Post Office loses Amazon contract | Channel Register - yes the Post office is hulking great mess of a dinosaur. Thing is when the delivery arrives the recipient is invariably not going to be in. This is where the post office has the advantage as they can stick a card through your letterbox and you can go and collect from the local sorting office (which usually isn't too far away - well if you're in London anyway) the next day.
Whereas a private delivery firm is not going to have any local sorting offices and quite often what happens is you get a card saying they will try the next day and if you're not in they will send it back. Sometimes you get the option to phone them and arrange a delivery. Still, you will have to be in that whole day to receive it.
Plus if you actually find out who is delivering it and the tracking number and pre-empt all this to request a day for it to be delivered when you will be in they will still (blindly) attempt to deliver it anyway as their computer systems are (probably) too badly designed to allow for this sort of customer service.
I've been there with deliveries from DABS (absolute rubbish for all sorts of reasons - will never use them again) and Adobe (a legitimate purchase that makes far far harder to obtain what you want than the various nefariius means available).
technorati tags:amazon, royalmail, postoffice, post
