What does 1st Class Mail mean to you?

[Hyacinth]

To me (until this morning :o) I thought that a 1st Class stamp on mail gave a next day delivery service, while a 2nd Class stamped letter took 3/4 days?

Wrong.

For next-day delivery one must pay yet more for a 'Special Delivery'.....so...
what's this 1st class/2nd class difference all about, then?

The postmistress didn't seem to know, either... >:(

Rosebud, your mint and pulmonaria are in the post.....Lord knows when you'll get them tho ;D

[Hyacinth]

[lorna]

Yes Lish I thought the same as you. I must admit I seem to have been pretty lucky, I only send cards to family members (down South) the afternoon before their birthday. Have sent a first class little package today will let you know if the lady receives it in the morning ;D

[Georgie]

Yes Lish I thought the same as you. I must admit I seem to have been pretty lucky, I only send cards to family members (down South) the afternoon before their birthday. Have sent a first class little package today will let you know if the lady receives it in the morning ;D

She's no lady, Lorna.  At least I wasn't titled last time I looked.   ;D   ;D  ;D

G x

[cambourne7]

I NEVER buy a 1st class stamp, nothing is that important and my thinking is that if i stop supporting 2nd class delivery then the royal mail will stop it.

[lorna]

OK female friend, glad you received, I also received post from you which you posted yesterday. 2 out of 2 so far Lish ;D

[Georgie]

LOL@Lorna.   ;D

G x

[OllieC]

I send work stuff 1st class because otherwise someone might think we're cheap...

1st class means it's marginally less unlikely to get there!

[cambourne7]

I send work stuff 1st class because otherwise someone might think we're cheap...

1st class means it's marginally less unlikely to get there!

hehehe  ;D

[debster]

i posted a card on saturday still not there yet and sent it first class

[Isleworth]

To me (until this morning :o) I thought that a 1st Class stamp on mail gave a next day delivery service, while a 2nd Class stamped letter took 3/4 days?

Wrong.

For next-day delivery one must pay yet more for a 'Special Delivery'.....so...
what's this 1st class/2nd class difference all about, then?

The postmistress didn't seem to know, either... >:(

Rosebud, your mint and pulmonaria are in the post.....Lord knows when you'll get them tho ;D

It's a funny one... don't think either mean much anymore! Some days we don't get any mail then the follwing day we get tons ?!?!?


According to royal mail website:

First Class - Aims to deliver your letter or packet the next working day, including Saturday.

&

Second Class  - Aims to deliver your letter or packet by the third working day after posting, including Saturday.

[Mrs Ava]

In our part of Essex, 1st class means anywhere up to a week, 2nd class has been known to be next day.   ???

[honeybee]

I had to send three cards to my sis the other day and I decided to stick them all in one brown envelope and get them weighed and send them together, she is a postwoman so I always have to get it spot on  ::)
Anyway the postmaster charged me the price of a first class stamp for all three cards....hmmmm, i asked, can you double check that, it doesn't seem right to me, I so didn't want ridiculing off my sis for paying short of postage, so of course, the lady double checked, it was right and my sis got the brown envelope containing the three cards the very next day (sent from Cheshire to South Wales)

A couple of days later, it was my FILs birthday, they live just 30 miles away, I popped a cheque in the card and sent it first class, a week later he had still not got it  >:(
Apparently the card was too big, well I purposely bought a small card as I didn't have the time to visit the post office to have the card weighed and priced.
How maddening that my poor old FIL, a pensioner had to pay a surcharge to collect his card  >:(

[katynewbie]

 >:(

Don't get me started, you know my views...First Class Litter Louts!

;)

[Bionic Wellies]

Blaa - don't get me started on the mail system.  Was my birthday recently & daughter actually sent me a card - first time ever (that's not a critisism!).  She popped a small bar of chocolate in it and stuck first class stamp - she hasn't quite got a handle on how the postal system doesn't work.  - so 10 days later a slip of paper is handed to us saying that there was an underpayment of 6p and therfore together with the handling charge we now owe £1.06p - plus we have to drive across town to collect the thing.

Another thing! - they have just closed our local village post office - even though is was apparently the most profitable in the area! As a consequence parcels are no longer send to the post office but to a depot about 15 miles away. - I might as well go direclty to the sender and pick it up - it would be cheaper and quicker.

These things mean that neither I nor my daughter will be using the postal service unless someone is actually holding a gun to our heads (or come to think of it ...any other part of our bodies).  I duobt that I am alone in this thought (about not using the GPO not about the gun!) and believe that such punitive actions and outrageous decisions are effectively killing their business!

There ... done that .... calm again!

[Lacelotte]

Re-nationalise Royal Mail & the Post Office before they are ran completely into the ground by the profit driven cronies.

Maybe then we'll get a mail service that is customer driven and not battling to get one over on the competition.

There was something on the BBC news website about the Royal Mail a few days ago about them once having a monopoly in mail delivery etc. so what if they did!? It worked. Same as this bloody 118 lark!

People will probably disagree with me but hey hum thats my 10 pence worth

[OllieC]

I agree entirely! Market forces only work where there's competition. That's why British Rail was a disaster (you can't go on a different track to your destination) & energy companies worked - you can buy someone else's electricity.

I can't post a letter with a competitor to the Post Office, so it's a privatised monopoly.

[loopyloulou]

my post gets edited, ive been sent things (not registered) and all too frequently they fail to arrive, where do they go?? anybodys guess, but either another house on another road that happens to have the same doornumber (and the postie doesnt check) elsewise somewhere between sender and me theyre having a field day, lost mail my arse, someone else has it... and i is not happy :(

[Paulines7]

A couple of years ago we were about to go to France on holiday, so I rang my neighbour to find out how her husband was as he was seriously ill in hospital.  Their son answered my call and said that his father had passed away that morning.  I had a spare sympathy card indoors so I took it with me and wrote a long letter to my neighbour that evening and posted it in Folkestone the next morning prior to getting the ferry. 

It never arrived.  I was very upset when we got home two weeks later and my neighbour said she hadn't received it.  Of all the cards and letters to have gone astray, it had to be that one.   I thought it would be safer posting it from Folkestone rather than in France.  I still get upset when I think about it for my neighbour must have thought we did not care.

[Lacelotte]

I used to work on a cadet training ship and we were alongside in France one weekend when I stupidly asked a cadet to get a stamp and post a letter I had wrote to my friend in Australia. He came back to tell me the post office was shut but it was ok he posted the letter anyway!! I was horrified thinking this letter was not going to get anywhere and get lost in the French postal system.

To my amazement it turned up in Australia 1 week later delivered with no postage to be paid at that end.

I can't imagine that happening over here. No doubt she'd have been sent a letter from the royal mail saying they have a letter for her but she must send a cheque off for £1.25 + the cost of the letter they sent to her before they would forward the letter on.

[rosebud]

The parcel Alishka, posted arrived the next morning.