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Postal Strike Information

Posted on | August 4, 2007 | Comments Off

Royal Mail are currently on strike/industrial action. Unlike previous action this seems to have been more carefully planned to cause the maximum possible disruption to mail than before. Different departments of Royal Mail are striking on different days and/or in different areas. The effect of this is cumulative and is causing major backlogs of post across the United Kingdom. In particular the people most affected are business mailers with accounts with Royal Mail such as ourselves and other mail order outlets.

The backlogged mail is estimated at around 8 million items and growing at 1 million a day. Consequently mail is taking a lot longer to get through to people and to get out of the country, and also via Heathrow, which is where 90% of international mail leaves this country. Particularly hard hit areas within the UK are Wolverhampton, London, Southampton, Milton Keynes, Uxbridge, Hull and Slough. Wolverhampton alone has a backlog of over 1 million items, which is understandable when you appreciate that Staffordshire is home to a very large quantity of mail order companies and fulfillment houses.

In theory the backlogged mail should be getting processed in an “oldest first” rota, but in reality we have been told this is not happening. What is occurring is that when mail is being sorted, the private postings (from postboxes and Post Offices) are getting done first, simply because there’s “less of it” and being collected daily from the boxes etc it tends to be smaller sacks, i.e. the “easy option”. Therefore we have found that items posted more recently are arriving faster than items posted earlier last week and last weekend. I know this causes worry as if more recent orders arrive, customers automatically assume that older parcels are lost.

Some areas are particularly badly affected also as post is not being collected from some businesses AT ALL. So far we have missed one business collection, but have posted out today (Saturday) to make up for this.

Please therefore accept our apologies for the delay to your delivery. You will need to allow a reasonable amount of time for deliveries to arrive during this difficult time, and accept our apologies for Royal Mail’s actions which are beyond our control.

Thank you for your continued patience – please do not hesitate to contact us if you require further information.

For more details and for up to date information on the strike, please click here.

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