Since today I'm on off and have some time before meeting my friends, I decided to go to the Singpost Centre to settle some chores for Nomadic Technology since it is open today. I intended to do the following at the Singpost Centre.
Once I entered the Singpost main branch, I got quite a shock when I saw the queue. The queue was around 20+ people, and as I only set aside 20mins for my tasks, I decided to just do the remittance if time does not permit me to complete the registration. As usual, I went to the ticket machine to obtain a queue no. for the remittance. Quite surprising, the ticket machine is off today, meaning that I have to join the queue. Since I'm already there, I thought that I might as well try my luck and join the queue. However, before that I have to fill up the form for registration of mail. At the writing desks I took a form, only to find out that no pen is provided. I started to think that is it so hard for them to provide pens at the writing desk and they shouldn't expect everyone to bring a pen of their own. As far as I remember, they used to do so. By then I was getting a little disappointed at their services, but well I thought I'll have time to fill them up while they process the remittance and joined the queue.Time past by and the queue barely moved. I started to do some observations, there are a total of 12 counters in the Singpost Centre, more than any other post office in Singapore since it is the main branch. However, there's only 4 customer service officers working today. Actually not only today, but on other days when I visit the post office there is only 4 customer service officers working. As I'm waiting and queue, I started to get a little frustrated. Why did they have to waste so much money building such a big post office when they only intended to hire 4 customer service officers and shouldn't they be more prepared for the Sunday queue by hiring part time staffs on Sunday. Another thing I noticed is that most of the queueing customers are not going to the post office for postage-related services. Majority of them are queueing to pay their telephone bills and stuff as such. However, a post office is still a post office, shouldn't they give priority to customers using postage-related services by separating the queues. If customers want to pay their bills, they can do it through SAM or 7-11, if they want to do remittance, they can go to the Western Union offices, but there's no other places I can go for postage-related services.
Long Long Queue
After spending 20mins in the queue with still more than 10people in front of me in the queue, I decided that I will not have enough time to complete the tasks and just settle to purchase the postage from the SAM and complete the rest another day. Found out that they have 'upgraded' the SAM machine. Yet, this new SAM machine does not even have the weighing function while the old SAM machine had it. Fortunately I knew the weight of the item and is able to work out the postage fee. Another function they removed from this SAM machine is the coins payment. I just wanted to purchase a 31cents stamp and I have to use my nets, enter my pin and wait for it to process. What a waste of time. The only good thing is that there's nobody using the SAM machine so I need not queue up. However, this also prompt me to think why did they spend money to 'upgrade' the SAM machine when nobody is using it. At least more effort should be made in educating or advice the mass to use the SAM machine. If those queueing customers can use the SAM to pay their bills and it will probably benefit both the postage-related and non-postage related service users.I understand that Singpost is a monopoly of postage service in Singapore and therefore need not be too concerned about the level of service quality as there's no other alternatives that consumers can go to. However as a public service provider, Singpost should ensure that a certain level of service quality should be maintained. These years Singpost have been increasing the number of services provided, e.g. credit and shopping but it should remember the very reason why it was established, which is to provide an efficient postage services for Singaporeans. If Singpost can't even do this well, I do not see why they should expend their operations to other aspects.
Notice the 'upgrade' ?
Majestic on the outside, yet no better than any other branch
