FH Post Office

Hi all, I’m not sure if it was bad timing, but I visited FH PO yesterday lunchtime and the service was dreadful. A few people had a number of items, which slowed things down (which I can understand), but there seemed to be little grasp of the growing queue and little desire to speed things up or even say anything to queuing customers. There were two staff working and one decided to leave after she’d dealt with a woman filling in a DVLA form, ignoring the rest of the queue. In the end, I had to leave to go because I had a work call, but everyone looked really angry. I can think of very few businesses that would respond in the same way.

Thankfully, the visit today to Stansted Road was queue-free and painless.

I’ve had long (30 min) queue times at Stansted Road recently. Due to covid they can only have one member of staff at the desk at a time. Frustrating, but not their fault. I’ve taken to using the new collection by postman service.

I’ve been intrigued by that service - especially as our postal worker seems to come at a variety of times depending on if they are doing the letter round (sometimes quite early) or arrived in a van with parcels (quite random).

Straying from the OP a little, but would you recommend the collection service?

Yes, I’ve only used it once, but it was faultless. Downsides are you only get an email receipt (obviously after the postman has left) and it does cost a bit (i saw 72p today to collect a 2nd class signed for letter).

I avoid the FH post office if at all possible, it is usually pretty awful. Worth walking to Sydenham which is bigger and seems to be able to handle its customer volumes rather better.

I’ve used the parcel collection service a couple of times, and found it to be perfect, as long as you are flexible about the time the item gets collected.

@YorkshireLad Thanks for the warning - I was about to go there this afternoon to pay a company electricity bill. Think I’ll try somewhere else!

How do you know she wasn’t going on her break, or needed to use the toilet? It doesn’t mean she was ignoring the queue. I would hate to work there, it must be relentless. Blame the post office, for being tight and not employing enough staff.

Why not tell people she’d be back in a moment?

I’ve been using the parcel collection service with post office for a few months now. It’s absolutely game changing.

Lunchtime is hands down the worst time to visit the post office

The aircon wasn’t working this morning. It was a sauna and after 5 minutes I was a wet rag. I can only imagine how tough it was for the staff today.

The Sydenham post office has a couple of self-service postal machines, so if you just want to post a simple parcel it’s much quicker.
Also it’s much more spacious so you don’t feel as crammed in.

If you’re posting a parcel, you can pay for the postage online (Royal Mail website) and drop off the parcel at the Royal Mail delivery office off Perry Vale. If you can’t print the label at home you can print the label there by scanning the bar code in the email confirmation.

If more people did that it might reduce the queues in the Post Office. But that might contribute to the PO saying they don’t have enough custom to justify keeping a branch open…