Post Office

Compared to the cramped conditions of the Post Office’s previous incarnation on Brazennose Street, this is an amazing Post Office. In the grand scheme of things, I doubt a Post Office would really ever get more than 3 stars on Unilocal…
Located in the Town Hall, it’s a good central location, easily accessible for the majority of the city. There are two post slots outside of the main area, for letters and parcels, so you can pop them through on your way out rather than having to go back to a desk to drop off or searching Manchester for a post box.
I’ve been in on two occasions — on the first it had only just moved from the aforementioned location, so people really didn’t know where to go, meaning it was basically empty. The second it was much busier, with lots of office workers obviously trying to run errands during their lunch break, so this is definitely the time to avoid if you’re looking for a super quick process.
Service at the desk has been very friendly on both visits, and more than happy to process purchase of an envelope and then process the actual delivery side of things. There’s a table in the centre of the room for labelling addresses if required, and a few bins provided.
I haven’t tried the self service machines, though they do appear to be the same as those in the supermarket i.e. no matter what anyone does, a member of staff has to get involved at some stage.

This is a new Post Office which opened about 2 weeks ago. The Post Office on Brazennose Street is now closed and «replaced» by this one.
I went in yesterday around 1pm as I needed to post a couple cards. I had a feeling it would be busy since it was around lunch time and also Christmas time so people sending cards etc.
This particular Post Office has a couple self service kiosks. There was a guy there helping people — which kind of defeats the object of a self service machine! Its quite a complex machine I think as it does lots of different things and catering for people posting all sorts of different things. I didn’t actually use the machine as he just pressed the buttons and told me to put in the money and then get the stamps — which I was a bit disappointed they were not Christmas stamps.
Anyway, my main issue with this Post Office and why it only gets ²⁄₅ is the layout/​queue. I walked into the Town Hall Extension towards the PO and the queue was going out the door? Now the end of the world as it wasn’t outside but not very «professional». As I got further in, I realised that the queue for the kiosk was shorter but no one knew which queue was for what. No barriers. No signs. People were wondering what the big queue was for. I decided to move over to the shorter queue which meant walking past people in the longer (counter service) queue — people probably thought I was queue jumping.
At this point, some guy said he was in front of me. I think he was in the bigger queue but assumes it just «forked off» into 2 different paths — one for the kiosks, the other for the counter service.
I think they need to re-​think the layout. Putting barriers (theme park style) up so people know where to go. And not putting the kiosks right by the entrance! Not very well planned!
I complained to them via Twitter and they said would pass message on etc. I did the same for the branch on Spring Gardens about something — not that I complain all the time! That branch was confusing with the number ticketing system.