Aberfoyle postal issues criticised by villager as deliveries drop to twice a week

Royal Mail have been slammed over the postal service it is providing in Aberfoyle amid concerns that the number of delivery rounds have been cut.

A resident of the village says the area has seen the number of rounds brought down from three to two due to a management decision to not provide holiday cover, with mail then arriving on random days as a result.

Dez Wright has also seen packages marked for Tracked 48 Hour delivery take five working days, while another set for Tracked 24 Hour delivery sent on Saturday had yet to arrive to its destination by Wednesday afternoon.

He believes the decision to not provide cover “makes a mockery” of a commitment to provide a six-day postal service – with no mail having arrived between Saturday and Wednesday of this week at his home.

There are also claims that nearby Gartmore has been affected by the issues and went four days without post being delivered.

Dez told the Observer: “It’s been a couple of weeks now that there have been the problems; the weekend before last, my neighbour went down and there was a sign at the post office saying there was no postman.

“They were left with only two postmen to do deliveries and one of them had been assigned to Kippen so we basically had two days of post delivered that week.

“It’s happening again this week so it feels as if this is less of a one-off and more of a conscious decision to shuffle the pack and hope nobody notices, which is not what Royal Mail were contracted to do.

“These things getting delivered could be passports for example which are essential to get there on time – why wold somebody pay extra for a service if they don’t get it in time?

“The people delivering the post here aren’t happy about it either because they are the ones often getting the blame and people think it’s them as they are on the frontline having to deal with customers.”

The Observer asked Royal Mail for comment but none was received before we went to press.