lots of people have pointed out and what I thought when I read the article is that if I order off Amazon in the future I now can't depend on picking up the parcel from the local sorting office. Either I have to go further elsewhere or they will knock on my neighbours door. As it happens, he's quite a nice bloke and will take in my parcel if I'm not there but I don't want a company disturbing my neighbour like this. Effectively, they are co-opting him into helping them with their deliveries for free. The current Royal Mail set-up of dropping off undelivered parcels to their own sorting office (nearly always local) should surely be promoted more as one of its key aspects of consumer appeal.

What the management and government have been doing over a period of time is destroying the Royal Mail by a thousand cuts - and when it comes to privitisation you'll see all the current management and ex-government ministers sitting on the board making millions in personal profits.

 

[marty21]

it is way more convenient to pick up a parcel from the sorting office down the road, I've had Amazon parcels delivered by courier and it is more difficult to arrange, I have to ring the courier company to make more arrangements for a package I've ordered and already made arrangements for. I'm disappointed in Amazon tbf, and I'm going to tell them that, they've made a fair bit of money off me over the years.

 

[weltweit]

According to the radio this morning Amazon are denying that they have cancelled their order with the PostOffice.

 

[marty21]

According to the radio this morning Amazon are denying that they have cancelled their order with the PostOffice.

hope that is the case, the home delivery network, who seemed poised to get the gig, are shit imo

 

[durruti02]

They don't want the Royal Mail to continue. The point is to wreck it. It's already been deliberately run down so that the "business is uneconomical", by selling off the bits which might have made it economical.

edit: to make clear, "they" here isn't Amazon of course, it's RM management and the government

this ^^ same as BR and lots of others .. then blame the workers .. classic

 

[kyser_soze]

The UK postal service is the only one in Europe that still sorts the majority of it's mail by hand. It has had the equipment to do this mechanically (as happens in Germany, France, Denmark etc) for over a decade, it just hasn't been used because of the 'threat' to jobs. Perhaps if 'the workers' had started dealing with the fact that the service the RM provides is shite 10 years ago they wouldn't be in this position now.

 

[editor]

£25m doesn't seem an awful lot of money considering the size of Amazon. I never forgave Royal Mail for getting rid of the trains and shoving all the traffic on to the roads and planes because it saved them thruppence or something.

 

[rhod]

What continues to amaze me is that the local newsagent type shops still haven't cottoned on to the fact that courier deliveries have become a major issue for huge numbers of people. If they'd offer a secure drop off & collect for maybe 50p per parcel I reckon they'd boost their trade by dozens of people a week. But I've been saying this for nigh on a decade and they just will not listen!

Looks like they have an interesting idea in Germany: The Packstation, an unattended drop off point that you can select and retrive your parcel using a PIN.

(Of course, they'd have to build the thing out of Titanium to resist the unwanted attention of vandals in the UK..but this could work, if they were located intelligently)

For example, I'm sure Tesco and DHL could come to a nice arrangement....

 

[marty21]

What continues to amaze me is that the local newsagent type shops still haven't cottoned on to the fact that courier deliveries have become a major issue for huge numbers of people. If they'd offer a secure drop off & collect for maybe 50p per parcel I reckon they'd boost their trade by dozens of people a week. But I've been saying this for nigh on a decade and they just will not listen!

/rant

sounds a good idea, I've heard it does happen in some places, but should happen more

 

[butchersapron]

The small contract with amazon hasn't been lost, amazon are simply looking at temp alternatives in the event of a national strike. Transparently slanted reporting designed to give anti-strike types a stick with which to beat the strikers, an opp taken up by an eager few here i see.

 

[marty21]

The small contract with amazon hasn't been lost, amazon are simply looking at temp alternatives in the event of a national strike. Transparently slanted reporting designed to give anti-strike types a stick with which to beat the strikers, an opp taken up by an eager few here i see.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5966IO20091008
true, they are looking at alternatives

the guardian

 

[Sesquipedalian]

]The small contract with amazon hasn't been lost, amazon are simply looking at temp alternatives in the event of a national strike. [/B]Transparently slanted reporting designed to give anti-strike types a stick with which to beat the strikers, an opp taken up by an eager few here i see.

Do you mean looking for poor people to break the backs of other poor people ?

 

[butchersapron]

I don't think the anti-strike types on this thread are particularly poor no.

 

[Sesquipedalian]

The small contract with amazon hasn't been lost, amazon are simply looking at temp alternatives in the event of a national strike. Transparently slanted reporting designed to give anti-strike types a stick with which to beat the strikers, an opp taken up by an eager few here i see.

Do you mean very poor people being encouraged to break the backs of poor people ?

