NOTES FROM PEIPER’S WORLD PRE WEEKEND. THE USUAL BIZARRE HAPPENINGS OF SOME NOTE.
on 07/17/2009 at 02:50 AM
Peiper: I honestly don’t know how the postal system here in Canada stays afloat, almost all bill payment can be done electronically through the banks here. Seriously, other than bills, and the occasional package, what does the postal service bring me? JUNK MAIL.
How about electronic bill payment in England… is it ready for prime time yet?
Oh sure. Bills can be paid on line here as well.
Used to be that the Brits really,really did have a great postal system. I’m surprised any of it still works these days. Sadly, much of it has been farmed out. I forgot the right term. LyndonB more knowledgeable on the subject.Last year we were having problems with the local sorting office. They were sending mail to the person who was sending the mail. Yeah. It was even franked. Sometimes on the back of the envelope. Weird.
The other day when the mail came thru the slot in our door, I caught the delivery guy before he could go to hand him back something that was for another address. Hey. That can happen anywhere so no problem And it doesn’t happen that much here anyway. BUT .. the guy was a sub for our regular postman (or postperson. don’t ya love that one? How about, milkperson? ) so anyway I caught his attention and damn the guy could barely speak English. I think he was Chinese or Korean or somewhere from that part of the world.
Maybe it’s just me but I could hardly understand the few words he said.Argentium I did have a bit of a chuckle about the on line payment. I have to say that the UK is a long way ahead of Canada in terms of on line banking, on line shopping and even on line grocery purchase. For one thing it is a tiny country compared to Canada so the postal system is generally quicker than in Canada. In fact I have sent letters to the UK from Canada which have taken only three days. Canada Post can’t even guarantee a letter getting to the next town in three days! Don’t get me wrong I love Canada, but some of the stuff here is really aggravating. Mobile phones are where the UK was a decade ago as regards the rip off charges, same for banking.
As far as Royal Mail goes it was a very good system, but like most state run monopolies such as British Telecom it had problems with the unions trying to dictate what they would and would not do. Over the years the service has declined. They used to collect mail on Sundays, but not any more. There used to be two deliveries a day but that has gone and now they are considering doing away with the Saturday delivery. Now the EU has stepped in and made them give up part of their monopoly (the profitable part of course). The EU wants to allow competition which in general I am in favour of but what will happen is companies like TNT cherry picking all the lucrative stuff and the Royal Mail having just the crap. Personally I think they should piss off and leave the Royal Mail alone but I hate the EU with passion so I would say that!
It will get interesting as the deadline approaches since Labour socialists will have no truck with privatisation. They also have a big pensions shortfall which will cost the taxpayer dearly. Something which the Liebour party gloss over is the way that the idiot Brown when he was Chancellor imposed taxes to the tune of £5billion on the profits from the stock exchange. Pension companies used to reinvest the profits in the stock market and the UK pensions industry was the envy of the world. Now it is f***ed thanks to the marxist wanker who is now Prime Minister
JayD probably a Chinese national. Not too many Korean illegals in Britain, they are better off in Korea! One big problem with the Royal Mail is Mount Pleasant sorting office where all the international stuff goes. It is in central London so you can imagine the kind of diversity they have there. It used to be unheard of to lose something in the mail. Now it is sadly all too commonplace.
Paiper and Lyndon, regarding on-line banking: Well, maybe I’ve been spoiled by the trust company I originally signed up with in Canada back in the early 80’s. I was a customer of Canada Trust long before it got bought out by Toronto Dominion, so I got used to instantly being able to access my money from any branch, and then ATM’s when those came out.
The current online bill payment interface is extremely easy to use, although there is a slight delay from when I make the payment to when the receiver gets it, and this may be one of the ways we’re behind the UK in terms of online payment. Could you two speak to that specifically? What’s the delay between when you hit “Send” on a payment, and your intended payee actually gets the funds? Do you have instantaneous transfer between different financial institutions where electronic payments are concerned? If so, then dang, yes, you’re ahead of what we’ve got.
On the other paw, what we’ve got here is much ahead of what I experienced while living in the US Midwest. Financial transactions took days using their old system of “running the tapes” overnight, and running everything between institutions through clearing houses. Mind you, when you have literally thousands of different banks, you can kind of see why there’s a delay of days and not minutes/seconds.
Oh, and don’t get me started on Canada Post. Extremely high cost, pathetic service. There’s a reason I try to do everything electronically in terms of payments here. Other than the faster speed, I simply don’t trust Canada Post be able to punch its way out of a flaming paper sack.
*grrr* We really need a way to edit posts. Peiper. NOT the mis-spelling my fingers just committed. Sorry about that.
Argentium don’t get me started on the inter bank delays. Two years ago the government told UK financial institutions to speed up the system and still nothing. If you make a payment to a company then provided you have funds it clears right away or the next business day if it’s a weekend. However if I want to transfer money from my current account (cheque account) to a different bank or building society etc. it can still take four working days.
A lot of them have improved, but not all by any means. The banks meanwhile have been collecting millions in interest while the money disappears into a black hole. In that respect I think Canada’s banks are probably better. I have done international transfers using the swift system and that is a lot better but there is usually a fee attached.
One thing though with Canadian banks which is now starting to happen in the UK again. They often charge a monthly fee unless, as in the case of our HSBC account, you have a minumum $4000 balance. Banks in the UK were a lot more competitive in this respect and I haven’t been charged a fee with my Natwest account for over thirty years. However a long drawn out case involving idiots who were being charged by the banks because they were overdrawn was settled recently. I think the banks still have an appeal but essentially the idiots won. The banks were charging silly money, like £30 to send a letter to people who had become overdrawn. Now I have never been overdrawn because....well because the banks charge you for being overdrawn, which seems to me perfectly reasonable. After all when you open the account it does have fine print. Well it seems a lot of people never bothered with that and took offence at the bank charging them for their unarranged borrowing. They took out a class action suit and won. So the banks are now threatening an end to “free banking”
07/18/2009 at 07:57 AM
