fionamw

In distance, I have to travel about 5km to pick up my mail at the (my) buzon. If it arrives, that is. My car insurance was due today. I only realised when OH mentioned it on the phone so I checked. I visited the broker in the village and she said a reminder had been sent out and should have arrived about 10 days ago. However whilst chuckling over this, she said it was far from dire... someone in the village received something at the end of last week which was sent at the beginning of September. From within the village
Anyone top this?
Oh, and is an inefficient - I'd love to give the option of 'or efficient' - postal service down to local management? National?

lynnxa

mine gets delivered to my door more or less - the buzón is about 20 metres from my door - but then I'm not in the campo

we usually have issues in august - nothing much gets through

but last Thursday during a torrential downpour & thunder & lightning that knocked out power on & off about a dozen times & felt like it sat right on top of our urb for an hour the way the building was shaking.................my doorbell rang

the postman was yelling '¡abre, abre! so I did

he had an international parcel he felt he had to deliver before he went home - he stood dripping in my porch & rang his boss to say he was going home right now because with every boom boom boom he was c******g his pants

now that's service!

he was speaking Valenciano - & I know it takes a lot to embarrass a Spaniard - but he was mortified when I told him I understood him

Domino

small (DL) envelope sent letter rate from UK to Granada, posted am Sat 24 Sept hasnt arrived yet, address on computer printed label so should be legible.
as its to a block of flats perhaps its in the wrong box ??

Fredbargate

A few weeks before my 55th I picked up a card from my sister.
Most unusual, she worked for the Post Office in UK and believed everything arrived the next day wherever it was going so never posted anything early.
However on opening it it was a 50th card, and checking the envelope it had been posted almost 5 years earlier.

fionamw

Lightweight....less than two weeks and international

This may be the one!

megmet

And I thought my birthday card had taken a long time!

Son in UK posted card in mid February for my birthday in early March.....it arrived four months later after being re-directed from Malaya, our correct address was very easy to read.

billgates

We're about four or five km from our post office. Don't get a delivery here in the campo, but we have a box at the ayuntamiento, just a letterbox-sized box that is. If we get a parcel then we just get a note stuck in the box and have to collect the parcel from the post-woman.

Unfortunately, the post office is only open for half an hour a day monday to friday, so a tight schedule.

Rambling Rose

Our buzon is 2 km from our house at the begining of our urbo. The urbo is in the campo and the houses are very spread out. We 'belong' to a town about 11 km away - pay our taxes to them etc. but the postman comes from a town about 22 km away and we have to collect all our parcels from there. He will leave a card in the buzon when we get a parcel but if we are waiting for another before we make the trip he doesn't bother leaving a second card so we have to guess when its best to go.

Mail often gets delayed because of postcode confusion. We are told to use the one from our town but that has its own post office (open very restricted hours) and if the mail goes there they just send it on to the other town. Added to that the postman only comes up here when he thinks it is worth it - ie. he has enough to bring or something marked urgent. That usually means not more than twice a week but of course he doesn't always come on the same day! As a result of that we never know when to go and check so we usually go up once a week. That can mean things sit there for several days but so what? We've got very laid back about it now.

Worse still, although there is a bank of buzons which you can buy (and we have) and put your name on, there is also a general box for mail for people who haven't paid for their own box. That general box is usually full to the brim. Sometimes some of our post ends up in there, so occasionally we have to spend half an hour or so sorting through it.

Our worst experience when we first moved here was our Telephonica bill which always arrived 3 or 4 days after it needed to be paid to avoid being cut off. The second time that happened to us we figured out how to get and pay the bill on line. I also had some correspondence from my UK bank telling me I was overdrawn which 3 weeks to reach me by which time I had run up quite a bill. It turned out someone had got hold of my debit card details and was buying coach tickets on National Express. I got all the money back after a few months but I make a point of checking my account on line regularly now.

I tell everyone in the UK to allow at least 2 weeks for things to reach us, but of course most of them ignore it and birthday cards are usually a week or so late. (Not 5 years)

People in the UK just don't appreciate the postal service they've got. Still at least we don't get much junk mail

fionamw

Forgot to ask what others' buzones are like - ours are in a cute brick and proper roof tile-built little bus shelter type thingy, on a concrete shelf, all nice metal banks of them, all numbered. Trouble is the front see-through slot to put your name in perished in the sun and we have all (I think - certainly most) now got a hole in the front so security is non-existent. I know this because my 9yo offered to get the mail and I tried to call him back to the car for the key but he didn't need it. He can just get it out by putting half a hand in and tugging the envelopes

agoreira

Some of us do! I´m always amazed how not only the postal service works, but the online companies that use them, things often arrive within 24 hours. I use an online photo printer, and if I upload the photos before 4pm they are delivered the following morning. I get an email within an hour of the upload saying they have received them, an hour or two later another saying they have been printed and being dispatched, and delivered the following morning. Ordered a new laptop recently, and that was here within 24 hours, no complaints from me. I see there was an Amazon Spain site set up recently, wonder how they´ll get on.
http://www.amazon.es/

Fredbargate

DHL

A business I know in Gib used to get DHL deliveries from Manchester.
The order had to be placed before 2 pm UK
It would be collected by DHL at 5:30 UK and taken to their Manchester depot.
Then on to East Midlands Airport, then Brussels, then Paris and on to Vitoria where it was put on a smaller plane and sent to Malaga I believe via Madrid..
In Malaga it was put on a lorry that delivered down the coast.
It should arrive at the frontier by 1:30 local time in order to cross before the Commercial frontier closed for the day.
A phone call from DHL Gib to the business would enable personal collection.
The whole process taking less than 24 hours and cost less than Royal Mail.

Unfortunately the system seemed to fail when the goods were most urgently needed

Lynn R

I live in town and get mail delivered to the door Monday-Saturday, no different from living in the UK!

We did once have a problem when no mail was received for about 3 weeks, OH rang a complaints number he found for Correos, in Madrid, and they took details of the complaint in English (I was back in the UK at the time and his Spanish wasn't up to it). 2 days later a whole bundle of mail arrived, and a couple of days after that a letter from Correos hoping that the problem had been resolved to his satisfaction. I've no idea why the delay occurred, possibly a correro off sick or a change of postal rounds.

Mail that I send to the UK from here seems to take about 3 days on average, but can take 2 weeks for things posted from the UK to reach us here. Don't know whether that's down to Correos or the UK postal service.

Domino

we have 2 postman, one delivers abt 8am the other does the round the reverse way and delivers abt 2pm
never had no mail because postie is off sick
however, on a couple of occaisions our local shopping centre wasnt cleaned for 2 days because a) the usual guy is on holiday (so they obviously made no allowance) b) the usual guy is off sick.

I discussed the time taken for mail to Spain and was told if it was taken at 4.30 from the post office concerned it would by on the night freight. I am sure the local office in Granada would say they deliver as soon as it was received (and I have seen a postlady make a second delivery arriving on her motorscooter). So it must be whoever it is inbetween...who is.?

Domino

managing a mail room operation in a building which services clients and staff on a same day\next day basis (where possible) for a company with operations in 52+ countries I can say from experience that can often be the case.
We had an instruction to deliver same day to a client's address at whatever time courier could get there. He brought it home again because they had forgotten to get a member of staff to stay late to accept it and no one had their out of hours number(s).

jimenato

I was stopped in the street the other day by a cry from our postman.

"Simon!" he says "There is a package for you at the Correos - I think it is for your dog!"

Off I toddle and, sure enough there is a package from MIL (in England) containing a doggy toy addressed to "Fraggle" at our address.

Good service.