I AM pleased that businesses such as Mulberry Hall are to confront the Royal Mail about the deplorable deterioration in postal deliveries since the "reorganisation" of a month or so ago (February 2).

For the 14 years I have lived at my present address I have only, in exceptional circumstances, not had my mail delivered by 9am.

On most days it arrived by 8am. To be told I would hence receive a later delivery is hardly progress; to be assured it would arrive by midday is hardly acceptable when it has generally arrived by nine o'clock.

In practice, the mail has been arriving between two and three hours later than previously and has not appeared until nearly 2pm a number of times.

How can this be construed as an improvement?

I work from home running a small business and need my post first thing in the morning. I do not propose to pay extra to have it delivered, nor do I propose to adopt the ridiculous suggestion of driving out to the sorting office at Huntington Road at 8.30am to collect it myself, a journey in the middle of the rush hour and school run which would probably take an hour.

The fact that the Royal Mail has only had six complaints may have something to do with it being difficult to find anyone to whom complaints should be addressed.

There is no phone book listing under Royal Mail for a local customer centre or regional manager; there is only a call centre number which, when I rang, turned out to be in Belfast.

At their suggestion I sent a complaint there and was rewarded with an anodyne standard letter which was obviously sent out to all complainants but which dealt with none of the points I raised.

Michael Blakemore,

De Grey Terrace,

Avenue Road, York.

Updated: 10:15 Wednesday, February 04, 2004