Two Posties For Chiswick Households

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TNT compete with Royal Mail delivering to local homes

Chiswick residents are having their post delivered by two different companies as TNT Post, part of the Dutch TNT group, gets a foothold in the domestic mail delivery market, in opposition to Royal Mail.

Over the past fortnight, TNT postmen wearing bright orange high-visibility jackets have been delivering mail to W4, and to a total of 250,000 homes in west London on a trial basis. Royal Mail deliveries are continuing as normal.

The TNT postal operatives are working from four delivery offices across the area, with sorting coming from the company's hub in Iver, near Heathrow Airport.

TNT Post is part of Dutch-owned TNT Express, and is the UK's largest private mail delivery firm, handling more than 300m letters and parcels a year.

Until now it has been limited to providing a service to bulk mail clients, including local authorities, hospital trusts, as well as businesses such as Tesco, Barclays and Sky. This was due to the Royal Mail’s monopoly on delivery to family homes which has now ended. The current delivery is on a trial basis but TNT Post has made no secret of its ambition to provide a full-time service.

The Royal Mail will continue to deliver to local homes, with TNT describing itself as "an alternative postal delivery provider, giving business customers greater choice”.

This means that two different people will now deliverr domestic mail. Letters delivered by TNT Post will have the logo on the envelope.

It also means that mail will be delivered at different times of the day. TNT says ;

“The needs of clients who use the industry have changed and there is less need to deliver mail before someone leaves for work.

So we are being more flexible in our delivery times which will enable us to offer employment opportunities for those looking for flexible hours such as mums whose children are at school but still need to be available to drop off and pick up their children.”

 

A TNT delivery bike in Chiswick

TNT says the bulk of its mail will be “ business to consumer mail” such as bills and statements. People will not be able to opt out of having their mail delivered by TNT as it is the choice of the business client using their service.

Royal Mail has expressed concern about the current trial saying unregulated competition in the mail industry poses a significant risk to its own service.

“With over 900 postmen and women working in 14 delivery offices across West London, Royal Mail delivers items to nearly 185,000 residential addresses and over 26,000 business addresses six days a week. It also makes daily mail collections from nearly 1,500 post boxes and over 1,700 businesses.”

"Royal Mail is investing £69 million in mail centres across London in addition to nearly £12 million in new automation and new delivery equipment for our postmen and women".

The national postal service is concerned it will be left with the more unprofitable parts of the market, and says it will be closely monitoring the new trial service by TNT Post.

Since the UK became one of the first countries in the EU to open the post to full competition in 2006, competitors to Royal Mail now currently deliver 40% of all UK letters, including 70% of bulk mail.

With the growth of email, fewer 'lighter' items such as bills and bank statements are being sent through the post. Nationally,l Royal Mail delivered 84 million items a day five years ago but the latest results show a 6% decrease in letter volumes over the past year, to 59 million letters. The forecast is for a continued decline, partly due to rival operators such as DHL and TNT,who now carry more than one in three letters and more than half of all business mail and partly to lifestyle changes such as increased use of the internet and online billing. ChiswickW4.com was unable to get figures for the Chiswick area.

Local people who have queries or complaints about the new TNT Post delivery can contact their customer service department at 0845 601 5827 or email them at ;

tntpostdelivers@tntpost.co.uk

May 4, 2012