View Full Version : Royal Mail Strike
Hi,
Just curious really, some of my online retail contacts have noticed a gradual drop off in orders this week, even those that are not even using Royal Mail.
We have been pretty steady, anybody else noticed a difference in order volumes?
Orders have been dropping slowly over the last two weeks in the build up to the strike and now that the strikes are here and the media is all over it orders have dropped by about 80%.
It seems that buyers have no confidence in ordering on line even if you deliver only by courier, if this strike is prolonged many small internet retailers will go down, the hard part is to ensure we are not among them.
This Government couldn't give a damn what happens to this country, they know they are doomed as soon as they are forced to face an election and all they care about is accumulating as much inflated pension fund as possible before they are out on their ears.
The bigger mess they hand over to the next Government, the better they like it.
What other country in the world would put up with being led by an unelected, one eyed, Scottish Idiot?
John, that is a dramatic drop :mad: But it does confirm what I am hearing from other retailers.
This needs to be resolved now as it is impacting on consumer confidence.
Fat chance of it being resolved with the Lord of the Samba up to his neck in it!:mad:
Visitor numbers are well down on my site, but i've actually had more orders in the last 2 days that last week put together. Not sure how there going to be sent out yet though. Don't they realise that there is a strike!!
Hi Neil
Orders and visitors down for us. But then we have had a big shuffle on Google which has affected our traffic and not sure I can monitor the affects of the strike. Sad thing is that I can still ship having set up with Secure DX from late September I can now do without RM for all UK mainland deliveries. Ah well back to the SEO.... a priority now to get back our positions.
Cheers all
Just out of interest - why do you think your positions have been affected. Blue Park has always been very SEO friendly in my opinion. Might be why my numbers are down then - i was putting it down to the seasonal products that i sell tho. Luckily my B & M business is so busy at the moment we are struggling to keep up!!
Neil
B&M hmmm what could that stand for neil!!!! :P
sorry my inner child coming out a bit
We have noticed a significant drop off on orders via BP and Amazon this month in comparison to last year, though it is still our best month for 2009. Amazon particularly is running at about 25% of what we had last October...
mikepayn
23-10-2009, 09:08
Same for us I'm afraid. Orders are way, way down. It does give me a chance to catch up on SEO and tidying up the site. If this keeps up I may need to go out and get a job! :eek:
Adva Trading
23-10-2009, 10:41
Same here.
Just out of interest - why do you think your positions have been affected. Blue Park has always been very SEO friendly in my opinion. Might be why my numbers are down then - i was putting it down to the seasonal products that i sell tho. Luckily my B & M business is so busy at the moment we are struggling to keep up!!
Neil
Hi Neil,
I've no idea why the Google drop. I use WebCEO software and on Tuesday 30 odd listings just fell out of sight! Unnerving though this is, it is not the first time Google have done this and usually within a few days (sometime a couple of weeks in worst case) the rankings reappear. It is a bit off topic for this thread so I won't go on except to say I am obviously working hard again on the SEO.
Now the post strike and the impact. It feels like there is nothing we can do - but there is... we have the power of the net. We need to get this thing into perspective for our customers and then make sure they get the message. I have posted on a main lingerie blog this morning and sent out a press release.
I know I have the benefit of using an alternative delivery service now, but even if I was still stuck with Royal Mail for everything there is a message to get out to the customers and I am putting it out. It is this... this two day strike may add two days to delivery... but while the industrial action is running customers should put away the I want it and I want NOW attitude and remember that in pre- internet shopping times distance shopping from catalogues meant waiting for the product sometimes as long as 2 or 3 weeks. So what is a 2 day delay to worry about if you think from that perspective..... This is my slow shopping campaign. Help me by blogging and forum posting like mad about the reality of the postal strike impact. Its good for your SEO as well if you put a link in the text or in the signature.
So please join me in my campaign. :)
Gill
Shop for Lingerie Online (http://www.ever-so-sexy.com)
pinkypie
23-10-2009, 11:43
I've had more visitors since I sorted my SEO out but no orders at all from the UK over the last few days, we have from overseas who probably have no clue what is going on.
I saw a postman this morning, delivering in my street, but nothing at all for us. Can't work that out unless he was only delivering priority items and it was not our usual one.
I was speaking to the postmaster the other day and his postie, that collects the post, told him that he did not want to go on strike but had to otherwise the other members would mess up his round, move his mail, take things in and out of his sorted route so he feels he has to strike or get bullied day to day. It makes me wonder how many posties actually want this but feel they have to go on strike. The lady behind the counter then said 'how would youn like working overtime and not getting paid for it' and I said 'I used to, if the work isn't done you finish the job', she said 'I'd do it tomorrow' and I said 'what happens to tomorrows work when you are doing work from the day before?'.
