Don't get me wrong, there's a long way to go before the postal system and post office is as bad here as in Turkey, but..!
I get a card with my letters, telling me that one item hasn't been delivered because there is a further charge to pay - as the stamp paid for was insufficient for a letter of this size. I, me, the recipient, must pay £1.10 to get the letter. A further note says that £1 of this is a Post Office charge. So I actually owe 10p but have to pay eleven times that or I am not getting my letter.
So I have to drive to the sorting office which is out of the town centre (not the town centre PO, that would be too convenient), killing the planet with emissions that I really didn't need to emit (the postman was at my door, he could have delivered the card rather than the notification) - and I ring a bell. A man comes, I assume he was doing something else but eventually came to me. I give him the notification card, he disappears for a while, comes back with a letter - which turns out to be a birthday card for the kids with nothing more than one of those little gadgets inside it that plays a tune when you open it. It is apparently over thick. Not unlike the bloke who gave me it. He asks for £1.10, I give him £1.20 and he goes to find 10p change. He returns and gives me 10p change. I ask for a receipt, he gives me a look then searches for a receipt.
A postman had to stop and write out a note to put through my letterbox, I had to go out to a sorting office and back spewing out petrol fumes as I go and adding to traffic levels, I took up the time of another postal worker for a significant number of minutes and all for the pursuit of ten pence.
