Fed up with Royal Mail

[Austin VT]

Sorry, this is just a rant and not particularly constructive but maybe it will help others think twice before working with Royal Mail. We switched away from RM last year to a competitor because of their farcical service during the repeated strike action. We ended up suffering a huge loss in sales in the crucial run up to Christmas because of the strikes, which meant we fell behind in paying Royal Mail invoices. As soon as we fell behind, service was immediately suspended and threatening letters were issued. Their upper management is disgusting. They treat their workers like crap and their business customers, too. How ironic that our business suffers because of them, and their first reaction is to threaten legal action when we didn't have the money to pay them.

Anyway, after about 6 months and after paying all the overdue RM invoices, we got contacted by our old account manager, tempting us back with great prices on their fully tracked services. So, we came back to Royal Mail. Of course, their quoted prices are not what you pay. They levy all kinds of surcharges on, fuel surcharge this, green surcharge that, probably another charge they'll dream up soon. Less than a year after agreeing on pricing with them, they're raising our prices considerably and using that threatening tone we're used to them, demanding we stick to contracted volumes, and so forth.

They are a company with management that simply has no idea how to deal with people. I wish there was a viable alternative for small packages. The only good thing about RM is their general workforce of posties and collection drivers, they're almost always great.

 

[Tim James]

We ship out orders using RM, although most of them go with FedEx. I find RM useful when we need to send a small package to the north of Scotland, or NI, as they charge the same price wherever they are in the UK unlike most of the commercial companies that add on surcharges for those far flung places.

We book all of our parcels online and pay at the time of booking - I've not yet been tempted into setting up an account with them - maybe I'll think twice if it comes up in the future.

 

[AlanJ1]

Sorry but all I see is issues on your end here?

It was common knowledge about Royal Mail strikes, why did you not have a back-up in place? (we put two back-ups in).
Blaming Royal Mail for losing sales because of this is laughable, see point above.
Not paying Royal Mail (actually not paying anyone) is never going to end well.

Fuel surcharge has always been something you pay with Royal Mail (and every other courier I have shipped with).

Online business and business in general is about having plans if something goes wrong and not blaming anyone, just being reactive to the sitution and getting what need's done, done.

 

[Austin VT]

Sorry but all I see is issues on your end here?

It was common knowledge about Royal Mail strikes, why did you not have a back-up in place? (we put two back-ups in).
Blaming Royal Mail for losing sales because of this is laughable, see point above.
Not paying Royal Mail (actually not paying anyone) is never going to end well.

Fuel surcharge has always been something you pay with Royal Mail (and every other courier I have shipped with).

Online business and business in general is about having plans if something goes wrong and not blaming anyone, just being reactive to the sitution and getting what need's done, done.

I've always wondered what motivates users such as yourself to reply to threads in this way. All you do is antagonise with your snarky, know-it-all attitude. Maybe you'd do great working in management with Royal Mail.

To respond to your points, we did have back-ups in place. I find it hard to believe you actually sent anything out during the period I'm referencing because online retail suffered greatly across the board, and all the other couriers suffered delays because of the extra workload. People went to bricks and mortar shops because they were afraid their gifts wouldn't arrive in time.

 

[Tim James]

Out of interest what were your back-ups? Thankfully the majority of our revenue comes from training courses and PAT Testing - the equipment sales side of our business is quite small. But I do know that during the RM strikes, the other couriers were a bit swamped. We sent out a couple of orders during that time with Fedex that got held up. I'd be curious to know how a business which relies 100% on shipping things out can cope when a major disruption like this happens!

 

[Austin VT]

Out of interest what were your back-ups? Thankfully the majority of our revenue comes from training courses and PAT Testing - the equipment sales side of our business is quite small. But I do know that during the RM strikes, the other couriers were a bit swamped. We sent out a couple of orders during that time with Fedex that got held up. I'd be curious to know how a business which relies 100% on shipping things out can cope when a major disruption like this happens!

Thanks for your reply. Yes, all the couriers suffered and as mentioned in my reply to the other user, the confidence in online shopping fell substantially. We used DPD and EVRI as backups. Tried to use DPD when financially viable, but delays got so bad that I had to beg them to take a boot load of packages off me at the depot, which they weren't too keen on initially. It was a nightmare period to be an online retailer.

 

[AlanJ1]

I've always wondered what motivates users such as yourself to reply to threads in this way. All you do is antagonise with your snarky, know-it-all attitude. Maybe you'd do great working in management with Royal Mail.

I have always wondered people in business who would rather moan on a forum than take action for there own business.

To respond to your points, we did have back-ups in place. I find it hard to believe you actually sent anything out during the period I'm referencing because online retail suffered greatly across the board, and all the other couriers suffered delays because of the extra workload. People went to bricks and mortar shops because they were afraid their gifts wouldn't arrive in time.

Well you would be wrong, we increased volume last year and suffered very few delays with the likes of DPD. We would occasionally have areas (postcodes) that caused issues for a day or two but they got rectified fairly quickly and we let customers know where there parcels were at all times. just because you suffered doesn't mean other businesses did (I am in a chat with other e-commerce sites and yes it was a stressful time, everyone had there back-ups in place).

 

[AlanJ1]

Tried to use DPD when financially viable, but delays got so bad that I had to beg them to take a boot load of packages off me at the depot, which they weren't too keen on initially. It was a nightmare period to be an online retailer.

Maybe we just got lucky, I heard DPD did cancel some pick-ups and prioritized picking up from there larger accounts first. (We had to turn shipping off from one of our stores because they wouldn't pick up so a slightlt inconveicnance), but we never had any problems with our main warehouse (we get 3 DPD pickups on a daily basis throughout the day).

 

[japancool]

It wasn't a particular problem for us.

The strikes were well known about, we just used our backup for those who wanted their orders, and the customers knew about the strikes and were prepared to wait.