When the old Westbury Co-Op closed for a while to refurbish itself - after the nearby Tesco Express opened (about 6 or 8 or so years ago) - Co-Op put on a bus service to take their PO customers to the College Road Co-Op in Trowbridge. I drove there to have a look at it in my role as a town councillor at the time and wondered how on earth I had never discovered it before. When the Westbury Co-Op eventually closed and it's PO finally shut down, I then used the College Rd PO several times when I was going to be in Trowbridge anyway.
Since the High Street PO has opened in McColls I have found it to be very good most of the time because the queue is either very short or non-existent. Sometimes, like in the run up to Christmas last month the queues were longer and it obviously took longer to wait but in reality the same must have been true at every other PO.
I guess that sometimes when there is a serious staff shortage, a sub PO will close their PO counter. I have never heard of this being a regular problem though I have seen one or two signs in the door saying that it would be closed on a certain day for staff training or shortage reasons over the last year or so, which hardly seems to be a regular crisis.
I think if the shop is convenient and open and does the job most of the time without a problem, then it is basically providing a good service with little risk of an occasional problem. If I ever found it to be closed when I need it then there is always an array of other nearby sub PO counters at The Ham, Dilton Marsh, Bratton, Warminster (WH Smith) and several in Trowbridge including Co-Op College Road and now WH Smith.
