Possible rural Post Office closures

[The utility cyclist]

Post Office and indeed RM shot themselves in the foot with their inflexible opening times and non competitive pricing on parcel after the old 'standard parcel' post went to the wall.
The old idea of closing the post office at 5-5:30 and at 12 noon on a Saturday not open on a Sunday has to a certain extent changed due many main post offices closing and sub post offices becoming open counters within newsagents and the like and offering greater flexibility with respect to posting items even if those items aren't collected for a day or so.

This was a frustration to many, working 9-5 not being able to get to the PO except maybe on a Saturday but then queues out the doors even with multiple counters. Also the pricing structure for parcels made people start to use couriers more and more, lack of forward thinking, when you look at how MyHermes, Collect+ and others have expanded RM/PO missed a massive opportunity to offer the new wave of internet buying/selling postal services to suit.
You get tracking, can drop your parcel off whenever or even collect your parcel at your convinience (through C+) for a less price than untracked RM.

They had all the infrastructure, all the locations, the vehicles, depots and so forth to offer exactly what these drop off services do and have been playing catch up since. If they had had people with some vision they could well have kept a lot more local/small post offices open, I do realise that some absolutely did not want to change how things were but many simply didn't stand a chance & PO were inflexible in many ways.

[thirdcrank]

... If they had had people with some vision ...

"Royal Mail" must be one of the best-known brands there is, yet some bright spark was going to change it to Consignia: has anything ever been consigned anywhere except to the bin?