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Royal Mail - Variable service quality [Oct 10th 23]

Posted on 10th Oct 2023 @ 10:13:32 AM

Short Version: UK Customers

Royal Mail services are currently proving to be unusually unreliable and are taking much longer than normal to complete delivery. We would strongly recommend UK customers select DHL Parcel or Fedex UK Priority delivery for any packages where you need it within a few days.

Please note: We will NOT re-send or refund UK orders placed using free delivery or Royal Mail services until at least 3 weeks has passed simply because that's how long some packages are taking to be delivered.

International Customers are not affected (We don't use Royal Mail for International orders any more).

 

Longer Version:

In late 2022 and early 2023 Royal Mail staff were involved in strike action that disrupted various services and while a deal was reached, we have noticed a steady and regrettable decline in service quality, particularly over the last month with RM48 services taking as much as two weeks to deliver packages or, worse still, items being completely lost.

We have reached out to other contacts in the eCommerce sector and found that our experience is not unique with almost all services experiencing delays and/or increased losses along with a swathe of cost increases and reports of recruitment issues in some areas.

The net result of this is that we are urging customers to recalibrate their expectations of the services and consider them more in line with Hermes (now Evri). 

  • RM24 is now closer to 2-5 working days delivery time
  • RM48 is now anywhere between 2-10 working days delivery time
  • Special Delivery is not as reliable as it once was with some deliveries delayed by up to 2 weeks. Thankfully rare but not rare enough.

 The net result is that we are seriously considering dropping Royal Mail services for all but the lowest value orders where speed is not required and updating our prices in line with the more expensive but far more reliable courier services we also have available.

 

Please note that International customers are not affected as we found that Spring GDS has been a far more reliable and cost effective and no longer offer Royal Mail for the bulk of our International customers.