Posted on 11th Dec 2024 @ 7:26:46 PM
Closure Monday 7th April
Due to staff holiday overlap we're closed for one day on Monday 7th. Orders placed between midday on April 4th to midday on 6th should ship as normal but may be delayed until Tuesday 8th if contingency plans hiccup. Support throughout may be delayed by 24 hours but we hope to respond sooner. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
EU Business Purchases - EORI is Required
Any EU based business order MUST include the registered EORI number for the business or we will be forced to cancel and refund the order.
We are seeing a substantial increase in orders from EU businesses who do not know that they need an EORI registration or who simply don't provide it with their order. This will delay dispatch because we cannot ship such orders without the EORI information. It just won't be accepted. So, please if you are based in the EU and ordering for a business, make sure you have a valid EORI number and provide it with your order.
Overall status:
- Easter Holidays are affecting support and dispatch times. Potential 24 hour delay in response/dispatch
- Orders are shipping as normal and most delays are weather, sales/holiday volume or stike related.
Country Specific Information: (Issues affecting delivery times)
Australia: Normal service
Belgium: Normal service
Canada: Backlog appears to have cleared and items are shipping as normal
Denmark: Normal service
France: Normal service
Germany: Normal service
Greece: Normal service
Ireland: Normal service
Italy: Strike action affecting some deliveries (updated: April 4th)
Japan: Normal service
Poland: Some delays (1-3 days) due to "operational issued" in Polish Post network (updated: April' 3th)
Portugal: Normal service
Netherlands: Recommend Spring (Priority Parcel [T]) for faster shipping.
New Zealand: Normal Service
Norway: Normal service.
Slovakia: Normal service
USA: USPS worker layoffs are expected to affect delivery times coupled with uncertainty caused by tarriffs. Expect delays.
Ukraine: Services to eastern and southern parts of Ukraine remain patchy. Please contact us BEFORE ordering so we can check for issues.
Russia/Belarus: Service to these territories have been suspended indefinitely.
European (EU/EEA Orders)
(Not including the UK)
- See above for country specific delays.
- Please read our detailed information on EU/EEA orders available here
- We continue to incur surcharges with all EU shipping services. We're actively looking at alternatives for both IOSS handling and shipping.
- Spring GDS continues to improve their service breadth and speed of delivery and we're switching all our International post/mail options to their services.
International (Non-EU Orders)
- Spring GDS continues to improve their service breadth and speed of delivery and we're switching all our International post/mail options to their services.
- Royal Mail has become an overblown, poor quality service for International orders with very little responsibility or communication from account managers, etc...
- Asendia has been suspended following a number of issues with processing times and unforced errors.
UK Orders
- Royal Mail services since mid September (2023) have been poor with numerous delays and increased losses. Please use another service if your order is time critical. (more info).
- All other UK courier services are currently delivering reasonably normally but we seeing some delays due to the parcel volumes leading up to Christmas.
Final Comments.
- We are now managing to ship orders almost every day with some rare exceptions.
- Spring orders are being shipped in batches every 1-2 days for efficiency purposes.
- Covid-19 appears to have dwindled into the background noise and while it is occassionally mentioned as a cause/excuse for delays it seems "normality" has returned to a degree.
Shipping Service Updates
You can find updates to shipping service availability, performance, etc... on this thread
Earlier Updates:
The snow is finally gone. - 16th January.
The roads and pavements are now clear and postal deliveries are taking place as normal in most parts of the UK. There may be some delays in some areas but in the main we're back to normal.
Adverse weather: Delay in dispatching orders - Mon-Tue 6-7th January
We closed for the day on Monday 6th and colder than expected weather overnight into Tuesday means that snow has gone through a partial thaw, freeze cycle on repeat. The net effect has been a lot of black ice and treacherous conditions on both roads and pavements/walkways.
We are now back in the workshop and getting orders ready to ship today (Tuesday 7th) but we fully expect additional delays in processing and delivery for the next few days. Similar conditions exist elsewhere in the world so please allow accordingly.
As ever, our apologies for the inconvenience caused but please keep yourselves safe.
See our earlier thread:
https://www.octoink.co.uk/news/543/