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Royal mail really seems to be lacking in the innovation department - this is the first innovation I've seen for years. Ideas for other improvements to their se

Royal mail really seems to be lacking in the innovation department - this is the first innovation I've seen for years. Ideas for other improvements to their service: * Ability for the recipient of a parcel to pay to expedite things. Ie. "Pay £10/month, and all parcels sent to your address will be delivered in 24h, even if the sender only paid for slow shipping". * Auto convert all incoming letters to emails. Should save them delivery costs, especially when the sender uses the reverse service. * A premium 'I need it now' service where you pay say £200 and an Uber driver is dispatched on a motorbike direct from the parcels current location to you. * 'Choose address later' service for sender's. I package up an item and send it to royal mail, and later can tell royal mail where to deliver it. Would be very handy for online shops. Royal mail then becomes an Amazon logistics competitor. * Packaging service. Frequently I have an item I want to send, ie. A laptop, but no packaging materials. When I request a collection, I should be able to request they bring packaging materials too and pack it for me (for a fee obviously).

nickt 2y ago
> * Auto convert all incoming letters to emails. Should save them delivery costs, especially when the sender uses the reverse service. Back in the 1990’s when I moved away from the UK they had the opposite service. You send an email and the Royal Mail sends it as a letter. I forget the name of the service but it was a good way to “email” someone before everyone had email. I still think it’d be nice to have today.
kotaKat 2y ago
I want to see more countries adopting stampcodes. I feel like being able to buy postage 'on the fly' with a phone and a pen would help boost services. https://www.postnord.se/en/private/sending/letters-and-parcels/digital-stamps/ https://www.postnord.se/en/private/sending/letters-and-parce...
rafram 2y ago
> A premium 'I need it now' service where you pay say £200 and an Uber driver is dispatched on a motorbike direct from the parcels current location to you. Until your parcel arrives at a local facility, it’s likely in a gigantic stack along with hundreds of others heading to the same destination area. There would be no way to retrieve it early without spending hours breaking that stack apart, searching it, and putting it back together. Postal logistics just doesn’t work that way. > 'Choose address later' service for sender's. I package up an item and send it to royal mail, and later can tell royal mail where to deliver it. Would be very handy for online shops. Royal mail then becomes an Amazon logistics competitor. This would require a lot of warehouse space that they don’t have. They could spend the money to acquire it, but why? Shouldn’t they focus on their core service instead of trying to branch out into a totally separate field that they’ll have a hard time competing in?
- londons_explore 2y ago
  > likely in a gigantic stack Well £200 pays for many hours of labour to go though that stack... And with postal volumes dropping, there is plenty of excess labour and equipment to do so. Besides, if this service saw any substantial use, it would be worth splitting all big stacks into crates of just a few hundred items each.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  > Shouldn’t they focus on their core service instead of trying to branch out Their core service (sending letters) has seen declining per capita volumes ever since the invention of the telephone. They need to branch out or die. The fact they have an employee visit every address in the nation every day gives them a huge benefit to getting into loads of businesses other companies wouldn't have a chance at.

nickt 2y ago

> * Auto convert all incoming letters to emails. Should save them delivery costs, especially when the sender uses the reverse service. Back in the 1990’s when I moved away from the UK they had the opposite service. You send an email and the Royal Mail sends it as a letter. I forget the name of the service but it was a good way to “email” someone before everyone had email. I still think it’d be nice to have today.

kotaKat 2y ago

I want to see more countries adopting stampcodes. I feel like being able to buy postage 'on the fly' with a phone and a pen would help boost services. https://www.postnord.se/en/private/sending/letters-and-parcels/digital-stamps/ https://www.postnord.se/en/private/sending/letters-and-parce...

rafram 2y ago

> A premium 'I need it now' service where you pay say £200 and an Uber driver is dispatched on a motorbike direct from the parcels current location to you. Until your parcel arrives at a local facility, it’s likely in a gigantic stack along with hundreds of others heading to the same destination area. There would be no way to retrieve it early without spending hours breaking that stack apart, searching it, and putting it back together. Postal logistics just doesn’t work that way. > 'Choose address later' service for sender's. I package up an item and send it to royal mail, and later can tell royal mail where to deliver it. Would be very handy for online shops. Royal mail then becomes an Amazon logistics competitor. This would require a lot of warehouse space that they don’t have. They could spend the money to acquire it, but why? Shouldn’t they focus on their core service instead of trying to branch out into a totally separate field that they’ll have a hard time competing in?

londons_explore 2y ago
> likely in a gigantic stack Well £200 pays for many hours of labour to go though that stack... And with postal volumes dropping, there is plenty of excess labour and equipment to do so. Besides, if this service saw any substantial use, it would be worth splitting all big stacks into crates of just a few hundred items each.
londons_explore 2y ago
> Shouldn’t they focus on their core service instead of trying to branch out Their core service (sending letters) has seen declining per capita volumes ever since the invention of the telephone. They need to branch out or die. The fact they have an employee visit every address in the nation every day gives them a huge benefit to getting into loads of businesses other companies wouldn't have a chance at.