As you will have noticed our shipping prices have increased over the last 12 months. We would like to make it clear that this is due to Royal mail increasing prices 5 times this year. we have had the price of some services more than trebled and some have had more than one price increase. This is on top of the increase in fuel duty that they brought in (despite the fact that fuel has become cheaper), the new green surcharge they have added and their peak time price increase (they are putting prices up at peak times of the year) and the plummeting service levels.
We have surveyed around other companies and as far as we can tell these inflating busting price increases have only been brought in with small business. The bigger companies have not had any price increases.
we feel that Royal mail is taking advantage of us as a small business and of you as our customers.
We do understand that Royal mail is the only delivery option for some customers we are actively looking for a better priced reliable service but as yet we have not found one.
The current issues with Royal mail are:
Price- we do not feel that the services now offer any value for money.
speed-
We are finding on average that a tracked 24 delivery is taking around 3 days (not the 24 hours advertised) and tracked 48 deliveries are often taking 5+ days. Whilst we do appreciate that Royal mail are facing staffing issues. the fact that they made a huge number of staff redundant (they did this after they had all worked really hard in the first lockdown) is making the situation far worse.
Damaged items and lost items:
Royal mail are loosing and breaking far more than they ever did previously. Sadly whilst they will claim we can submit a claim for the loss or damage they are rarely paid out as they generally find something to refuse the claim for.
we are currently finding the highest level of loss and damage is from Royal mail deliveries however mail fraud is also incredibly high.
Customer services:
When things go wrong with Royal mail it is almost impossible for us to find out any information. If we call them we are left waiting for 1-2 hours just to speak to someone and we are then generally told they will email the delivery office etc to find out what has happened but as they are so busy it is unlikely they will reply, and that's it end of enquiry. If we email them it takes over a week for a reply and generally several weeks to actually resolve the issue. We do not feel that this is acceptable.
With DHL and DPD we can get a reply and a resolution generally in around 48 hours.
We don't like to moan but we really are concerned about what Royal mail is quietly doing. they are not permitted by law to change the price of a stamp by too much but they can increase their prices to business customers by whatever they like and they are currently using small business as a cash cow during a time of national emergency.