Royal Mail Difficulties for 2023

Last year was the time for a lot of strikes throughout the United Kingdom, the biggest strike through the year being Royal Mail and the loss of respect for it’s upper management. fulfilment are facing a tough time during these strikes and delays, causing reputable companies to strand the long running postal business after years of service.

After the issues regarding strikes impacted the nation, a lot of businesses have faced delayed parcels and too many upset customers, with customer service taking weeks to answer email enquiries, parcels taking almost a month to be scanned in at the depot for their deliveries and a vast majority of parcels being lost and undisputed. It’s not hard to see that this has been likely the worst year for them yet.

The new numbers have been released for Royal Mail’s Quality of Service and Complaints Report heading into 2023. We can see that the last year was a terrible time for the nation with parcels being disrupted as well as letters, not only did they underperform the targets set for themselves at the start of 2022 but we are seeing that the numbers were largely underachieved across the board.

(https://www.internationaldistributionsservices.com/media/11979/quarterly-quality-of-service-and-complaints-report-2022-23-q3-final.pdf)

As you look closely, the report only really covers from 26th September to 4th December and that there is no notice with the days leading up to Christmas (The peak of Christmas is always excluded from Royal Mail’s quality report) so the numbers, as you can imagine, are likely to be much worse than we have been informed of. Without shock to us all, the lack of consistency with Royal Mail has caused too many small businesses across the United Kingdom to cut off sales before Christmas, looking at a loss of thousands pounds to cover their year, additionally putting more strain within the face of the country’s economy crisis.

Royal Mail, disregarding the build up to Christmas, only 50% of First Class mail was delivered the next day, which means we are missing 38.9% from their original target set, some getting letters only weeks later than intended. Special Delivery, Royal Mail’s premier courier service, only achieved 85.6% for their year, missing the intended target of 99%. This service is saved primarily for any urgent mail and can cost over £7 for a simple letter.

In recent weeks, between Jan-Feb 23, Royal Mail reportedly stated that the quality has improved and are reflecting higher than the figures held for summer 2023. While admittedly the strikes are not aiding the people around the United Kingdom, a mass of the population are agreeing that the strikes are necessary for disputing their wage. Royal Mail have sectioned a majority of their losses due to the CWU strikes when in fact after the strikes have absolved in December 2022, we are still looking at a majority of delays that carried over into late January.

Furthermore, the CWU members have raised the votes for Royal Mail strikes as a Yes. 95.9% are in favour for more strikes to take place throughout the rest of the year, causing more companies to have to allocate their parcels through other couriers. This will cost Royal Mail thousands, in loyal customers and in money, not to mention their CEO, Simon Thompson, creating a temporary policy at the time to prioritise tracked parcels, large and then late parcels last, only a few letters (including first class/special delivery service also) which has caused distress and disgust and consumers will flock to other resolves. Hopefully this will bring them down to a less reluctant level for them to discuss a positive change for their workers.

You can negate the impact that a Royal Mail strike has on your business by outsourcing your fulfilment to a 3PL. Third party logistics partners have the volume to have multiple account open with all the major carriers for a like for like service without it costing your anymore or impacting your ability to service your customers.

At MCF we offer SFP services to our clients and can switch between all the SFP approved carriers when Royal Mail are striking. Amazon usually implement padding on your account if Royal Mail is your only delivery option for SFP however MCF can seamlessly switch between Amazon Shipping or DPD to give you an advantage by preventing padding being applied to your SFP listings.

To find out more contact the MCF team now.