More on Royal Mail’s 4-day Xmas Shut Down

Royal Mail have given us a little more information about their well deserved extended Christmas Holiday break, which is taking place by the happy coincidence of Boxing Day falling on a Saturday.

While there won’t be any Royal Mail deliveries and customer service points at Delivery Offices will be closed, it is not the case that parcels won’t be going anywhere.

For larger customers, especially retailers, Royal Mail will be making collections on Saturday 26th, Sunday 27th and Monday 28th – this will enable deliveries on Tuesday 29th December. Collections will also operate on and Saturday 2nd January and Sunday 3rd January, for deliveries on Monday 4th January. Royal Mail are already talking to businesses now to forecast volumes and determine what their needs will be.

Normal collections will operate on Sunday 27th December and Sunday 3rd January, as these are considered working days for collections. For Saturday 26th December and Saturday 2nd January, special arrangements will be put in place to accept parcels into the network.

Royal Mail has historically received very low volumes of Universal Service Obligation mail for delivery during this period. Ahead of Christmas Royal Mail are extending seasonal deliveries and there will be more than 400 Delivery Offices that stay open until 5pm for parcel collection on Christmas Eve, Thursday December 24th.

The extended Christmas shut down is unlikely to impact smaller retailers, other than the extended delivery times for items in transit during that period. I can’t imagine too many independent online retailers will be opening up their warehouses on Boxing Day and even if you do it’s unlikely that you have a regular Saturday collection so you won’t notice that Royal Mail aren’t working.

The only impact you’ll probably see will be a larger than usual backlog of sales to process when you return to work on Tuesday 29th December, but no more so than last year when Christmas Day fell on a Thursday and we all went back to work the following Monday.

Enjoy your enforced 4 day’s holiday this year and for Christmas 2016. Before you know it Christmas 2017 will be upon us and we’ll only get 3 days holiday and in 2018 and 2019 we’ll only get two day’s off in a row!