Millions of people across the country are waking up to a heavy snowfall this morning which will inevitably lead to delays in ecommerce shipments.
Some online retailers may find staff unable to come in, either due to simply not being able to get their cars off their drives and as thousands of schools close parents are forced to stay at home for emergency child care. Certainly expect staff that do get into work to potentially be arriving late for their shifts.
Delivery drivers will have a tough time of it with times between drops extended as they crawl their way through the heavy snowfall around icy streets and, even if it’s not the snow, what other traffic is out there will be inching along and holding them up.
Royal Mail have issued a warning that, wintry conditions are likely to effect deliveries in several parts of the country today, especially over higher ground and in North West England. We’ll be out delivering and collecting mail in all areas today, but only where access is possible and it’s safe for our people to perform them.
Particularly hard hit areas of the country are Cheshire, Derbyshire, Dyfed and Powys. There are Amber weather warnings across much of the UK with warnings that many rural areas could be cut off.
Whilst local deliveries may continue as normal, it’s worth remembering that many major trunk roads have been blocked overnight with Cornwall seeing drives on the A30 having been stuck in their cars and trucks for up to 10 hours overnight. This will have impacted trunk deliveries into local depots meaning that parcels simply won’t be in the right place to be delivered.
We’re waiting to see if marketplace announce protections for sellers who’s shipments are delayed due to the heavy snowfall, but in the meantime (if you can get into work) it will be worth messaging your customers to inform them of delays where possible.
15:00pm Updated to add:
eBay have advised sellers that they will be taking steps to protect their feedback from the heavy snowfall
“Severe weather conditions from snowfall are currently affecting many parts of the United Kingdom and are causing delays to postage deliveries this week.
We’re in contact with delivery providers to understand where and how their delivery services are affected.
In order to prevent negative impact to seller accounts caused by the adverse weather conditions, we’ll endeavour to take the following measure for affected transactions:
• Reviewing and removing Feedback and late delivery rate defects if (a) our delivery providers advise; and/or (b) if sellers inform us they’ve been unduly affected by the adverse weather conditions and provide us with sufficient supporting evidence.
Details to follow.”
– The eBay Team
3 Responses
With regards to ebay, if they should happen to bother to protect sellers it will require them to phone in, wait ina queue for ages, then go through every single item that is marked as late. Of course these may show up over several days so several calls will need to be made and records kept of what has been reported and what not. Then there will be the ones with no tracking…. good luck there!.
Of course in reality for most volume sellers it simply won’t be worth the time, or even practical, so they will just take the hit…. If only there was a way that ebay could simply suspend late delivery metrics….. hmmm, in the 21st century? Hell no…. what if a few sellers send a few items late and ebay misses out on half a dozen genuine late delivery black marks. Talk about bring the system down.
Royal Failing Mail might want to have issued some warnings last year with the Beast from the East carry on, when they kept all the already LATE deliveries back in Glasgow total nightmare cost a small fortune.
eBay were about as much help as an ashtray on a motorbike also….and I do not expect much more from them this time around either ….with their currently unmanaged rudderless shambles of a marketplace.
We’re waiting to see if marketplace announce protections as your man Toby said it will hoops to jump through and ages on the phone normal carry on…they just turn the simple into the complicated…
Please help us eBay