Jersey Post claim unfair treatment
Thursday 21st July 2011, 3:00PM BST.
Jersey Post chairman Mike Liston
THE future of Jersey Post is being put at risk by a regulator ‘recklessly’ pursuing the ideology of competition.
That is the view of the chairman of the States-owned postal business that just about broke even last year, according to its latest results.
Mike Liston criticised the policies being pursued by the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority in his review of 2010 trading presented to States Members yesterday.
He warns that the Island’s postal service ‘risks collapse’ and that more jobs will go as a result. More than 170 posts were shed in 2010 and more than £2 million was paid out to staff in redundancy payments.
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No, lets get this right – the future of Jersey Post is at risk due to the shocking service that they provide and the inept mismanagement of the company.
Absolutely nothing to do with the Regulator.
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Companies using Jersey Post claim unfair treatment to. We are fed up with having prices put up on us by this monopoly that employs to many and over pays them, which they then over charge us for.
Perhaps if he sorted his own house out rather than moaning first.
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Just about broke even last year with £2M of expenditure it isn’t going to have this year. I don’t deny that there’s a worrying trend but it stands to reason that the outlook isn’t quite as bleak as is being portrayed.
The management of the JP empire grew exponentially in recent times and so did their pay, at least so it appears.
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Totally disagree with Mr Liston.The demise is simply down to very poor management and ridiculously high postal charges.Reverse these two matters and Jersey Post will again achieve success and regain respect and confidence which has been completely lost at present.
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Good. Their “service” is a disgrace.
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Perhaps if Jersey Post delivered local letters in less than 5 days they might be doing better.
There is virtually no competition in the market place. The JCRA have been completely timid in licence approvals.
There has been no deregulation in letter post and the only “fulfilment” business they have lost is Flying Flowers to a new licencee. The proposed licences are massively restricted to large packets.
What does one expect of a Chairman that ran a state owned monopoly in electricity that adds a huge mark-up to EDF’s prices (The French pay about 6 pence per KW hour – look what we pay!!)
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Yeah and with Kevin Keen now CEO its likely to get worse.Liston,Keen and others seem to be among the jobs for the boys brigade and get everywhere.No redundancies for them I see.!
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The future of Jersey Post is at risk because it’s the worst postal service in the world. Just waited 7 days for a letter to get from St Helier to St Peter.
The only problem with Jersey Post is it’s Managers, Directors and Chairman.
Stop moaning Mike Liston and get out before we don’t have a postal service at all.
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Jersey Post – having ‘pushed’ for incorporation to enable them to ‘compete’ in the commercial marketplace now bemoan the process and authority that gave them their wish, still continues to allow them to operate a ‘reserved area’ and will not allow competition in the letter market.
I assume this vitriolic outburst from Mr Liston is his reaction to Jersey Post having their wrists slapped for breaking the terms of their license and acting illegally by having unpublished, and therefore ‘secret’ tariffs with certain customers that were not advised to other Jersey Post users or available to them.
In addition Jersey Post have, as yet, failed to publish those tariffs or, much more importantly, prove that these tariffs are self sustaining and not being subsidized by every other Jersey Post user.
If Mr Liston considers his treatment ‘unfair’ then perhaps he should consider the view from the other side of the fence.
Jersey Post enjoy beneficial customs clearance arrangements and procedures that no other licensed operator is able to use – therefore making like for like competition impossible and Jersey Post still have a monopoly in the letter and large letter market.
How quickly Mr Liston forgets the directorial ‘recklessness’ of ME:MO , wasting tens / hundreds of thousands of pounds of Jersey Posts money on non postal related businesses. The ‘recklessness’ of investing in Ship2Me, only to see its architect leave and set up a competitive service.
Competition is still in its infancy in Jersey’s postal market. The time has come for Jersey Post to demonstrate decisive leadership and innovation to save the business from itself, not its competitors. Blaming the JCRA, competition, licensing rules and whatever else it can come up with, is political misdirection to divert attention from the real issues. It seems that they should have started reorganizing from the top down, and not the bottom up.
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Top heavy in Directors….top heavy in Salaries……..not enough indians…….3 days to get a letter from St Helier to St John ….thats what would kill the postal service………
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I,m sick to death of all the wingers who are never happy about anybody or anything . Jersey post were forced to shed 120 trained staff who flogged their guts out in all weathers to get all you wingers mail out on time replacing them with cheap labour casuals and part timers , if the service has gone downhill what do you expect , as for the odd items that go astray s..t happens do you know how many thousands items of mail get delivered on time and how much work goes into getting it there . How dare you slag off a whole workforce on the back of a bad few would you like someone to totaly slag of your workplace and mates on the back of rumour and heresay , i doubt it . By the way i,m not a postie i just like to see someone given a fair go .
A MESSAGE TO THE WINGERS GROW UP
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Mike Liston is correct in his assumptions regarding JCRA and I can prove that very easily.
It’s very sad that the public can dismiss Mr Liston’s comments, but it just shows a lack of understanding of the JCRA’s role in the Island by your commentator’s.
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People have to remember that Jersey is a very small place with a limited customer base. There are times when too much competition can be counter productive and result in poor servcie all round.
No. 6 – St Ouennais – get your facts right before posting please. Jerseys general tariff is about 12p per kWh where France is about 11p per KWh! Jersey is still amongst the lowest in Europe.
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If John Boothman was in charge of Jersey Post, instead of moaning, he would turn the company around and produce record results. – He has the Midas touch.
