It argued that rail companies are private organisations who should be allowed to charge what they want. If customers don't like it, the correspondent opined, they can use another form of transport. Yes, very intelligent.

But let me counter this logic with the not unreasonable argument that if this were to be pursued to its natural end, then these rail companies would go bust. What company would see any benefit in going bust?

But then I realised the folly of my position, studied the lexicon of modern-day British business (plummeting levels of customer service equals huge executive bonuses) and suffered a heavy bout
of remorse.

You see, there is one British organisation whose leaders appear to be personally profiting from their descent into oblivion – our beloved Post Office.

In recent years, I've written about the results of postal privatisation. I've accepted the need for change, but only noticed the worsening of services and the closing of branches, while the promised land of competition has dawned only in business-to-business services, since this is the only area where private companies can see decent margins.

It's now three years since the market was opened up, and that promised land seems as distant to UK customers as the likelihood of Lord Mawhinney, the Football League chairman appearing as the after-dinner speaker at Leeds United's "player of the year" dinner.

Last year, we had the new pricing structure, whose initial complexity took our minds off the latest round of industrial action. Postwatch, the independent postal services watchdog, argued throughout that while the internet was stealing customers, the Royal Mail could still restore confidence if it were to reinvent itself and "to show it cares about customers".

If last year was the Post Office's annus horribilis, then 2008 is proving to be even worsus. Prices are on the rise, and if we're unhappy with our provider we can't follow the advice of our learned correspondent above and go elsewhere – as the promised competition in the residential market has been an abject failure.

And if that hasn't cheered you up enough, then don't forget that, in the past eight years, the Post Office has closed more than a quarter of its outlets in Yorkshire, with that set to rise to a third by the end of 2008.

Even if the structure of the industry may need to change to reflect the increasing domination of electronic communication, there is a need to strengthen one of our most necessary institutions. After all, we can order items on-line, but unless Amazon's
IT department have introduced teleportation in recent months, we still need the postie to drop by with our package.

The more cynical of you may reflect that the Post Office is simply streamlining itself to make more profit at less cost, but a cursory glance at its own performance confounds that logical assumption. Last year, it lost £3m a week, and, earlier this year, the Post Office's stamped-letters business made a loss for the first time.

When asked to explain itself, the organisation is notoriously reticent. It does admit a financial crisis but, according to Billy Hayes, of the CWW Union, it attributes this to overpaid workers and unreasonable pension expectations.

So, is a strategy based on alienating workers, businesses and the public worth embarking upon? My opening remarks were meant to dash that foolish thought, were the answer not a resounding "yes", since Adam Crozier, the CEO of the state-owned Royal Mail, has just received a bonus package of £3m. And I stress "state-owned" since you might expect this sort of nonsense from a private-sector organisation (see any number of recent stories of executives walking away from customer service disasters considerably richer than they were before they arrived) but not one funded directly by the taxpayer.

Don't ask how this was achieved, since the Post Office's media arm will not reveal the personal performance targets that Mr Crozier presumably met and/or exceeded. To me, this is either because they couldn't think
of any or because they posted the explanatory press release on a Sunday or Bank Holiday, forgetting they'd stopped collections on those days.

But biting satire apart, the Post Office could have followed the lead
of the world's most progressive organisations and recorded customer advocacy, since research proves that companies whose customers wholeheartedly recommend them to friends and family perform best.

If Adam Crozier was personally benefiting because the UK public is overwhelmed with affection for its service, then I believe the bonus is justified, but just as British Airways seems to have forgotten to include customer service in its annual performance targets, so the
Post Office seems to have invented
a premium for asset-stripping. Showing that it cares for its customers? I think not.

However, what sticks in the craw is the order in which they are meeting these challenges. Any sensible business strategy would have the options (such as post offices being replaced by mobile "outreach" services) in place before embarking on a damaging series of closures. And yet it seems that more haste has been applied to the latter than to the former – a point which the Greater London Authority is currently testing in a legal challenge to the Post Office's London branch-closure programme.

Clearly, some difficult choices lie ahead and we may all have to recognise that the postal service as we know it will have to be replaced by a system that is more cost effective, even if this means that you have to wait at a bus stop for your post office to pass by.

The "modernisation" of the NHS appeared to augur in a patient-led service where people came first and systems were improved to focus provision on improved outcomes. Enter the infamous modern executive, and all we have to show for this is an IT system that is millions of pounds over budget, more layers of management to control "targets" and no senior figure being hurt in the pocket for this abject failure.

It seems that the same thing has happened with our postal services. The vision of customer-led service provision in changing times was especially compelling to a consumer writer like me, but until the level
of service provision warrants a reward, their leaders should resist adding to the losses – or come clean on exactly how their bonus packages are calculated.

Now that's something to write to the Post about.


Mark Bradley is a writer and consultant working to raise the profile of customer service in the UK. His new book, Retails of the Unexpected, is to be published in July and is available from www.ardrapress.co.uk