The sub postamster then came to the counter and told us that the collection guy has told him that he gets paid til 3pm but is usually finished by 11.30-12.00 each day when he can go home. If he is asked to do half an hour extra to finish something else off then he has no problem with doing this as he is being paid until 3.00 - however, the other workers will then bully him and make his life unbearable, move the mail, mess up his round, etc.. and so he will not do the overtime. The key thing is that the bullies, the ones messing up the rounds, are in the union so the unions will not help with the bullying. What sort of work force is that when you join a union and the union members bully other members and the union actually saying 'tough'?
Also my husband was speaking to someone he works with who's other half is a postie and is finished by Midday but get's paid until 3.00 - he is complaining about having to do 'unpaid overtime' if he is asked to do anything after Midday but before 3pm, but she says 'tough, you get paid til 3pm so it is not unpaid overtime as you should be in work'. Apparently they have loads of rows about it as she thinks if he is being paid til 3 he should be there til 3 but if he works later than 12.00 he is then says he is on 'unpaid overtime'.
So when they start bleating on about unpaid overtime I have no sympathy as I know the real reason behind it. Yesterday on the news the worker who called in said that he did not want to divulge the exact reasons as to why they were striking. Kind of makes you wonder if they actually even know and if they are just sheep being swept along by the unions.
John - you hit the nail right on the head, Labour do not give a toss because they are on their way down and they will leave as much mess as possible for the next party to sort out and then when the Conservatives cannot give x, y and z that Labour promised, or when they withdraw some of the services that Labour has implemented, it will be the Conservatives that will be to blame. Of course.
pinkypie
23-10-2009, 11:49
Just to add, I want to get a pair of boots, I have found them online up North and they are £140, but they will send them by Royal Mail so there is no point in me ordering them as I do not know when/if I will get them and I am desperately trying to find somewhere local that sells them. So the online retailer loses out. I know this is what the problem is as I am an online shopper myself.
If you send out by courier and you make it clear that sales will not be affected then you should be just fine. However, charging someone £2.50 and then paying £6+ for a courier is not going to work for me, I'll lose more than I earn so I am having a few days rest!! The parcels are light and there is no way I can justify a courier really.
Oh, and what is B&M that everyone wants, Neil. For the life of me I cannot work out what it is..... I am sure it is going to be very obvious. Someone help me out!!
Oh, and what is B&M that everyone wants, Neil. For the life of me I cannot work out what it is..... I am sure it is going to be very obvious. Someone help me out!!
My bricks and mortar business. For some reason the recesson seems to have passed us by. We have a very loyal customer base, and coupled with the extra marketing we have done, we have had a very good year. Even the one that went bust paid us personally!!!
Just to add, I want to get a pair of boots, I have found them online up North and they are £140, but they will send them by Royal Mail so there is no point in me ordering them as I do not know when/if I will get them and I am desperately trying to find somewhere local that sells them. So the online retailer loses out. I know this is what the problem is as I am an online shopper myself.
If you send out by courier and you make it clear that sales will not be affected then you should be just fine. However, charging someone £2.50 and then paying £6+ for a courier is not going to work for me, I'll lose more than I earn so I am having a few days rest!! The parcels are light and there is no way I can justify a courier really.
Oh, and what is B&M that everyone wants, Neil. For the life of me I cannot work out what it is..... I am sure it is going to be very obvious. Someone help me out!!
If you were in retail before the advent of Internet shopping you would be well aware of what (B)ricks & (M)ortar meant; a real shop where people go to buy things. we had a B & M store for over 25 years and finally switched to Internet only because of the ridiculous cost of rent, rates and service charges in the High Street and the constant loss of business to Internet only competitors, now if the mail strikes last we may have to rent a B & M Store to get rid of the stocks!
The strike effect is getting worse today, visitors down by 75% and not a single order since midnight, looks like we may finally catch up on work soon as ther'es no new work coming in (or cash).
Have you checked if Blacks is nearby and have the boots? they are desperate for cash and if they have them you could probably get a bargain.
My bricks and mortar business. For some reason the recesson seems to have passed us by. We have a very loyal customer base, and coupled with the extra marketing we have done, we have had a very good year. Even the one that went bust paid us personally!!!
