Shipping Update

I received the following notification from Royal Mail yesterday.

Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1pm
We will no longer guarantee deliveries by 1pm the next working day for items posted from Thursday 19 March 2020 onwards.  As a result, we will not consider a claim for delay for items posted using the Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1pm service from that date.  In addition we will not during this period offer our Consequential Loss service and we will not accept any related claims.

Our Special Delivery Guaranteed by 9am service remains unchanged.

To that end I have today removed the Special Delivery 1pm option from the website. I will look at the pricing for the 9am service over the weekend and may add that option from Monday.

All delivery carriers are experiencing increased demand with more people working from home so please be aware that delivery times may be slightly longer than normal for a while. So far I haven’t noticed much/any delay, however depending on how carriers’ workforce is affected by the current situation that may change.

I’m sure you know that most carriers are now no longer getting recipients to sign for deliveries – here’s Royal Mail’s procedure.

All Signature services
We’ve put in place a temporary procedure for those services where we would normally capture a recipient’s signature on delivery in the UK. For items delivered on or after Saturday 14th March 2020, our postmen and women will not request a signature but will capture the recipient’s name and will ensure they take in the item. You can still check that we have obtained confirmation of delivery and who we delivered to by tracking your parcel at www.royalmail.com/track-your-item (where you may see a special code, ‘XP1’ instead of signature).  As a result, we will not consider refunds or compensation requests for not capturing a signature for items delivered on or after Saturday 14 March 2020 and until further notice.

International shipping may also be affected. Most carriers are stating increased transit times. Royal Mail has a page that lists known issues here. Note that due to lockdown in certain areas in Italy there is currently no postal service in certain post codes.

You can follow Royal Mail’s updates on their response to the changing situation for domestic deliveries here.

Please stay safe everyone.