Royal Mail International post is still on hold, following a cyber incident last week, which appears to have been a ransomeware attack. This has left their files encrypted and the company unable to access their data, which may also have been stolen with the threat of it being published online.
Due to mail piling up and going nowhere, they have requested shippers to hold outgoing International post and not despatch it until the issues are resolved.
The impacted Royal Mail items impacted are:
- Royal Mail International Tracked
- Royal Mail International Tracked & Signed
- Royal Mail International Signed
- Royal Mail International Standard
We are temporarily unable to despatch items to overseas destinations. To support faster recovery when our service is restored and to prevent a build-up of export items in our network, we’re asking customers not to post international items until further notice. Items that have already been despatched may be subject to delays. We would like to sincerely apologise to impacted customers for any disruption this incident is causing.
– Royal Mail
In order to enforce this request, Royal Mail disabled the ability to send international items from business accounts on Friday evening.
To avoid creating congestion in our network and to support a faster recovery, we’re taking the additional step to disable access to our international shipping solutions for all international account customers, from 1900hrs this evening (13 January 2023). This means that you will not be able to purchase international postage or generate any labels for items being exported.
– Royal Mail email to business customers
A Times article reports that over 100 engineers are working on a solution and it could take up to a week to get systems up and running again. In the meantime, all items that have already been despatched will be subject to delays. Any International items already received by Royal Mail are being processed through the Royal Mail UK network and held securely for export processing to recommence as soon as their export despatch systems are available again.
eBay Protections
Always sympathetic to sellers facing circumstances outside their control, eBay will automatically protect your performance on transactions currently dated between the 4th of January until 16th of January 2023 for items listed with Royal Mail International services including:
- Your late delivery rate, which will be removed for international transactions.
- Your “item not received” count in your Service Metrics dashboard will be removed.
- eBay will also remove any negative and neutral feedback relating to or arising from late or non-delivery during this period.
- As always, you should upload tracking details when you dispatch an item. This helps to keep your buyers informed, and adding tracking details gives you additional protection.
12 Responses
Good that Ebay is protecting sellers. But how big a shambles has RM become. Question. Why does a company the size of RM not have rigorous cyber security in place? Question. Why does RM not have backup systems in place in the event of a successful attack? Question. Why has RM not already found a timely workaround which IT experts say is possible given this is a known threat? Question. Why are RM execs drawing a fat salary and fat bonuses whilst just sitting around on their a***s?
Absolutely agree.
Curious as how its just international service that’s impacted
It’s not just the international service that is affected. Mail coming out of Northern Ireland has been delayed since Wednesday. Some of it is being sent over to Scotland to be processed.
Radio Silence from Amazon (the usual) with absolutely nothing on their news headlines. Trouble is that Amazon FR, DE etc will probably be unaware as only impacts on a minority of sellers from UK selling on the non UK Amazon platforms. Turned on vacation mode immediately but pending orders creeping through caused us to go over 2.5% cancellation target. Suspension and appeals, deep joy!!
I spoke to an Amazon rep earlier about it, and as you can imagine they were unsympathetic…
Me:As I am sure you are aware Royal Mail has suffered a cyber incident and is unable to send any items internationally
We are in the process of setting up a different carrier, but at the moment (as well as many other UK sellers) we are unable to send anything internationally.
Is there any official advise on how to deal with this issue?
Yhell:I understand that you need assistance about shipping your products internationally.First,I apologize for any inconvenience caused and that’s definitely not what we want our sellers to experience.No worries, I will try my best to assist you in this matter.
As of now there is no official statement about it. If your carrier unable to ship your product you need to find another carrier that can fulfill your order.
Me:Is there any sort of seller protection in place? This is a major issue, with the UKs largest mail carrier is unable to ship international
Yhell:To be honest with you no. Since, there is is an issue with the Royal Mail.
You need to find a carrier that can deliver your product.
All the best with getting your FBM account back if they do suspend you. Happened to us and to keep selling we had to convert to FBA which is exactly what they want. This despite the fact that we send everything tracked.
Hopefully you’ve reported this to the UK competition inquiry which is ongoing…
Why can’t they process manually to get things moving? This is ridiculous. Their CEO was grilled in parliament today and failed to give any reassuring answers about any of the problems at RM. The CWU are balloting for more strikes as well. The RM board should sack him forthwith. Even worse than Rico.
The clock is ticking for the Royal Mail parcel service, I’m quite sure this might finish them off.
The timing is highly suspect.
Cant help thinking there is much more to this.
A serious effect to Thousands of businesses and services , nation wide.
A threat to a national service and economy ,yet Not a great deal of noise in the media
As usual, a total sh**show from Royal Mail. Thompson & Co need to resign. And they talk about modernisation? Having used the Parcel2Go website, how much better it is than the Click & Drop RM offering. Built in commodity codes, international address lookup, IOSS and you know what you are paying on each consignment. International was claimed to be the profitable part of Royal Mail, but I think I will bin it and keep with Parcel2Go