I wonder if the one that went bust knows that is illegal and makes him personally liable for every other debt (if it was ltd co)
We switched to a combination of RM Tracked and HDN, the Royal Mail Tracked parcels do seem to be getting priority , parcels are being delivered today and we are getting a collection between 3PM and 5PM by a RM Manager.
Visitors are slightly down but orders seem fairly steady.
We have just finished (apart from a script awaited from Richard) the integration of our site, Amazon, Linnworks and Royal Mail Despatch, with new RM contracts for Tracked, Worldwide , Packet Post etc.,
All working fine and now after many, many hours of work and sleepless nights the whole thing is wrecked by postal staff that could not give a shit, In my view they should sack the whole lot and re-employ anyone else that is prepared to work for a living.
Most of these postal workers(?) do short shifts, then want overtime for work they should have done in the first place, then complain that they are bullied and overworked, our local post collector only works part time picking up in the afternoons, has five (yes five) houses and complains that he is underpaid! That's the sort of underpaid I would like!
I wonder if the one that went bust knows that is illegal and makes him personally liable for every other debt (if it was ltd co)
He needed a supplier, no one else was touch him after the word was round. Only one way out of it!!
As for RM, it's about time that TNT was allowed to set there own service up i think.
We switched to a combination of RM Tracked and HDN, the Royal Mail Tracked parcels do seem to be getting priority , parcels are being delivered today and we are getting a collection between 3PM and 5PM by a RM Manager.
Visitors are slightly down but orders seem fairly steady.
I see you were convinced by HDN then, Is it a 24hr service? What were prices like? Any problems?
Regards
Neil
pinkypie
23-10-2009, 13:15
Ah yes, B&M, of course, I said it would be obvious. I started out on Market stalls but they hicked the pitch rates up to ridiculous rates too (£100 a day! and if you was off through holiday or illness you still had to pay when you got back) and so we cut our losses and started trading solely online.
I do miss the face to face contact you have with people but I di think it depends on what you sell and where you are based. We was doing great until Primark opened in town and people would not pay more than £4 for a bra after that as 'it is cheaper in Primark'. Never mind one wash and it falls apart or that it does not fit proplery, as long as it is cheaper, that is the main thing. So, now I only sell online.
I am after a pair of Kids Uggs Cargo's so I cannot get them in Blacks (they want to be after the business, I said to hubby 'go get a jacket' but they were reduced from £300 to £150. Ouch). I don't buy fake Uggs and they are my only real vice, but I wear a kids size 2 and they are a nightmare to get because.... I won't bore you with that. I know they are a lot of money and I know I can get cheaper on the market but there is nothing like walking around in them. If I could sleep in them I would. But they are really, really hard to find short of going up to Westfield in White City and I do not want to drag the kids up to London. The only place I have found selling this particular boot online is Kids Cavern up in the North but they send via RM. I just want my boots. I cannot even get the Ugg Australia website to work to find out if I can get any in Cambridge somewhere tomorrow and go to to a real shop to get some.
On a good note though, at least they are choosing to strike over the half term so I'll not be busy and can fit the minimal work around the kids. Looking on the bright side, eh??!!
John - I am with you. Thing is, I think that most people are past giving a toss about the workers in all honesty because of the inconvenience it causes to everyone. Most people know of the short days they have and their 'unpaid overtime'. Sacking them and forcing them to get 'proper jobs with proper working hours' might give them all the kick up the asses they need. I did hear that some offices have bought temporary staff in though, they should do that everywhere and let the strikers get on with it, they'll soon buck their ideas up when the bills need bpaying. Let's face it, the Union Bosses are not losing any money by striking, are they? Doh!!
Baa!!
mikepayn
23-10-2009, 16:21
Finished talking to our FedEx rep a short while ago about using their under 2kilo service rather than RM - just got to work out the possible implications of a minimum £4.95 postal charge.
Anyway, apparently, FedEx along with another carriers are Allegedly talking about buying the Royal Mail postal services lock stock and barrel! Don't know how true this is, but, if it is, I wonder if someone in the know has engineered this strike so that whoever buys RM gets it for a rock bottom price!!
Our Electric & Gas companies are owned by the French & Germans so you can bet that RM will go to one of them, I think they already control TNT and DPD.
I see you were convinced by HDN then, Is it a 24hr service? What were prices like? Any problems?
Regards
Neil
Neil, managed to get almost the same price as RM tracked within 10p, then there is VAT on top which we can offset. The service guarantees are almost identical to Royal Mail Tracked, which I am sure is not a pure co-incidence :D
The only problem with the HDN service is delivery to Scottish Highlands & Islands, Channel Islands, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man. There is a £10 surcharge to those postcodes!.
