IT IS a bit unfair to single out GPO ‘delivery’ system, when the ‘counter’ system in the Bridge Street PO has been dispensing this sort of shoddy customer service for years.

A routine 20 second transaction at ‘the till’ means routinely and regularly for up to 25 minutes.

On Thursday, 19 March only two ‘tills’ were in operation; one of these was occupied and ‘monopolised by a female customer whose transaction involved sheaves and sheaves of A4 sized paper continuously being ‘signed’, inspected, initialled, stamped and double-checked, doubledouble- checked, inspected again on both sides of the partition (and accompanied by coffee-shop badinage and chatting) all the while the sheets of paper being shuffled, re-shuffled, passed and re-passed between both sides of the counter and obviously a very ‘productive’ half hour (for some), so much so that at least two people waiting in the queue, gave up and walked out.

The other service ‘till,’ as well as doing ‘normal’ PO business, was also selling foreign currency, so that anyone with a ‘booked’ appointment time there, could walk straight in off the street, and not in effect, but in fact ‘jump’ the queue, adding to the delay.

There is a so-called automatic / self service facility available, only it is not, as a member of PO staff has to be permanently assigned to monitor it and ‘help’ anyone misguided enough to seek to utilise it, when the staff member would be much more productively employed deployed behind the counter (due to the unacceptable level of dire customer service in that area). Along with a recent arty-farty interior ‘refurbishment, Bridge Street PO currently just illustrates another axiom from the modern lexicon, that the word ‘improvement’ just means “worse’.

If the big shops carried out their trading like this – well they wouldn’t, for they would go out of business – or be put out of business by the ‘social disorder’ that their behaviour engendered.

Paddy Keenan, Ward Close, Andover