It’s likely that every UK ecommerce business has experienced some kind of disruption related to the bad weather that the country has seen over the past week or so. And the problems are likely only starting: complaints take a few days to work themselves through the system.
Royal Mail has published details of the problems that they have experienced with deliveries and explained the situation. And eBay UK has also said it will be protecting sellers from weather related defects and complaints. (The picture above is from a reader in Scotland, who lives not that far north of Glasgow, taken last week. That reader can’t get to the nearest village.)
Several Tamebay readers have been in touch and here are a few comments they’ve made. The commentary has come in via Facebook and email. Please do add your experiences and fill out the picture:
– We are in Scotland and we haven’t been able to despatch via Royal Mail for three days. We can’t even get to the Post Office. We’re worried about how eBay and Amazon will judge our performance.
– I know that my despatch times and deliveries have been impacted and we have had some buyer complaints already despite trying very hard to send out goods on time.
– Will international buyers understand that there are problems in the UK? Why does snow here cause so many problems when it’s not a problem in other countries that have more snow?
This winter has doubtless been one of the more bitter and difficult that the UK has seen in several years. But the experience has been different, depending on where you are around the UK. Scotland has been very badly affected, parts of the East of England and elsewhere too. But maybe not so much in other parts of the home nations. So if you haven’t been terribly impacted you might not understand why other sellers are so troubled.
But there can be no doubt that just about every UK ecommerce business will get a grumble over the next week, because the complaints do take a bit of time to trickle down when there are difficulties. What are you doing to communicate?
5 Responses
Well we are located near Stirling, (near where all the people spent the night in the cars)…Everything just shut down on Wed afternoon when they issued the RED warning. We are not that concerned about the UK, it is the amount of international sales we have it is going to be an issue.
However we still do not see WHY RMG did not work Saturday, we just came from the Post Office and the lady said last thing she seen them was Wed morning, and they were open on the Saturday. Honest it had cleared up and it was perfectly safe. Totally understand WedPM/Thursday it was a whiteout here, but by Friday you could get about No problem. We dropped of a Stirling Sort centre easy, and they guy said nothing was moving till Monday.
We did email all our customers however. One of our main markets were good and they will make sure no disputes are open and they emailed our customers to help (translation help).
We also emailed any eBay orders (as ebay were useless as normal and NOT helpling)….and anything sold over the weekend had a 3 day dispatch advertised.
Sales were down by about 25 % however with 3 day dispatch etc. On the PLUS side Digital SALES were high, no couriers no eBay to worry about with that 🙂
its this ridiculous ethos of instant delivery thats the problem. not the weather
Britain gets lots of weather every day
Well we have had 6 sacks of orders from 28th to 2nd that have not been delivered. Not one single one of them. We have been to sort centre in Stirling, had a manager on the phone. They say everything is sent to Glasgow.
Most we can fathom is GLASGOW is the issue, they are not clearing the backlog. They have delivered everything we sent down Monday and Tuesday however.
This is all about TARGETS that mail from last week is late anyway. Nevermind the fact this is costing us a complete fortune.
we have an estimated 8 day delivery , though in reality its nearer 2 or 3, saves us all sorts of grief
well worth the 10% ebay carrot dangle