The only problem with the HDN service is delivery to Scottish Highlands & Islands, Channel Islands, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man. There is a £10 surcharge to those postcodes!.
We get customers complaining all the while about the offshore delivery costs. They seem to think (rightly or wrongly) that because they have UK post codes that delivery should be charged at the same rate as rest of the UK.
I can sort of see their point when the delivery charge is 3 times our standard charge!
Jonathan Read
24-10-2009, 09:40
I concur with all that has been said. Our Internet orders have dropped during the RM strike - it cannot be a coincidece!
If I was chairman for a large corporate company which failed to perform the shareholders would have me out on the pavement and install someone new before you could blink - so why the he'll do we have to sit back and watch our 'leader' make such an almighty mess?
Give us the vote now and let's start the road to recovery before it's the UK that's up for sale!
Regards
I concur with all that has been said. Our Internet orders have dropped during the RM strike - it cannot be a coincidece!
If I was chairman for a large corporate company which failed to perform the shareholders would have me out on the pavement and install someone new before you could blink - so why the he'll do we have to sit back and watch our 'leader' make such an almighty mess?
Give us the vote now and let's start the road to recovery before it's the UK that's up for sale!
Regards
What Idiot would want to buy it? Mugabe perhaps?
mikepayn
24-10-2009, 11:44
The only problem with the HDN service is delivery to Scottish Highlands & Islands, Channel Islands, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man. There is a £10 surcharge to those postcodes!.
Just had eBay on to us (we still sell a fair bit on eBay) and they have been talking to various carriers and mentioned "My Hermes" https://www.myhermes.co.uk/wps/portal/PN_CTR/ looks quite interesting. Very competitive pricing, I personally don't think customers mind a 3-5 day delivery as long as it is guaranteed and trackable - and, as long as they can pay extra for next day delivery if they want.
powertoolworld
24-10-2009, 17:33
Hi All
We have had a similar downturn in hits and orders in the last few days.
Today we have put a "Central Block" on all of our pages stating thet we are not using Royal Mail for deliveries and our orders have rocketed.
Please try it Guys its worth a go to try and combat the strike.
Royal Mail Tracked seems to be going OK, all our parcels from last Weds/Thursday have been delivered as of this morning which seems fairly remarkable. A very stressed RM Manager came in on Friday to pick up that days collection, so I would say so far so good.
At the moment HDN do seem less organised, our contact seems to be a jack of all trades i.e he came to assess the business, got the contract signed up, installed the IT side of things and he is now our tech support :eek:
We are now ready to go live but it has taken a good 3 weeks to get here, we will start sending out some test parcels tommorow to see if they can beat RM's deliveries.
Just had eBay on to us (we still sell a fair bit on eBay) and they have been talking to various carriers and mentioned "My Hermes" https://www.myhermes.co.uk/wps/portal/PN_CTR/ looks quite interesting. Very competitive pricing, I personally don't think customers mind a 3-5 day delivery as long as it is guaranteed and trackable - and, as long as they can pay extra for next day delivery if they want.
Just been looking at this, it looks really good, especially with the strikes, has anyone had any experince of them?
Just been looking at this, it looks really good, especially with the strikes, has anyone had any experince of them?
They don't seem very highly rated on the UKBF forums.
Has anyone tried www.parcelsplease.co.uk (http://www.parcelsplease.co.uk) , basically interlink provide the service - am waiting for a price from them.
Regards
Neil
Yesterday we had to move all our delivery services over to the Home Delivery Network, we had dozens of people ringing us to check on our methods of delivery even though it is stated on the site!.
We have even changed our Adwords wording on some ads to indicate that we are unaffected by Postal Delays.
Seems that even though a lot of us have moved over to new delivery methods, customers are still nervous about their deliveries :confused:
Come on RM/CWU get this sorted!
Yes, I think you are right... and even if you put a message on the site that is not going to be seen if customers don't visit in the first place and I fear that might be happening a bit. Our traffic is down despite improved serps.
Gill
Luxury Lingerie (http://www.ever-so-sexy.com)
Sack the bloody lot of them.
There are hundreds of thousands of people out there that would love the chance of a job!
We seem to have a normal service here this am!!
Post been delivered. Post collected from local post office, might not get past sorting office, but just wondering whether posties are getting fed up with it all.
