Did you receive any letters in the post on Saturday? If so then this would have been the first time for a month and a half. For six weeks from the 2nd of May until the 13th of June, there was a Royal Mail temporary change to postal arrangements on Saturdays as a result of coronavirus-related absences and necessary social distancing measures.
While Royal Mail continued to provide a letter delivery service from Monday to Friday as normal, they temporarily no longer delivered letters on a Saturday. This Royal Mail temporary change to postal arrangements on Saturdays was to help ease the additional burden on hard-working Posties.
The good news is that from Saturday the 13th of June this temporary change has come to an end and Royal Mail have now resumed Saturday deliveries for letter products. This is good news for ecommerce merchants who use letter post as now orders will be delivered six days a week once again. The changes didn’t affect most other services as parcels and any items (including letters) sent via Signed, Tracked or Special Delivery services continued to be delivered on Saturdays during the Royal Mail temporary change to postal arrangements.
Royal Mail Temporary change to postal arrangements still in force
It’s worth noting that there are still some other changes to how Royal Mail operate.
There is a temporary change in opening hours at Customer Service Points – largest locations will be open between 7-11am. All other Customer Service Points will be open between 7-9am. All will be closed on Wednesday and Sunday.
To give consumers longer to collect items, Royal Mail have temporarily extended the retention period to 30 calendar days before items are returned to sender.
Timed guarantees for Special Delivery Guaranteed have been extend for by 9am to by 12.00pm and by 1pm to by 9pm.
Royal Mail will not be handing over our hand-held devices to customers to capture signatures but instead log the name of the person accepting the item.
