Our third-class post: Almost half of Britons are unhappy with Royal Mail

Millions are unhappy they do not get their post until the afternoon. The death of the morning post has come about as Royal Mail cut staff by 48,000 over the past six years and changed shift patterns in an attempt to transfer two-thirds of deliveries until after midday.

Service quality has also been affected by the closure of thousands of post offices, a reduction in the number of post box collections, and the scrapping of Sunday collections.

Postwatch: 'Many deliveries are made later in the day than they used to be'

In May, it was revealed that strike action in 2007 had caused a serious slump in standards and the organisation failed to hit nine of the 12 minimum service targets.

Tens of millions of letters were delayed or lost last year and the reliability of the first-class delivery service fell to 85.2 per cent.

This was below the firm's official target, which requires that at least 93 per cent of first-class mail is delivered by the following day. 

Royal Mail also missed delivery targets for second-class post, special delivery and standard parcels, which are cornerstones of the service.

A customer survey for Postwatch conducted by Ipsos MORI, which polled 2,036 adults in early July, found 43 per cent believe Royal Mail's service has declined over the past two years, 42 per cent believed it was the same, while only 14 per cent have seen an improvement.

The findings may increase pressure on Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier, who was paid £3.04million for 2007-08 and is the country's highest paid civil servant.

Postwatch chairman Millie Banerjee said it was 'not surprising' the vast majority of customers believed Royal Mail's performance had got worse or stood still in the past two years.

She said it was important that customer perception was dealt with alongside performance.

'Adam Crozier has acknowledged that Royal Mail needs to become more customer-focused to show it really does care about every item of mail arriving safely and on time,' she said.

Mr Crozier's pay package has been condemned by union leaders. General Secretary of the Communications Workers' Union, Billy Hayes, said: 'Management are clearly being rewarded for failure.'

However, Royal Mail's chairman, Alan Leighton, said Mr Crozier and his team 'has consistently exceeded expectations'.

The CWU said the service is suffering because rivals had taken lucrative commercial contracts.

Mr Hayes added: 'Royal Mail is not being innovative in bringing new products forwards and is being forced to compete on price instead of products and services.'

Royal Mail said the reliability of first-class mail had improved over a two-year period.

A spokesman added that although last year's strike had damaged customer service, 'we are working hard to deliver the high quality our customers deserve'.

He defended later deliveries, saying: 'Royal Mail remains committed to delivering mail to urban areas by around 2pm and around 3pm for rural areas.'