I visited the post office today to return the Skypephones which 3mobilebuzz had kindly loaned me. 3mobilebuzz also kindly provided me with two pre-paid Special Delivery bags to return them in. You would think this would speed up the process of sending them back and that’s where you’re wrong.

In addition to the pre-payment, 3mobilebuzz put about £1.25 of stamps on each bag. It turned out they didn’t need to but it deeply confused the employees at the local post office. It took 2 employees roughly 10 minutes to realise that all I wanted to do was to send them (”No, I don’t need more insurance”) which really annoyed me. To their credit, they remained courteous and polite throughout this riddle!

A few months ago, I had a different (and opposite) experience:

I was trying to send a DVD to my good friend Dan and being the organised type of person which I am I used Royal Mail’s Online Postage service. Sadly, I underestimated the weight of the package and when I tried to hand it over at the Post Office I received evil glares.

It took the elderly post office employee several minutes to realise she could stick stamps onto a prepaid envelope (she had to confer with 2 other staff members first) and when she finally realised this she did everything she could to charge me more (such as claiming it was thicker than 25mm when it obviously was not) and trying to sell me insurance. She took a patronising tone when she obviously did not realise that you could print postage online!

Another issue which is happening with the Post Office locally: they plan to shut their main post office in a town of well over 100,000 people and move it into the basement of a chain shop in a shopping centre!

You would think the Post Office would be up-to-date but it’s only this year when they’ve started offering broadband!

Any of you had problems with the Post Office (not the Royal Mail) in Britain or indeed in your nation?

Tags: post office, royal mail