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Dear Realistic
Apologies, I made a small mistake, my source for electricity prices in France was from last weeks Economist magazine (source eurostat) – French Consumers pay 8 pence per Kwh (I read the 2005 figure by mistake) and my last electricty bill was 13.05 pence Kwh. I’m sure the JEC buy at wholesale rates so my comments about a big margins are still quite correct!
Anyway this is a debate about Jersey Post although pertinant as all of the States Utilities have the same high cost base and top heavy management structures based on their past civil service mentality.
Jersey Post gets massive state subsidies – Just before the were “corporatised” you and me (the tax payer) gifted the following assets to Jersey post
(a) a fleet of brand new vans
(b) gave them the brand new premises at Rue Des Pres and the valuable premises at Broad Street (about £ 5 million of property if I remember correctly)
(c) Various cheap taxpayer funded loans to pay off the deficit in the gold plated final salary schemes.
Then what happened? – All of the overpaid management decided they were in the private sector and massively jacked up their salaries to between £ 100,000 to £ 200,000 per annum. They just voted on their own salaries it was totally disgusting! The pension pot alone to fund these 50% final salary gold plated schemes for senior management ran into millions.
So Jersey Post had a great start and as Chris Bee stated above, then wasted millions of failed ventures and top management pay packets and pensions………….mostly paid for by expensive stamps and ripping off play.com
In all the years of corporatisation Jersey Post has not paid a penny dividend to the States. (In fairness the cheap loans were paid back).
If they were a proper business the shareholders (long suffering taxpayer) would be getting £500,000 rental per annum for the £5 million of premises + a large dividend.
The Jersey States are the world’s worst shareholders and we have the worlds worst postal service!
Roll on JCRA – there is absolutely no competition – let’s have some. Also step up to the plate Ozouf and cut out the overpaid “fat cat” management – try to be a proper shareholder.
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Jeff 11 is right, the reason the service has gone down the pan is because they got rid of everyone who knew what they were doing and replaced them with a bunch of cheap numpties.
There are people applying for jobs at Jsy Post who can’t read English, £10 an hour might seem attractive to an immigrant but with a 25 hour working week it’s not even subsistence living.
Sack the managers and re employ the old posties, I dealt with several of the old posties and they were brilliant, nothing too much trouble.
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The chief executive of Jersey Post and Jersey Water had pay packet worth £174,000 in 2010
Read more: http://www.thisisjersey.com/2011/07/22/utility-bosses-earn-500000/#ixzz1SqX5Oqzu
Postmaster General of United States Postal Service: £167 645 (population 307 million)
Chief Executive Jersey Post £174 000 (population 100000)
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The chief executive of Jersey Post had pay packet worth £174,000 in 2010
Read more: http://www.thisisjersey.com/2011/07/22/utility-bosses-earn-500000/#ixzz1SqX5Oqzu
Postmaster General of United States Postal Service: £167 645 (population 307 million)
Chief Executive Jersey Post £174 000 (population 100000)
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In Kevin Keens JEP article he mentions no one at Jersey Post has been made compulsory redundant!
A few days back a Murdoch claimed that he was not made aware of certain events that took place in their company and showed that as a result they were unaware of what was going on below in their business , has Kevin been miss informed already ?????? by the powers that be , or is this just a miss quote, I hope for the sake of the company it’s the latter, the poor chap has not taken official office yet
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Duncan
John Boothman has yet to perform any magic at JT. Look at the 2010 accounts, strip out the 2009 restructure charge of GBP6.5Mio, and you will see that they are going backwards.
This island needs to look a bit beyond the normal old boys network for future alchemists.
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11. Jeff
As you are no doubt an ex-postamn and come out with comments like ‘as for the odd items that go astray s..t happens’ , no wonder that Jersey Post is in such a mess. They are obviously only going to improve now that they have got rid of people with such an idiotic attitude.
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Dear St Ouenneais
Don’t want to beat on about this, and this will be my last post on the topic, but you are not comparing “apples with apples” and I hate misinformation.
Your 13p on your bill is no doubt for E7 or Comfort Heat which has a slightly higher “day” rate. The only way to compare as closely as possible is by looking at the standard or general rate which is what I have done, with figures taken from the JEC website and EDF’s.
The only 8p per KWh I can see on EDF’s tariffs is the discounted rate for electric heating (i.e. if it was JEC’s E7 it would be the rate you are charged between midnight and 7am)which the JEC charge 6.36p for!
All slightly off topic I know but it annoys me when people cherry pick convenient information or figures to try and reinforce their argument. Have a good day
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Christopher Bee (9) Jersey Post – having ‘pushed’ for incorporation to enable them to ‘compete’
Well said Christopher, I agree totally. In my view Jersey Post had a service to be envied, but went down the ecommerce route with a vengeance and is now finding the competition is a bit more nibble. The Jersey Post senior management having paid themselves handsomely will now have to start earning their keep, the commercial marketplace is tough.
Jersey Post still has time to turn itself around, but winging will not win the day.
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#6 You’re getting letters delivered within 5 days of posting? And you’re in St Ouen as well! Try posting from St Helier to St Helier and you can be looking at up to 7 days (and yes, I would hand deliver if it weren’t circumstances where hand delivering just isn’t appropriate).
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I was up at Maufant Co op the other day and as I came out a scruffy bloke in a white van with tools etc in the back walked up to the post box, fag in mouth, bag in hand and emptied it out.
He slung the bag in the back of his van amongst all the pther crap and zoomed off.
I wasn’t sure if worked for Jersey post of he had just robbed the post box.
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