Thank goodness for small mercies. At least the December/November selling peak period remained unhampered by snowy conditions on any major scale. But now, perhaps inevitably, here comes the first nationwide snow event for a while and very possibly just the first of 2013.
Though the cold snap is predicted to continue, the actual snow isn’t likely to last all that long as rain and sleet will follow quite swiftly (or so I have read).
The worst hit area looks like it will be SE Wales where the Met Office has issued a rare Red warning and that’s as high as their warnings go. A 20cm snowfall (and the rest) is forecast there over the next day or so. To all our Tamebay friends in that part of the world we say: stay safe and warm.
Naturally, snow causes headaches for ecommerce businesses everywhere. Your ability to despatch may well be impaired and your carriers’ delivery networks will likely suffer problems too. Perhaps that is one benefit of snow on a Friday: just this once you might consider downing tools, take the day off, grab the sledge and leave the hard work until Monday with a plausible excuse. It’s just an idea. 😉
Are you all set for a flurry of snow? What plans do you have in place? Are there any specific problems in your area that other sellers should know about? Let us know how the freezing conditions are affecting your business. But above all: stay warm.
16 Responses
sovvern softies
here we go some poor sod from the tv will be stuck on a bridge over a road in a blizzard telling us its snowing ,or sent up a mountain to make certain they find the thickest snow to tell us its so many inches deep
Wonder what the ratio of people arriving at work is when you compare self employed to employees ?
I was out at 6:45 this morning, drove my Golf (without snow tyres, snow chains etc) the 11 miles to my warehouse and got there fine.
My packing guy has a land rover, so I’m expecting him soon but the courier driver from DPD said yesterday that although he lives a 400 meter walk from the depot that he’d not be going into work ‘at the first sniff of snow’……
Always amazes me that this country grinds to a halt at the first sign of a snowflake.
We have about half an inch in Manchester at the moment, the sheer volume of “I am not driving in snow so I am not going to work today” type statuses on ye olde book of face – its half an inch, if you sneeze it goes away!
*waits for 4 o’clock to open the unit door to find a mountain of snow outside…*
Suns out in Falmouth.
Gutted.
Got a new sledge and just itching to jump on it.
The problem we seem to encounter is that people stop shopping on ebay whenever it snows to this extent. It may be that buyers don’t think business’ are working and/or they have little faith in the delivery network to deliver their purchase. It seems to be a case of I’ll order it “tomorrow” and then simply not remembering to do so. Ebay should have a message facility that we can put on the shop for this, that simply says “We Are Business As Usual – Your Items Will Still Be Dispatched On Time”.
The only issues (for me) are the additional “where is my package” type of messages. And it gives buyers an excuse to bang in INR claims. May be worth while using signed for services for the next few days for all packages and absorbing the extra cost.
there is more snow on christmas cards than you soft lot ever see down sowff