Millions of homes and businesses face over two weeks of postal disruption as as the Communication Workers Union start there strike action. Experts think it will take up to 3 weeks for all the backlog of post to get delivered and back to normal.

Jonathan de Carteret, founder of broker Post-Switch, said that Royal Mail was using special warehouses to house the undelivered mail which will get topped up as and when more strikes take place. Letters waylaid by the first strikes will be the last to get delivered because they will be literally at the bottom of the pile.

“While Royal Mail works through the backlog of letters, it’s unfortunately a case of first in, last out,” he said.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called further national strike action next week. The details that will effect dropshipping orders are as follows:

Thursday 29th October: Mail Centres and Network Distribution Units. Limited processing, movement and collection of mail (if local collections performed by a Mail Centre)

Friday 30th October: Manual Data Entry Centres (MDEC).

Saturday 31st October: Delivery Offices. Limited delivery and collection of mail (if local collections performed by a Delivery Office)

Royal mail has said:-  We are really sorry for the significant disruption and inconvenience national industrial action taken by the CWU is having on customers and for the uncertainty further announcements of CWU industrial action will cause. We are continuing to urge the CWU to call off all strike action and concentrate with us on supporting customers during the autumn and Christmas peak mail period.

In the event this planned strike action takes place, mail services on Thursday and Saturday will be very limited and delay to the collection, sorting, distribution and delivery of mail will be inevitable.

What we will do to maintain and recover service
If national industrial action takes place, Royal Mail has strong contingency plans to do all we can to keep mail moving and minimise disruption for our customers:

• Keep mail moving – over 900 managerial and contract drivers will move mail around the country on strike days.
• Delivering mail – we will continue to deliver premium services (Special Delivery™ and Royal Mail Tracked™) to customers throughout the week.
• Use of around 5000 managerial and support people – to maintain premium services, open callers’ offices and to collect mail from Post Office branches, posting boxes and customers where possible on strike days.
• Support the distribution of packets and parcels – we have five additional dedicated and fully staffed sorting centres to aid the distribution of goods through our network.
• Deploy a targeted service recovery plan – concentrate our substantial support resources in areas most affected to deliver mail after the strikes.

Collection of mail

• Most collections will operate normally Monday-Friday next week.
• If a mail centre or collection unit located on a mail centre site performs a customer collection, these customer collections are likely to be affected on Thursday 29th October. If performed by a delivery office, collections are likely to be affected – and very limited- on Saturday 31st October.
• Wherever possible we will provide more certainty to customers about the day on which their collection is likely to be affected however, the nature of the CWU strike action means we may not be able to provide absolute certainty to all customers.
• Royal Mail service teams will be contacting business collection customers early next week to advise as to how collection services will be affected and, in the event we may not be able to collect, provide alternatives for getting mail into our network.
• We will be continuing to collect mail from all Post Office® branches and from posting boxes, prioritising heavily used boxes, such as those outside Post Offices®.

Delivery of mail

• In most areas, mail deliveries will take place next week Monday – Friday although delivery times may be subject to some variation.
• On Saturday 31st October, mail deliveries in most areas will be limited to the delivery of premium services (Special Delivery™ and Royal Mail Tracked™).
• Where delivery offices are located on the same site as mail centres, deliveries made from these offices may be affected on Thursday 29th October but will take place on Saturday 31st October.

More information
More detailed information about mail services, including the answers to our most frequently asked questions relating to industrial action, can be found on our website at http://www.royalmail.com/serviceupdates.

Alternatively, if you are a business customer please talk to your usual Royal Mail contact or call the Business Service Helpline on 08457 950950. Residential customers can call Royal Mail Customer Service on 08457 740740.

Again we’d like to say we’re really sorry for the inconvenience we know this industrial action may cause you, your business and your customers.

Regards,

Royal Mail Customer Services

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