On 2008-06-21 22:16:37 +0100, Roland Perry said:

In message 485c30df@qaanaaq, at 23:36:15 on Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Andy
Hall remarked:

The sorting office is at the Post Office.
That's fairly unusual, but I do know of a few like that.

They may be seaparate organisations but have the same bad public sector
culture of the past.
Don't they have a separate queue for the sorting-office stuff?

Yes. Outside and wih no shelter or nearby parking.

How long is the queue normally?

On one occasion, over 30 mins in the rain.

- Return of goods purchased on line. I now favour suppliers who a
have a return arrangement where the goods are collected.
Which they charge you for in the general price of their goods. But if
that's affordable for you, then who are we to criticise how you spend
your money.
This isn't the issue. If they sell defective goods, then they should
be dealing with that problem.
A lot of the time, so-called "defective" goods are people buying the
wrong thing, not being able to find out how it works etc. The cost of
sending all those back by super-courier affects all buyers.

So make a charge for such collections. It isn't hard.

So "dealing with the problem" of defective goods involves getting the
customer to pay for exotic courier services??

There's nothing exotic about having some guy in a van showing up to
collect, any more than it is for them to deliver.



he product offerings are presented as something suitable for people
who haven't used them before - somewhat insulting to their
intelligence.
Not everyone is as clever as you.

I don't think it's a matter of being clever, simply avoiding being taken in.

It amounts to much the same thing.

I read some while ago that something like 95% of the population have
bought a Lottery ticket at least once. I was shocked. Why on earth
would people want to pay tax voluntarily?

Much the same as they pay tax when playing bingo, or at the races.

It seems that the first of those is on the way out, I don't know about
the second.