How much are the strikes costing you? Clients are losing thousands of £

[10Yetis]

Had so many crisis comms calls this week from client due to the strikes. Mostly around lost parcels from Royal Mail strike action and customers going loco.

Also had meetings completely disrupted by the train strikes.

Anyone else affected by the industrial action and if so, how much do you reckon it is costing you?

Love you all (mostly)
Andy

 

[DontAsk]

Deliveries are affected but it hasn't cost us anything (yet).

 

[Bob Morgan]

Nowt

 

[HFE Signs]

I've spoken to a lot of people saying their work has dropped off earlier this year, not sure if it's due to strikes though

 

[Mister B]

We're in online retail and it most certainly has affected us. Not just the whole missing parcel thing, but mainly the lack of faith in the system. The past two days we've sen a noticeable tail off of both sales and traffic. We're now trading as if it's two days before Christmas and not ten days.

Think that the high street may see an upturn this year.

 

[Clodbuster]

We don't use Royal mail and the courier has not advised us of issues and orders are still getting delivered over night. Carry on striking.

 

[Mark T Jones]

It makes document delivery interesting.

but also gives us an advantage over lazier, office-bound brokers.

Customers are generally understanding.

 

[Mister B]

We don't use Royal mail and the courier has not advised us of issues and orders are still getting delivered over night. Carry on striking.

Out of interest, which courier do you use? We've just been sent the following from DPD:

The vast majority of your parcels will be delivered by Christmas Eve, if they are with us by 21 December, however, for parcels sent to selected postcodes where we currently have delays, the last shipping date will be 19 December.

Ordinarily we would take orders up to and including the 22nd, but this year the absolute cut off is looking like the 19th.

 

[Newchodge]

No effect whatsoever. What sort of your clients are loosing thousands?

 

[HFE Signs]

No effect whatsoever. What sort of your clients are loosing thousands?

But you wouldn't expect to in your line of work would you?

 

[hikiwari]

My wife has a small £20,000 turnover mail order business and sends everything by RM large letter post. She has had about 30 customers saying they haven't received their order. Nothing she can do about it except explain the situation on RM strikes.
The clients have paid so if they don't get the goods then she'll have to offer a full refund which will put her seriously out of pocket.
She's also missing customer posted orders so losing out on the orders too.

 

[Newchodge]

But you wouldn't expect to in your line of work would you?

Not to a large extent, but I wa intrigued by the line that is costing clients thousands.

 

[HFE Signs]

Not to a large extent, but I wa intrigued by the line that is costing clients thousands.

Well someone like the wife of hikiwari on a bigger scale I guess

 

[LPB 123]

Not just the whole missing parcel thing, but mainly the lack of faith in the system. The past two days we've sen a noticeable tail off of both sales and traffic. We're now trading as if it's two days before Christmas and not ten days.

Think that the high street may see an upturn this year.

We're experiencing this as well, major drop in traffic and sales.

 

[DontAsk]

My wife has a small £20,000 turnover mail order business and sends everything by RM large letter post. She has had about 30 customers saying they haven't received their order. Nothing she can do about it except explain the situation on RM strikes.
The clients have paid so if they don't get the goods then she'll have to offer a full refund which will put her seriously out of pocket.

We state in our Ts&Cs that delivery can take up to 28 days. That covers the waiting period before we can claim from RM.

 

[Newchodge]

Well someone like the wife of hikiwari on a bigger scale I guess

Yes, but late deliveries should not justify a refund. Lost posted orders would be a cost, clearly.

Personally I have decided to visit stores for shopping this week rather that rely on deliveries, so I can see there will be some lost orders, but I am not convinced of a huge cost to retail business.

Staff not getting to work, possibly, but so many are used to WFH.

I would expect that hospitality would be hit hardest.

 

[japancool]

We're experiencing this as well, major drop in traffic and sales.

Same. Sales have dropped around 50% in the last 2 days.

 

[LPB 123]

Yes, but late deliveries should not justify a refund. Lost posted orders would be a cost, clearly.

