Apparently Royal Mail is introducing “smart” postboxes that will allow you to also drop off parcels up to the size of a shoe box and have it scanned on the postbox itself. They’ll have solar panels on the top (though how they would have coped with this year’s weather, I’m not sure) to power them.
Has anyone else seen these around? I’ve only just discovered they were coming to our area.
I have to admit it would be great not to have to stand in that queue upstairs at TG Jones but hopefully we won’t lose that service completely
Royal Mail deliveries have been really unreliable (got a Christmas card posted from the US only in late January), but I have used them to collect parcels from the house (as I work from home) and so it was quite convenient. I wonder whether that will stop once these post boxes are installed.
I definitely worry that the post office’s days are numbered. I can’t believe that TG Jones is that profitable, and if it goes there’s no way a post office would remain. I don’t use it for much but there are moments you need a branch for sure!
In my steampunk imagination I imagine the new post boxes will get up and walk away when they are full and be replaced by an empty postbox which has been dispatched from the ‘posthive’.
I understand that TG Jones is already in trouble in fact, and is considering shutting 80 stores (even though they committed to keeping them all open)
I can’t imagine our local one is one of the profitable ones, so would probably need support to keep it open and maintain the Post Office.
On the other hand, how many of us need the services of WH Smiths / TG Jones these days? It might be better if this store closed and we got a properly sized and resourced Boots The Chemist in the town centre, with the refurbished Post Office above.
