Smartstamp? My Arse.

Smartstamp is fast becoming a real pain in my arse. Or, more specifically, a pain in my wallet.

Smartstamp is a service that enables users to print barcoded labels off at home and use them instead of stamps to send items.

This means that if you use smartstamp, you pay Royal Mail direct as you no longer need to buy stamps/postage labels at my post office.

Yay, less work for me!!!

Well, no.

Most of the people who use smartstamp are ebay users. They also know that if what they send goes missing, they're a bit buggered without a proof of posting. Which means that the customer still has to queue up in the post office and processing these takes nearly as long as selling the postage labels would do but the main difference is that I don't get a bean from it.

Thanks Royal Mail. It's all well and good giving the customer the chance to buy stamps online but it's actually no real time saver for them. I sincerely doubt that this has persuaded a single person to use Royal Mail rather than a courier (which is the justification, as well as customer convinience (Hah!), for actually providing the service).

Bloody tight fisted wankers. Don't they realise that, espicially during this lovely recession, a lot of post offices are on the verge of closure anyway and with the reduction in revenue thanks to this brainwave are going to close. Once another round of post offices close, the one major plus point that we have (ie. there being a shit load of post offices everywhere) is gonna go down the crapper and it won't take long for a domino effect to occur. Less posts offices means that less other companies are going to use us (eg. bill payments, etc.) so less people are gonna come in so more post offices will close.

It really winds me up that the short term advantage offered by this product will be more than balanced out by a long term fucking up of the whole network. Possibly a bit exaggerated but I'm annoyed.

It winds me up more that I'm still doing 90% of the work by taking these parcels in but not getting paid for them.

Apologies for the lack of funny but,

Hnnnnnggghhh. Tossers.

Also, can the Royal Mail manager who wanted to bollock me for a fuck up caused by one of her colleagues, not me, try talking to me and not just bitch about it in front of the posties. It might have been nice to get my side of the argument before ranting about me. Fuckwit.