Late can appear lost though when Royal Mail can take 2-3 weeks to do an entry scan in to the system.

If you sell on a marketplace, by this time you've had an "item not received" case open, closed and refunded before Royal Mail have even scanned it in. You can't get a successful claim from RM as the parcel has now entered the system or been delivered so you're at the whim of buyers who will either repay or return when it eventually arrives, or just keep it and the refund.

 

[HFE Signs]

Yes, but late deliveries should not justify a refund. Lost posted orders would be a cost, clearly.

Personally I have decided to visit stores for shopping this week rather that rely on deliveries, so I can see there will be some lost orders, but I am not convinced of a huge cost to retail business.

Staff not getting to work, possibly, but so many are used to WFH.

I would expect that hospitality would be hit hardest.

You need to understand the bigger picture, if people can't get supplies then they can't trade. If we couldn't get ink our workshop would halt and we could easily lose thousands per day, simply because we couldn't keep to our next working day delivery. This is why we've been paying more to receive all items via other services. That's just one example.

 

[DontAsk]

Late can appear lost though when Royal Mail can take 2-3 weeks to do an entry scan in to the system.

If you sell on a marketplace, by this time you've had an "item not received" case open, closed and refunded before Royal Mail have even scanned it in. You can't get a successful claim from RM as the parcel has now entered the system or been delivered so you're at the whim of buyers who will either repay or return when it eventually arrives, or just keep it and the refund.

So choose a better channel to sell through.

Does your marketplace not allow you to provide proof of posting?

 

[HFE Signs]

So choose a better channel to sell through.

Does your marketplace not allow you to provide proof of posting?

Here's the proof of posting see ya - Not the best way to treat your customers

 

[LPB 123]

So choose a better channel to sell through.

Does your marketplace not allow you to provide proof of posting?

We sell through our own website and eBay. I like eBay and it works well for us, so wouldn't just stop selling there because of this.

Tracking numbers are auto uploaded from our order management system to ebay/website. We don't have "proof of posting" the sacks get collected and taken to the depot. If they don't scan them in for 2-3 weeks, it can appear that we haven't sent it or they've lost it etc.

 

[IanSuth]

I have just cancelled something due to the strike

I have a virgin mobile contract, i was rung and offered an O2 contract as part of the takeover, it had better data for same money as well.

They had to send a new O2 sim, it didnt arrive before my contract renewal date (yesterday) so I rang and cancelled as I had found another even better deal in the meantime and have to pay another month of virgin anyway

 

[AlanJ1]

Well someone like the wife of hikiwari on a bigger scale I guess

We switched everything from Royal Mail to DPD for the whole month of December. Comes at a cost however cost will be less than the refunds / bad reviews for missed Christmas presents.

 

[AlanJ1]

Yes, but late deliveries should not justify a refund.

Sadly not the case. Customers demanding refunds for late deliveries. Paid by CC a lot will charge back. Customer Service time to deal with all of this an absolute pain when you are processing hundreds of orders a day.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

Personally I have decided to visit stores for shopping this week rather that rely on deliveries, so I can see there will be some lost orders, but I am not convinced of a huge cost to retail business.

You can only do that for the things you can still buy from shops, which are becoming very limited. Short notice online retailers are getting mullered by the inability to deliver AND customers turning to bricks and mortar outlets.

 

[DontAsk]

Here's the proof of posting see ya - Not the best way to treat your customers

You obviously missed the point.

 

[HFE Signs]

You obviously missed the point.

Enlighten me?

 

[japancool]

We switched everything from Royal Mail to DPD for the whole month of December. Comes at a cost however cost will be less than the refunds / bad reviews for missed Christmas presents.

We're sending all our express orders by APC until Christmas.

 

[MBE2017]

I order a lot of my products online, probably 90% now, and have to say so far I have had just one item lost in the last month out of several hundred orders.

I re ordered the same item after receiving a credit on my account and received it within two days as promised. I think most parcel delivery companies are doing an excellent job this year, considering they must have been swamped by the RM strikes and time of year volume increases.

