Tuesdays are the new mondays
During lockdown, we’ve noticed an alarming increase in delays with items shipped by Royal Mail on Mondays. This is caused by two factors.
- Many Royal Mail workers are either off sick or off work caring for their children or dependent family members.
- The volume of items in Royal Mail’s network is currently exceeding Christmas levels.
Between these two issues Royal Mail is struggling to keep up and it seems to be the case that Monday’s post (which is a combination of Friday’s, Saturday’s, Sunday’s and also Monday’s orders) is the most likely to be delayed. Up to a week or more in some cases.
Mail shipped on any other day of the week is being affected to a much lesser degree.
So why and how does that work?
Well, Royal Mail aim for every day’s mail to be delivered within a reasonable time frame.
If this was a restaurant, you’d expect each customer to be served in the order that they actually ordered their food.
But this isn’t the case with mail logistics.
So if Monday’s volume is huge and there’s a backlog, then Monday’s post is assigned to a different team to process. Usually during the Christmas period that would be a team of temp workers that would catch up with the delayed day’s post. This allows Tuesday’s and subsequent day’ to be processed as per usual.
If Royal Mail were to process the delayed Monday’s post, then move on to Tuesdays, then Tuesday’s post would also be delayed. The delay then snowballs out of control.
It’s a combination of Royal Mail’s efforts to ensure that one day’s problem doesn’t affect other day’s scheduling, but also a way to make their delivery statistics look great and thus keep their shareholders happy.
Vape reviewer, cultish personality and all-round legendary bell end Mark Roberts (aka TVP. The Artiste Formerly Known As The Vaping Postman) told us the situation is “horrendous mate, three times worse than the worst Xmas I’ve ever seen in twelve years. Can’t even fit all of York’s parcels in the office some days. It’s carnage”. For more of Mark’s remarkably sagacious insights, check out his Youtube channel here.
We have a solution
Starting Monday the 11th of May, we are no longer going to ship on Mondays and instead will hand the weekend’s mail over to Royal Mail on Tuesday. In the event of a Bank Holiday Monday, we will hand over to RM on the following Wednesday.
Thanks to the Jedi mind trick of Royal Mail’s way of dealing with delayed post on high volume days, this means that shipments we send on a Tuesday will almost certainly be guaranteed to arrive more quickly than had we shipped on Monday.
This will also help take the strain off the mail network in general
The exception to this rule is that customers that choose Royal Mail Special Delivery will have their orders shipped on Monday as usual.
DHL shipments will also continue to be processed as usual
What to do if you have a delayed shipment?
- Hang tight. Have confidence that items aren’t lost at the moment, they’re just subjected to delay, and in some cases quite long and significant delays.
- Check your tracking number. Even non-tracked items shipped within the UK have a 2d barcode which is scanned upon delivery. This will give you an indication as to wether it’s still passing through the system. You can find your 2d code either by checking your dispatch email or by going to your account and checking the order details.
- Keep an eye on Royal Mail Service Announcements. Check regularly to understand further why there may be a delay in receiving your goods. RM posts their updates here. For our article on Saturday deliveries, check out this post.
What can I do?
Consider ordering by Special Delivery for important or time sensitive orders. For larger orders DHL can also be an excellent choice.
But more than anything, please be patient in the understanding that our Royal Mail is being pushed to it’s limits at the moment. But this situation, like Covid-19, certainly won’t last forever.
A thanks to our postal workers
We’d like to share our gratitude to all delivery agents for their hard work. No PPE, extra volume, colleagues off sick, but they’re still out there putting themselves at risk making sure the mail network is as efficient as can be. We wholeheartedly applaud their efforts.
