Would you take business advice from Royal Mail?

Recently I received a poster from Royal Mail and was asked to put it up in a prominent position in my Post Office.

I thought I'd better have a quick look at it just so I could answer any questions form the three people that probably would have read it (Hey, I like to be prepared for any realistic eventuality, needless to say I have no contingency plan for customers suddenly becoming polite and clever or Royal Mail/Post Office doing something effective).

The poster was inviting our business customers to have look at the Royal Mail website and get a tailored growth plan for their business. It promised a useful document personalised to their particular business that would have highlight similar (but successful) businesses and their strategies and also include ways that Royal Mail could help their businesses grow.

Intriguing no?

Seeing as I'm running a business and an always on the lookout for ways to make more money I thought I'd give it a try before putting the poster up.

Fifteen fairly shallow questions later and alarm bells have rung after one of the questions asked how I paid for my postage (franking machine, smartstamp, at the post office etc). As fiddling the system and printing out bogus receipts to keep the accountant happy weren't options, I had to put "pay at the Post Office" as my answer.

A short time later and an email with an attached PDF file arrives. Pound signs light up in my eyes at this point as the PDF is no doubt filled to the brim with ideas and case studies that would help me make a fucking fortune. No, seriously.

I'm sorry to disappoint you but this sort of thing was conspicuous by it's absence.

It was full of shite.

A few gems were things like get Royal Mail to do a leaflet drop for you or get them to give you a mailing list. The case studies were pretty much all companies that used Royal Mail and them saying how great they were.

Excellent!

However, the greatest piece of advice was how I could save money on my postage.

Simple.

Don't pay at the Post Office.

Get smart stamps or a franking machine.

Either way, I end up having to take the mail in, write out any proof of posting if required, sort it, bag it up and get it ready for collection.

I just don't get paid for my work.

In some ways you've got to admire the balls of Royal Mail for this. It's great (albeit short term) business sense to cut out the middleman and therefore make loads more dough.

Frankly though they can just go and perform a flying fuck through a rolling donut if they think I'm gonna put up a poster that tells my customers not to spend money at my fine establishment.

Fuckers.

If this were an isolated incident I might be willing to forgive it as a minor irritation. Guess what though. It ain't. It's all well and good saving costs/making more profit for Royal Mail but what's gonna happen when so many customers migrate to these new payment methods and Post Offices are no longer financially viable?

Again, Fuckers.

More and more often postmaster are being exploited as the public face of the Post Office to answer questions and hand out leaflets but more and more often the effort we put in is unrewarded as customers are being encouraged to use the web or other ways to pay for their services. Result? We get screwed out of our payment.

Again, but in bold and caps:

FUCKERS!!!

Needless to say, the poster was relocated to the bin asap. As was the glossy fold out waste of time and cash that I recieved in the post a few days later. Yup, Royal Mail had gone to the expense of printing the PDF file out but and mailing it to me.


PS. In case you're worried that I've gone soft on my customers lately, don't. They'll get their turn soon enough but I've got a good many years worth of pent up angst and bile that's being spunked onto Royal Mail/Post Office's tits (apologies for the mixed metaphor but I'm drunk).