ROYAL MAIL STRIKE ACTION INFORMATION &

ALTERNATIVE DELIVERY OPTIONS

UPDATE 11/11/09

Royal Mail collection, distribution, processing and deliveries are taking place as usual across all parts of the country today.

Royal Mail services in all areas are now operating normally and without delays to mail following the recovery of services after recent strike action. Although we believe there may be some minor delays still being experienced in some parts of London.

Royal Mail is now focusing on providing the best possible service to customers, so they can be confident in using Royal Mail as we move into the busy pre Christmas mail period.

Both our customers and ourselves have been very pleased with the services we have used from FedEx and Home Delivery Network, so we will continue to offer additional courier based delivery options on orders, including Royal Mail Special Delivery for smaller items.  Most larger items will be delivered by these services also. 

We will continue to report any changes here but right now all our deliveries remain unaffected and you may order in confidence of timely delivery.

UPDATE 3/11/09

The current postal workers industrial action continues this week and next, with all Royal Mail functions being affected on Monday 6th and Friday 9th November.

We have as yet, not experienced any major delays in deliveries to our customers.  We have also added Home Delivery Network and FedEx to our delivery carriers.

We are also trying to make the additional delivery options more simple.  From today all UK customers can choose express delivery for an additional £2 and we will choose the most suitable carrier to get your order to you. Standard delivery will still be Royal Mail 1st class at this time.

For international customers, standard delivery will still be via Royal Mail Airmail, however priority services are available as an option:

European Express Delivery at an additional £6 per delivery.

USA/Canada/Worldwide Express Delivery at an additional £9 per deivery.

International deliveries will still be routed via Royal Mail but will use their priority handling services which are usually unaffected by the strike action.  More expensive courier services are available on request but for an example, a delivery to USA could be over £20 additional cost, please contact us if you would like more information on this.  Using the Royal Mail priority service, delivery can be expected within 3-5 working days.

Previous Info

It has been announced that a series of rolling strikes affecting Royal Mail services will commence on 22nd October 2009

This is likely to cause delays when delivering your goods via Royal Mail, in the past we have faired very well but until the action is underway it is difficult to tell how disruptive this will be.  We will update our information here as the situation progresses.

Our main advice is to plan ahead and order items you need for specific dates and Christmas as early as possible, not only from us but from anyone!

During the strike period we will not be using the recorded delivery service for the delivery of items using our standard delivery.  This is due to our previous experience of postal strikes. As recorded delivery items are processed with the normal post, the recorded delivery element of that process only tends to lead to additional delays and makes no difference whatsoever in terms of items being lost.

To this end, rather than increase our delivery charges overall, during the period affected by strike action, we will be sending all standard deliveries via Royal Mail 1st Class Standard Post.  However, we will be offering additional options at checkout which you can choose to add to your entire order.  This way, you can choose your delivery method rather than us imposing additional costs.

UK Customers can choose

Courier Delivery 48hr at an additional £2 per delivery.

Royal Mail Special Delivery at an additional £4.50 per delivery.

International customers can choose

European Courier Delivery at an additional £6 per delivery.

USA/Canada/Worldwide Courier Delivery at an additional £9 per deivery.

Please note that these additional charges are entirely optional and we are only passing on what we are charged for these alternative services. They also do not apply to larger products which are delivery via courier anyway.  If you add an additional service and it is not necessary, we will refund it.