Month: September 2022

Latest update on Royal Mail Industrial Action – December 19th 2022

As the Royal Mail strikes continue right up to Christmas and there is a significant backlog of mail at Royal Mail depots we have made the decision to temporarily disable Royal Mail services to most areas, other than large letter rates for small packages and a few remote areas that don’t have realistic courier options.
This will be temporary until after the Christmas period as the last thing we want is a large number of packages sat in depots for prolonged periods over the Christmas/New Year period.
Most areas will see a very competitive Fedex option which at the moment is proving to be the most reliable service.

Royal mail strike days this week are:

Friday 23rd December
Saturday 24th December

Realistically our last shipping day is Thursday 22nd December for all orders.

 

The Communication Workers Union have today announced new strike dates for December so our updated list of strike dates is below
All Royal Mail  services will be affected around these dates with no collections taking place on those days, fewer deliveries being made, and delays with all services outside of these dates as sorting offices try and catch up.

We do not recommend selecting Royal Mail domestic or International services for any order that you need in a hurry.
With backlogs causing delays and the RM prioritising 1st Class and Tracked24 services over cheaper services, there is potential for long delays with mail leading up to the Christmas period.

November

We now have a FedEx service in addition to the Royal Mail options for most areas and this is cheaper than Tracked24 and only slighty more expensive than Tracked48. We recommend using this where available as delivery aims for all Royal Mail services will extend over the following weeks.

We will update if anything changes.

 

 

Hi.

As you’ve probably seen in the news, Royal Mail are planning further undustrial action.

• Friday 30 September 2022 and Saturday 1 October 2022
• Thursday 13th October 2022
• Thursday 20th October 2022
• Tuesday 25th October 2022
• Monday 28th November 2022

Further dates have also been announced by the CWU for functional strike action which impacts parts of our operation on the following:

• Processing, Distribution, International, Collections, Admin: 3rd, 9th, 15th, 24th November and 1st December 2022
• Delivery: 4th, 10th, 16th, 25th November and 2nd December 2022
• Network: 2nd, 8th, 14th, 23rd, 30th November 2022

Obviously as around 65% of our packages go out with Royal Mail then it’s going to impact our delivery service to you.

We’re working on alternatives at the moment but please be aware that if you select Royal Mail as a delivery option on or around these dates it’s going to impact the speed of your delivery.

As always, we’ll do our bit and get the items picked, packed and into bags for Royal Mail to collect but selecting an alternative courier at checkout may be in your interest.

Please also note that we may swap some orders placed with Royal Mail to other shipping providers to keep parts moving.

Simon.