Warning - Royal Mail items are delayed in sorting centres for 8+ weeks, no seller protection

custardy

mgdavid said:

megw said:

They should make clear that some items are being held for literally months due to lockdown. 'Delays' could mean anything. 
...........
So yes, they are encouraging people to sell more than ever before despite all this going on whilst at the same time not offering any accommodation for sellers who are suddenly finding all their items being held in sorting offices for 3 months.

this reads as gross exaggeration; we've only been in lockdown for 3 weeks, and the post within UK is running reasonably well. We are getting deliveries to home at least 4 days a week including parcels ordered online. Obv if you're posting abroad to countries which have been affected by Covid-19 earlier than us then common sense will tell you to expect delays at the foreign end, which are of course completely out of the control of Royal Mail.

The reality is RM dont have the space/rolling stock to hold mail in the volumes  of months without taking on extra buildings.(as they do for Xmas)
They have already been looking at dealing with business mail held due to the businesses being closed. They will be returning masses of mail as there simply no space to hold it.

hermante

I don't sell internationally anyway but I set all my dispatch times to 5 working days, still dispatch ASAP but don't mark as dispatched until later. The postman comes to the postbox every day, obviously I don't know what the situation is at the buyers' addresses, but most things are arriving, getting feedback before I have marked as dispatched. Fortunately the way my business works I can just refund any INRs (as I don't want to risk my health going to post office to get PoP)

soolin

megw said:

@hermante have you noticed any uptick in the number of reports for missing or late items? If we return will have to do UK only, but we always get PoP as profit margins are so small that if only one or two items go missing it will wipe out the profit for that day.

The power seller boards on eBay are full of people worrying about late defects mounting up. Many power sellers tried to retain their FVF discounts by keeping their dispatch times short and even a single day delay means a late defect. It looks like many have now followed the eBay advice to extend dispatch times but ship same or next day to avoid these defects.

Anecdotally eBay did seem to allow removal of some late defects if the bigger power sellers called them, but only up to a certain amount a day, and even that goodwill gesture appears to be slowing down. eBay have stated that no one will be penalised if their standard falls at the moment, but will be expected to get back to normal in a very short time frame later. Too many late defects now may not be recoverable from so a very keen eye needs to be kept on the seller dashboard.

I’m finding stuff is either roughly on time, or a day or two late at the moment , but my own postal deliveries are down to around 4- 5 days a week rather than the normal 6.
 

KxMx

Average of three days behind for anything apart from Tracked here which has all arrived on time.
My mail centre is appearing regularly on RMs logistics update, inbound, outbound or both. 
It's crazy eBay won't suspend delivery time markers. 

custardy

Some of Southamptons Mail Centres collection mail from today.
I doubt they normally use the yard to store collection mail (Edinburgh MC is in a building too small for their operation and they dont)

Lazydayz71

custardy said:

Some of Southamptons Mail Centres collection mail from today.

Good job the weather's nice and not raining.

mgdavid

rain forecast for tomorrow !

neverlikedpeas

My sales (memorabilia, nostalgia items) have been higher since the lockdown than before.Two parcels posted first class recorded to different addresses  in the Uk on 8 April still haven't arrived

CuttingItFine

@megw is spot on with regard to her knowledge of the delays. One can tell you have spent a long time on the blower to Royal Mail.

All international parcels I send for my 11-year online business are by Royal Mail International Tracked/Signed and the delays we are seeing are all due to lack of available air transit routes. Royal Mail primarily put international mail in the cargo belly of commercial passenger flights (British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, United Airlines, yada yada...) and with pretty much all commercial passenger flights grounded their international transit routes are literally severed.

The general vibes I'm hearing is that they are hoping to get some of these grounded flights into action to make "cargo only" trips which means waiting to fill an entire aircraft per any given country, then get that bird into the sky. Thus, the daily flight schedule or twice weekly schedule (or whatever the case is per country) has gone out of the window, and therefore if we are lucky we'll see flights to some countries take place once per month.

In the EU, things don't seem as bad because naturally we have more pre-established transport links set up within the EU than anywhere else, and I imagine the US route will remain pretty stable too, however, other routes outside of those will be sparse for quite some time.

Nightmare, to such an extent to drive one to drink — as someone shipping plenty out internationally each week!

(albeit strangely calming to not feel alone in this horrible time)

custardy

I have a parcel coming from the Netherlands. Took 6 days to get to the UK from being dispatched and in the dispatching NL warehouse. 
Arrived in the UK Thursday night so we shall see how long it takes to get from London to the civilised North.