The Usual Christmas Postal & Shipping Delays

[MVacs]

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As we all know, Christmas is almost upon us, and the Post Office and couriers are overwhelmed already.

We are already seeing long delays with Royal Mail.

A Second Class item mailed to us on the 5^th arrived today - the 13^th. Eight days! 

A first Class item mailed to us four days ago still hasn't arrived.

A few days ago our daily Yodel (DHL) collection never happened at all. 

We have now switched all our courier shipping to the way more expensive UPS until mid January - because we learned the hard way last year with Yodel/DHL/CityLink. UPS are the best of the bunch we find.

However, for regular orders sent with 'free' shipping, that is 2^nd Class, so up to two weeks might be expected if we get some snow as we have done in recent years. Royal Mail have decided that an item isn't 'missing' until three weeks have elapsed.

Our friendly local Postmaster has advised us that items sent to the United States are subject to long delays with the US Customs Service (they tracked some 'International Signed For' stuff as a test). Royal Mail is getting stuff into the States within three or four days, but the US Customs and USPS are taking another week at least to deliver. Items to the United States posted from the UK now might take up to three weeks - depending on destination state.

This last week, we have started to get the usual angry emails from customers asking where their stuff is. As with every other online seller, we use whatever service we feel offers the best service at this time of year. In the case of couriers and vacuum cleaners, we have switched to UPS (and swallowed the extra cost). In the case of small packets (parts mostly), we only have the Post Office and the Yodel small packet service. And Yodel are out-performing the Post Office/Parcelforce right now - so motors and orders over 1kg are going with Yodel.

If your order is delayed, please be patient. No amount of angry emails and phone calls will get it to you any faster. We ship same or next day with everything - beyond doing that, we are unable to influence the speed of delivery at this time of year.

In our experience, it usually takes the Post Office until mid January to totally catch up, and delivery times to return to normal.