Thinking of buying a Post Office?

I wouldn't recommend it for a number of reasons.

First, there are the details on this website, and surely that should offer some insight.

Then there are the economics of it, as you finish up handing over a sum, in my case £65,000, for equity in a business that can be written off by a third party without any compensation and without any appeal procedure or right to be given a reason as why they are doing it.

Post Office business is totally out of step with the demands of the real world nowadays. They have had a major network across the country and failed to take advantage of the wonderful opportunities it has presented. They have operated a cut and slash policy to the network to try and make the business profitable. Innovation and creativity are not words in their vocabulary. Their approach is more to dilute current markets by just copying what others are doing eg insurance, telephones and currency, and in the meantime suboffices continue to close across the country and communities lose vital services. But the politicians, apart from a bit if saber rattling, actually do nothing about it as they are led to believe, by management practices that would be more at home in the dark ages, that it is the only way.

Again, economically, a suboffice is the worst possible investment as the business continues to lose its' core work year after year and fails to develop innovative and lucrative replacements for the income. This is set in an environment where the Post Office impose major restrictions about what you can run alongside a suboffice on the private side of your business to try and make a living. In 2003/4 about 60% of business though a post office stemmed from government. The Post Office themselves are saying within 2 or 3 years this figure will be at 10%. So they've managed to lose 50% of their core business in just over 5 years, a superb example of their management skills or perhaps that is reflected in their top management multi-million pound bonuses.

If you are considering purchasing a suboffice, no doubt along the way you will hear it is a partnership. Though it is a very strange partnership where you pay a considerable amount up front and then the other partner tells you to do everything and you have no vocal input at all into the partnership. Remember what is mentioned elsewhere on this site, that in entering this partnership you are handing over a loaded financial gun to be held to your head and because of this nobody inside the business will tell you the truth about it. In my case they pulled the trigger, though I am not the only victim, if you look hard enough you will find the country is littered with bodies.

............... and don't forget, as they like to tell everyone, with them it's personal.