Neil
I understand that today it's only the people who sort the incorrectly addressed mail (400 of them!) who are on strike today, so hopefully nothing much else will be affected. Except people actually placing orders, of course...
mikepayn
30-10-2009, 12:15
Our postal service seems OK here as well. And the few parcels sent out by RM on Monday/Tuesday have all arrived. We had a flood of orders at the beginning of the week and now a dribble! A lot of customers have taken up our trackable next day courier bag service for smaller items - might keep this on as an option.
In our eBay shop things have been terrible for several weeks though.
Visits are down by half on expected and orders are devastated, it doesn't matter what you do or how much you tell people on site that orders will be delivered, they are staying away from Internet ordering in their millions because of the actions of these suicidal maniacs at the CWU.
The more they go on strike, the more business Royal Mail loses for good, the more CWU members will inevitably lose their jobs, we were just beginning to trust Royal Mail again after we lost at least £20K in the strikes 2 years ago.
I agree we should sack the bloody lot of them, also if it is the "Royal Mail" surely interfering with it should be classed as Treason shouldn't it? a few Union heads on spikes outside the Tower might concentrate a few minds!:mad:
I spoke at length to our postman yesterday. He is not a union member and thoroughly p'd off with all that is going on. From what he told me I was left with the impression that there is a hidden agenda.... unless of course the union is just being bloody minded for the sake of it. He also confirmed that there is a lot of bullying by union members to make others join the union and join in with the madness.
Our local HDN Rep informed us this week that over 600 business within the Yorkshire Region had made enquiries about moving their operations! The soonest that they can take on any more business is now the end of January:eek:
Small packet delivery is the area of largest growth, but it also the most competitive and Royal Mail/CWU are simply letting it go!
All this strike is going to result in is more strikes. Many companies are quickly moving their business to other couriers and will be most reluctant to move back.
There was one medium sized business on TV the other night that spends £1 million with Royal Mail and have already moved 50% of the business and will be looking to move the rest shortly.
If RM loose a lot of business they will have to start making more cutbacks and redundancies which guess what....will result in yet more strikes!
mikepayn
31-10-2009, 10:45
... If RM loose a lot of business they will have to start making more cutbacks and redundancies which guess what....will result in yet more strikes!
Exactly, and if they do manage to scrape through this in one piece, with a reduced client base, they will have to rethink their pricing structure. How long can they keep charging a fixed 36p for a letter delivered to the next town or 500 miles away!
Hi, just ready in the paper this morning that the RM Union is planning to break the "no strikes" before Christmas agreement.
Apparently the union is looking for some movement by RM to their demands and if they see no progress they will re-start the strike action to cause maximum disruption.
And we had started to move some of our deliveries back to RM :eek:
Hi, just ready in the paper this morning that the RM Union is planning to break the "no strikes" before Christmas agreement.
Apparently the union is looking for some movement by RM to their demands and if they see no progress they will re-start the strike action to cause maximum disruption.
And we had started to move some of our deliveries back to RM :eek:
Just what we need :mad:. Our business is so far down against last year, the next couple of weeks are our last chance to make up some lost ground.
It is a customer perception thing, if the papers start to suggest that there is any possiblity of strike action starting again they will drift away again like they did during October, even if you have alternative courier services in place it seems to make little difference.
Luck it was in the Mail rather than a real Newspaper then!
Agree with that sentiment :) but unfortunately they do have a rather large readership and the headline screams at you from the front page.
It has been a huge uphill battle since September we were just beginning to see some return in confidence for internet shopping and now this on what should have been the busiest weekend of the year.
We moved everyone to courier but had begun to wonder if we weren't getting as many sales due to the higher charges so sneaked RM back on without telling anyone (it is there if you look very hard for it).
I'm so annoyed not just with RM but for the DM putting it back at the top of the agenda again as this will just kill off the rest of December now (this happened this weekend last year and due to RM action "Christmas" finished on the 8th December iirc virtually no orders after than until January.
I have just heard that the Union are denying any strike action, but the message is already out there and the damage done.
The Daily Mail headline will without doubt now cause all sorts of problems, we will probably have to put on the "unaffected by RM industrial action" banner on our site again, although it didn't seem to make an awful lot of difference the last time we tried to quell customer fears, bloody RM/Daily Mail :mad:
vsharma72
02-01-2010, 07:45
Same for us I'm afraid. Orders are way, way down. It does give me a chance to catch up on SEO and tidying up the site. If this keeps up I may need to go out and get a job!
Same for us I'm afraid. Orders are way, way down. It does give me a chance to catch up on SEO and tidying up the site. If this keeps up I may need to go out and get a job!
Perhaps you should be using Bluepark then ;)
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