Your article (G2, 29 April) was illuminating in depicting the travails of the postie in the liberalised Dutch mail system. As one at the receiving end of this delivery service, I'd like to affirm that life for the customer has also deteriorated considerably since deregulation. Post from the UK, which used to take four or five days to reach the Netherlands, now regularly takes one to two months. Increasingly, envelopes arrive with edges ripped open to check if the contents are worth pilfering, and sometimes disappear altogether. On one occasion, a vinyl record was bent to fit through my letterbox. Friends relate similar horror stories.
What makes all this bad service intensely frustrating is the fact that one is never sure which service has made the delivery and therefore to whom a complaint may be made. The users of the UK postal service should be made aware that a "liberalised" system along Dutch lines is adopted very much at their expense.
Fintan McDonagh
The Hague, Netherlands