One thing that has surprised me is how poor the British postal service is. I figured it would be top notch, but instead it seems to make life quite difficult.

The postal service is divided into three separate companies:

Post Office - Runs the post offices, sells stamps, but doesn't deliver mail.
Royal Mail - Delivers letters
Parcel Force - Delivers packages

This in and of itself is not a bad system. However, the three companies don't really work together at all. If you go to the Post Office and ask about the weight of a letter, they will give you the stamps, but they won't take the letter and put it into the delivery system. You have to go outside and drop the letter off in a mail box. Once I took a piece of misdelivered mail to the Post Office, and they refused to take it from me, saying it was Royal Mail's problem, not theirs.

There are also tons of lines at the post offices. It always seems to take 15-30 minutes when I go to the post office.

Another problem is packages that can't fit through the mail slot. You have to go to the Royal Mail office to pick them up. If you want to pick them up at a post office, you have to pay another 50p. Luckily, our Royal Mail office is not too far away, but there are a lot less Royal Mail offices than post offices. Also, the Royal Mail office is only open until noon, and only one or two people help customers.

If someone sends you a letter without sufficient postage on it, you have to go to the Royal Mail office and pay them the postage, plus an extra pound for handling, before they will give you the letter. This was particularly ridiculous with one letter we got from Victoria's parents. It was missing 7p in postage, so we had to pay 1.07 for it! For what exactly? The convenience of me going down there and picking it up after waiting in line for 20 minutes?

Royal Mail also seems to constantly misdeliver mail. We get at least one misdelivered letter every week in our mailbox. It's ridiculous.