With Christmas now behind us, will you return to Royal Mail in 2023, or have you found a new carrier for your parcels and will shun the unreliability of the striking postal service?
It will be interesting to see what the CWU’s next move is now that the pressure on the Royal Mail of delivering Christmas is past. Traditionally, Royal Mail strikes have petered out in the New Year with a deal being reached as the leverage is all but gone. Consumers who were desperate for their Christmas cards and presents to be delivered tend to care a lot less if they don’t receive their credit card bills on time demanding payment for the festive expenses.
The Royal Mail have stonewalled the Union at ever turn, declining a last minute truce offered by the CWU which would have seen strikes on the 23rd and Christmas Eve called off. They’ve show absolutely zero inclination to negotiate a settlement that’s not on their own terms so far. In some ways this really does suit the Royal Mail as they’ve been able to invoke a clause in a previous agreement which enables them to push on with modernisation without Union agreement.
However at some point, a return to Royal Mail normal operations has to take place and it’s hard to see how this will be achieved without reaching agreement with the CWU.
In the mean time, small businesses have been devastated with parcels not delivered in anything like an acceptable time frame, and with Royal Mail focusing on Special Delivery and Tracked deliveries, this has meant letters and large letters have festered undelivered in depots. I spoke to so many independent businesses that were forced to give in and shut up shop weeks before Christmas who have lost their vital seasonal sales boost that keeps them afloat for the rest of the year.
The only good news is that the carriers who have been working flat out before Christmas will now see some relief and be more able to cope with the volumes that have come their way. Their services are likely to return to more normal levels so if you are sticking with them rather than considering a return to Royal Mail the only question to ask is if the carriage costs are at a level your customers are willing to pay.
There’s no doubt that Royal Mail are cheapest for letters and large letters, but for anything slightly heavier that’s a parcel size, you don’t ever have to contemplate a return to Royal Mail as there are options available that will delivery next day for a comparable, and in some cases cheaper, price.
13 Responses
Probably for Small & Large Letters – but not for Small Parcels.
cost and reliability, will be the base of our decision,
cant see royal mail providing either in the near future
I have moved 50pc of my daily parcels to rival couriers (approx 200 parcels a day moved). That business is not coming back.
I know many other businesses that are fed up. We’re not on the side of the strikers. Ruined much of our Christmas business because of their greed and unwillingness to understand the need for change.
Hoping there are job losses coming in Jan and royal mail is made leaner. More competition in the parcel market is a good thing.
Well done union.
They cost us a small fortune especially for things sent around Black Friday. They are always poor at peak but they were went out of their way not to deliver large letter this year total disgrace really just to hit pointless targets (that was the management) and considering it is about the only service they were worthwhile for.
Anyway we switched to Evri even for large letter items in the end as Royal Mail were pointless but had to switch off about the 10th. All parcels will go Evri now the Post workers are to lazy even to scan anything.
Am afraid it does not look good for Royal Mail at all.
I can understand the workers not wanting their conditions shredded but they have to actually move with the times with regarding times they deliver. Thompson needs to go also as he is all stick and no carrot.
We stopped Royal Mail except for odd offshore orders after they lost a sack of our parcels for 3 weeks during Christmas 2021. They also started giving us random surcharges which pushed us to move to Yodel with little to no complaints.
Won’t be moving parcels back to Royal Mail unless they provide a fully tracked service at under £2.50 per 2kg parcel and stop with all these delays.
You are also playing risk roulette with Royal Mail as they prioritize new mail over already delayed mail meaning they ‘lose’ a sack of your parcels for 3 weeks. No other carriers behave like this, so we’d have to factor in lower prices for the poor service they provide.
I’ve been taking advantage of the discount on RM48 Tracked and free collection. I had some booked for collection yesterday and they couldn’t be bothered to turn up. They emailed me a link to rebook the failed collection that didn’t work.
The company are a joke and I’ll using them as little as possible in the future. They keep bleating about how they want to be a parcel company but can’t even arrange for someone to come and collect when they say they will.
Very occasionally we get our despatch wrong
If a RM labelled item is collected by evri
Its spotted and returned ,
An evri labelled item picked up by royal mail is never seen again
Says it all really
RM dont care
Definitely not. No choice for letter / large letter, but am changing the business model to move away from those size mailings. Totally had enough. RM is making no appreciable effort to deal with the backlog and items up to a month are still not arriving. No updates from RM or indication of where problems are worst. Am sure many businesses now piling in claims for loss. Disreputable company, run atrociously and deserves everything they will get in 2023
Royal should shutdown the business. They failed to manage the workforce they keep doing strikes and stealing items. I lost £360. My item was to be delivered on 7th December 2022 collected on 5th December 24 hour tracked. Still tracking shows it’s in one their mail centre. Support is unreachable rude and threatening, failed to pay any compensation.
The products we sell rely on a Christmas sales. They normally post out as letters and Large Letters…. I think it might be time to up the postage costs and go for as many additional items with no extra charge and use another carrier ( now… anyone except RM!! )…. it’ll be less items and a greater spend…. or less work, either is better than trying to second guess a sociopathic Royal Mail and Amazon every Christmas
Atrocious management at RM to let it get to this level, and now they have been hacked! To some extent I sympathise with the strikers. We don’t need RM to become another Evri and when it was privatised the purchasers of RM knew what they were buying. Now they want to move the goalposts. Surprisingly had very little mail disappear. Moved most of our large letter to Amazon FBA Small & Light, which turned out to be a great decision.
Our RM contract is up for review in Feb, it should be a no brainer to move it to Evri, however Evri has had such bad publicity that many buyers would not want to use us if they knew we used Evri. Maybe this was part of RM’s grand plan!