Why are we waiting? (From Croydon Guardian)

Why are we waiting?

10:15am Thursday 10th May 2007 in News By Kerry McQueeney

The claim that some of the slowest post office queues in London can be found in Croydon will come as no surprise to the customers who have used the High Street branch in recent years.

Having used this particular office on numerous occasions, I am acutely aware of just how bad the long lines of people can get.

I remember one particularly frustrating lunch break spent queueing for 45 minutes to renew my car tax. By the time I reached the counter I was on first-name terms with fellow customers, the small child who had been smiling so sweetly when I joined the queue was by then scowling and sticking out his tongue.

According to Postwatch Greater London, the regional postal service watchdog, the average queueing time at the High Street branch is 17.5 minutes. The longest wait recorded at Croydon during Postwatch's latest research was a whopping 24 minutes.

So as I joined a queue of about 25 people to test this claim during last Thursday's lunchtime rush, I was expecting much of the same.

When I noticed seven open counters out of a possible 16 I feared the worst and prepared my ears for a symphony of tutting - a noise which often accompanies post office queues.

But after joining the queue at 1.35pm, I reached the counter 11 minutes later at 1.46pm and wondered whether Croydon's slow reputation was deserved.

While pleasantly surprised at my relatively short queueing time last Thursday, something tells me I might have got lucky.

According to Postwatch, Croydon's queueing times have worsened in recent years. In autumn 2004 the average wait was seven minutes 30 seconds and by the following year this had risen to 17 minutes 12 seconds.

In 2005 Croydon was revealed as having the slowest queues out of the 25 post offices researched in the survey. In 2007 it manages to retain this dubious honour, out of 23 offices investigated.

It's worth mentioning Postwatch only investigates offices where someone has complained about queues, so this research does not definitively represent post offices across London.

Roger Darlington, chairman of Postwatch Greater London, said the organisation regularly researched queueing times because it was a problem - particularly, for Londoners.

He said: "The result for Croydon is especially disappointing because we first expressed our concerns about this office to Post Office Ltd over a year before this research.

"We recognise that these are challenging times for the post office network, but we believe that customers using High Street Croydon Post Office have suffered for too long.

"The closure of many smaller post offices in the area means that customers rely heavily on the main post office, and they are entitled to a faster service. We believe the office has the capacity to cope better, but our research found that normally only half the serving positions are used.

"We have reported our findings to Post Office Ltd and been assured that remedial action will be taken, but unfortunately this is a long-standing problem and we have been assured of action' in the past.

"We hope that the Post Office will now act decisively and quickly. Postwatch will monitor the situation to see whether this is the case. We will not rest until Croydon's customers receive the level of service that they expect and deserve."

After leaving the post office I was keen to push my luck by foolishly hoping for a short queue in Primark. No such luck - however bad the queues are at the post office, it's nothing compared to the war zone that is Primark on a busy lunchtime.

q What do you think? Wriute to the address on page four or email letters@croydonguardian.co.uk.