From January 1 2006, any licensed operator could choose to compete head on with one of the longest-established public services in this or any other country.

Customers could cheerfully anticipate a new age of choice and improved service without, it was implied, losing the country's proud postal Unique Selling Point: one price anywhere. Business owners could look forward to a new competitive era where a poor performing postal services provider could be swiftly replaced with a new one.

So, in the two years since then, what has happened?

Not a lot, it has to be said. From a personal viewpoint, I have to admit some misplaced optimism. I'd envisaged garden paths crowded with postmen elbowing each other out of the way and competing for the affections of the divorcee at number 42. Life would be a lot more colourful – and still one price anywhere.

So, unless you've mistaken your porridge for hallucigens (again), this scene has not yet materialised – and, to those with a less limited intellectual capacity than your author, was never likely to.

The fact is that competition has had an impact on business services, but its impact has been to the detriment of residential services – the likes of you and me.

Put yourself in the expensive shoes of the MD of a large parcel distribution service: will you jump into the residential marketplace? Could your company eat into the Royal Mail's monopoly (when last counted, it had 97 per cent of the letters market)? Could you provide competition for sections of the process, for example, final-end delivery, mass transit of mail, etc?

Of course not, so no wonder these operators are unwilling to get involved.

Take, for example, paying a single price regardless of the UK destination. This is exactly the sort of social obligation that private companies tend to "avoid like the plague", as one commentator put it. Private companies are motivated by profit, not fulfilling social obligations.

The reality is that most of us will not be offered competitive choice for several years, or probably even longer. But business customers? That's another story altogether – and that's currently at the top of the MD's list of priorities.

From the couple of dozen organisations who have successfully obtained licences to deliver mail, all have focused on business services. TNT and DHL are the most recognisable new players on the scene, but anyone who ever worked in a solicitors' office or a building society will recognise the natural extension into this market of the former exchange service company, DX.

But business customers still have their gripes – and in this they are joined by residential customers like me.

A recent poll in Scotland highlighted that only 28 per cent of respondents believed that their post was always on time and always arrived. Apart from prompting the question: how do you know that post you weren't expecting hasn't arrived, it strikes me as a low figure.

To reinforce my point, a further 64 per cent of customers valued the service, but would not call it reliable or efficient, and eight per cent said they had switched to other modes of communication, mostly to modern technology.

What further galls these respondents is the fact that post prices are rising faster than Postcomm promised us. Who? Postcomm is charged by government to regulate the postal services industry. When the Royal Mail wants to put up prices, they ask Postcomm who, in turn, examines the company's cost, efficiency and service performance, before deciding on whether any proposed increases can be allowed.

The fact that it has been announced that second-class mail is to rise to 29p in 2009, and that the Royal Mail has announced that there will be no more Sunday or Bank Holiday collections from October 28 this year, means that the public is generally more aware of the organisation Postwatch than Postcomm.

Postwatch defends consumers and businesses in this competitive age, arguing recently that Postcomm should not have allowed the second-class price rise, and points out that the Royal Mail has failed to meet efficiency targets and cost-reduction targets, allegedly ignoring its own criteria for price increases. Naturally, Postcomm disagrees.

And while these arguments are played out in the newspapers, a series of strikes continues to blight the image of the Royal Mail, in protest against, among other things, lower-paid foreign workers coming on board, presumably to help address the Royal Mail's cost-reduction targets. Some allege that this further compromises postal security, which has featured in a number of shocking TV documentaries.

For residential customers, though, the new dawn promised by the opening up of the postal market is as far away as ever. Prices are rising, service is not what is used to be and if I'm not happy with my postal provider, I don't seem to have an alternative. I wish the post would get itself sorted.


Mark Bradley campaigns for better customer service in the UK. Author of Inconvenience Stores: One Year in UK Customer Service (www.ardrapress.com), he is a consultant and business speaker