Beware Royal Mail Parcel Lockers: there's a fatal design flaw and it will waste your time.

[pillarboxred]

Advertised as a convenient way to post items, they have a terrible snag which could result in the system being binned and written off at huge cost to the shareholders: you turn up and find that there are no available lockers for your item.  So you have to set off to find a Post Office. This happened to me today and the next time, I'll just traipse off  to the Post Office two miles away because I know it will be open.

Parcel Lockers are a good way to receive mail as you can turn up when it suits you. I've never used one to receive mail but I've seen others do it no problem.

The woman in front of me at the parcel lockers said she had been trying to post something there for a couple of days. She looked angry.

[jonatjonatjonat]

I hardly see lockers being full as a design flaw. You could argue you need eggs, you go to your nearest corner shop and they have no eggs. Is that a design flaw?

Yes its annoying when the lockers are full (particularly the case for larger items) but its a fact of life that sometimes, you will not have access to the service you want.

I believe with InPost you can check if there is locker availability (though unsure if it differentiates by locker size).

[pillarboxred]

The Parcel Locker service might or might not be available and you will only find out when you turn up so it isn't a convenience. Going directly to a Post Office will give you what you want. The corner shop out of eggs  is not being advertised nationally as a 24/7 egg service. 

[pillarboxred]

I was unhappy at the RM Parcel Locker today, the woman who showed up at the same time was angry as this was her third trip to the locker over a few days and then a Royal Mail employee in a van showed up and he couldn't post the handful of envelopes in his hand and had no explanation of what was happening. It might have looked like he was not doing his job of consigning mail. The locker looked like a shiny lump of junk of limited use even to RM employees.

[insidethe93]

pillarboxred wrote: "you turn up and find that there are no available lockers for your item"

I'm afraid it'll probably get worse in the run-up to Christmas, at lockers and post offices.

[pillarboxred]

Yes, so I'll go to the Post Office and wait in line. I would be happy to go to the Parcel Locker nearest me to collect something but the uncertainty of availability for sending is a killer.

[pillarboxred]

Someone told me about InPost, a service I've never heard of,  but I've never seen a facility. My informant thought they might also do Parcel Locker too.

[insidethe93]

pillarboxred wrote: "Yes, so I'll go to the Post Office and wait in line. I would be happy to go to the Parcel Locker nearest me to collect something but the uncertainty of availability for sending is a killer."

Why can't the availability status of every single locker of every single brand be checked online in advance, to save having to go and physically find out? The technology already exists! Platforms that integrate with InPost, such as Parcel2Go, do it. Or else there's the widely used existing technology that lets customers and businesss monitor stock levels using real-time sensors e.g. smart locks, Bluetooth, RFID (if buying eggs etc for delivery, using a supermarket's website). Likewise you can track locker availability live or within a short lag.

If there's a parcel locker brand that doesn't allow live locker tracking, they deserve to lose customers in favour of those that do.

Depending of course on distance, convenience and how many items you have, maybe consider rural post offices which tend to be less busy than urban ones? They might be glad of the extra business as small rural post offices form an endangered species. Though they're often part-time only. One I quite often use is open only a few hours a week; it's located in a small rear room of the post lady's house; she and the customer sit at a table, waiting customers (if any!) wait in her small rear hall or sit in her garden.

[c_of_e84]

When DHL first introduced them in germany over 20 years ago the same happened and they got vandalsied eventually they sorted out the over use problem.

[pillarboxred]

Yes, surely Royal Mail's designers must have known of the issue and the solutions their rivals have. As pointed out by c_of_e84 ,DHL dealt with the matter in Germany over twenty years ago. That's why I call it a design flaw, a basic conceptual mistake from the outset. I am in Edinburgh but the nearest post office is about three miles from here. I was thus delighted to learn about the Royal Mail Parcel Locker facility a five-minute walk away, delighted until aghast when I found it unavailable.

[c_of_e84]

The way DHL germany fixed the problem was when the lockers were getting full any vehice in the area would be directed to clear the locker, this may be 2 or 3 times a day, they wernt on a specific collection route. Mail order in germany is far more advanced and popular than in the UK.

[insidethe93]

At busy times e.g. the run-up to Christmas, Royal Mail has for decades and still does have lots of its van drivers driving around continually during the day to collect from pillarboxes multiple times, particularly in areas where there's a lot of items being posted (and they hire more workers and use more vans to cope with the extra volumes). Sometimes an RM notice on the pillarbox tells you.

My point is that RM should realise it needs to do the same for parcel lockers.

Online locker-tracking (using technology that already exists; like InPost) would help them focus effort where it's most needed. Keeping records would spot trends so workers can be more efficiently assigned in future.