 

[butchersapron]

Not really no.

 

[Sesquipedalian]

Please excuse my double post.

 

[glenquagmire]

The UK postal service is the only one in Europe that still sorts the majority of it's mail by hand. It has had the equipment to do this mechanically (as happens in Germany, France, Denmark etc) for over a decade, it just hasn't been used because of the 'threat' to jobs. Perhaps if 'the workers' had started dealing with the fact that the service the RM provides is shite 10 years ago they wouldn't be in this position now.

Is this satire or is there anyone on U75 stupid enough to believe this?

 

[Spion]

Is this satire or is there anyone on U75 stupid enough to believe this?

I took it as genuine. Kyser's 'an anarchist' but of the variety that seems to have acquired the affectation from hanging round on bulletin boards rather than any connection to workplace struggles.

 

[kyser_soze]

Ah yes, because supporting a dying organisation and a 'workplace struggle' that is doomed in the long term is so utterly worthwhile and fulfills all the credentials of being an anarchist.

The RM is a pile of shite from it's senior management down to the shop floor - it's a vision of most of UK industry in the 1970s frozen in aspic.

 

[Spion]

Ah yes, because supporting a dying organisation and a 'workplace struggle' that is doomed in the long term is so utterly worthwhile and fulfills all the credentials of being an anarchist.

The RM is a pile of shite from it's senior management down to the shop floor - it's a vision of most of UK industry in the 1970s frozen in aspic.

Well, yeah. Being an anarchist is such a vague thing that you really can be what you wanna be, man.

Having said that, those anarchists that are w/c and workplace focussed will tell you that while the jobs and organisations that currently exist may be a 'pile of shite' the bosses should not be allowed to dictate whether people make a living or not according to profitability and that the point is to take control of workplaces and make them socially useful. You won't be able to do that if you've let them be destroyed by failing to organise against the bosses' attacks.

It's ABC for some people. It's clearly an alien concept to others

 

[glenquagmire]

If your knowledge of RM is based on the half-baked recycled management propaganda above then I'd hazard a guess that you really haven't got a clue what it's like.

Workers holding back mechanical progress blah blah utter bullshit.

 

[newbie]

Looks like they have an interesting idea in Germany: The Packstation, an unattended drop off point that you can select and retrive your parcel using a PIN.

(Of course, they'd have to build the thing out of Titanium to resist the unwanted attention of vandals in the UK..but this could work, if they were located intelligently)

For example, I'm sure Tesco and DHL could come to a nice arrangement....

I heard of something like that at a petrol station, but I'm not aware of one anywhere near me.

 

[butchersapron]

They've still got this story up as the lead item on the website, with a last date of 11:11 today - hours after amazon put out their denial of the story. They're normally quite quick to publish updates etc - i wonder why not this time? It's actually been modified since amazon's statement but with the headline and substantive content remaining exactly the same.

 

[ExtraRefined]

A hahahhahahahahahah

Fuck royal mail, fuck it right in the ear

 

[ska invita]

The fact is the mail, like hospitalis and schools, doesnt necessarily have to make a profit. It is a service in the national interest and should be protected by the state. That doesnt mean that it is immune from being modernised, but the fact that Labour have turned their back on it is a tragedy IMO.

Mandellson's part-privatisation is clearly as good as it gets from Labour - a policy that was just the not-too-thin end of a much thicker wedge. Posties are up for reasonable reforms, but Ive heard stories of some insane and bang out of order changes to shifts and work practices. The mood is that its deliberate sabotage.

 

[Pickman's model]

Ah yes, because supporting a dying organisation and a 'workplace struggle' that is doomed in the long term is so utterly worthwhile and fulfills all the credentials of being an anarchist.

The RM is a pile of shite from it's senior management down to the shop floor - it's a vision of most of UK industry in the 1970s frozen in aspic.

you don't freeze things in aspic.

 

[marty21]

I don't know why successive governments have tampered with the royal mail, it was , and could be a great institution, and needs to stay in state hands, to provide the service it used to be able to provide, no problem with modernising it, but it needs to be done in consultation with the unions

and they need to learn a lesson from the fiasco of rail privitisation, which has fucked up rail transport rather than improve it

 

[Pickman's model]

The fact is the mail, like hospitalis and schools, doesnt necessarily have to make a profit.

businesses don't necessarily have to make a profit: i think you might mean that the rm shouldn't be expected to make a profit.

 

[DarthSydodyas]

They don't want the Royal Mail to continue. The point is to wreck it. It's already been deliberately run down so that the "business is uneconomical", by selling off the bits which might have made it economical.

Sounds a little like what happened with Visteon