It pays to use professional companies though, I was chatting to a neighbour this am as he was defrosting his van, and asked if he realised a delivery for himself had been thrown onto his bay window roof, out of reach. Pure luck I had spotted it.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

It looks like it is going to be a good Christmas for bricks and mortar retailers

 

[Clodbuster]

Out of interest, which courier do you use? We've just been sent the following from DPD:

The vast majority of your parcels will be delivered by Christmas Eve, if they are with us by 21 December, however, for parcels sent to selected postcodes where we currently have delays, the last shipping date will be 19 December.

Ordinarily we would take orders up to and including the 22nd, but this year the absolute cut off is looking like the 19th.

Use DPD and Fedex.

 

[Casually made]

Will only really effect small sellers with next to no business infrastructure with online market places on the likes of ebay and etsy

Everyone else can pre plan and mitigate

 

[IanSuth]

You can only do that for the things you can still buy from shops, which are becoming very limited. Short notice online retailers are getting mullered by the inability to deliver AND customers turning to bricks and mortar outlets.

Yes,

I saw something advertised on Asda went into store and was told I could only get the 3 pack click and collect as it was not held in store (instead i could buy the 3 constituent part immediately but it would cost 150% the price)

John Lewis - the instore display is a small % of what if available online

A lot of the high street stores are really becoming a glorified Argos style front end for a web delivery mechanism

 

[japancool]

A lot of the high street stores are really becoming a glorified Argos style front end for a web delivery mechanism

Yes - but supposedly, what a lot of consumers do is go in to a store, look at an item and then go and see if they can find it cheaper online anyway.

 

[japancool]

Personally I have decided to visit stores for shopping this week rather that rely on deliveries, so I can see there will be some lost orders, but I am not convinced of a huge cost to retail business.

Physical retail might not be doing so well.

Black Friday fails to lift sales in November

Sales saw a surprise fall last month as households continue to struggle with the cost-of-living crisis.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Mister B]

Yes, but late deliveries should not justify a refund.

So, Mrs Bloggs buys widget X for Timmy's birthday, Royal Mail deliver late so she rushes out to buy a replacement from the High Street, She understandably does not need two, so wants to return one. To not accept the return would be appalling customer service.

but I am not convinced of a huge cost to retail business.

Our turnover this month is way in excess of six figures. We're currently tracking at 15% below last year, which is a painful shortfall. So, that's a huge cost to us. It's not only the reduction in profit but also the impact on cashflow.

 

[IanSuth]

Yes - but supposedly, what a lot of consumers do is go in to a store, look at an item and then go and see if they can find it cheaper online anyway.

Then stores have no point at all

If they are not showcasing an item as all consumers will do is look at/try/sit on/use then search for it cheap online then what is the purpose of a shop

High Street Retailers either need more unique/exclusive to them products that cant be got through other channels or they need to have prices the same as online or otherwise they have no purpose in life and might as well be either a click and collect outlet (using far less sq footage) or be treated purely as a marketing tool (again needing less sq footage

 

[japancool]

Then stores have no point at all

If they are not showcasing an item as all consumers will do is look at/try/sit on/use then search for it cheap online then what is the purpose of a shop

High Street Retailers either need more unique/exclusive to them products that cant be got through other channels or they need to have prices the same as online or otherwise they have no purpose in life and might as well be either a click and collect outlet (using far less sq footage) or be treated purely as a marketing tool (again needing less sq footage

I don't disagree, just saying that seems to be what is happening.

I suppose that's why shops are becoming places to go to have an "experience" rather than to go shopping.

 

[DontAsk]

Here's the proof of posting see ya - Not the best way to treat your customers

It certainly isn't. Is that the way you treat yours?

Proof of posting allows us to have a dialog with the customer about waiting for the delivery time in our Ts&Cs after which we can claim from Royal Mail for the missing item. The customer order will always be fulfilled, one way or another. I have found that a claim to RM will sometimes cause the item to magically (or co-incidentally) appear from the depths of their system.