From this Monday, the 6th of April, your Royal Mail parcel drop off will need to be first thing in the morning if you use Customer Service Points at local Delivery Offices. Some will only open for two hours per day whilst others will open for four hours. All will be closed entirely every Wednesday and Sunday. Those who have a regular Royal Mail collection should be unaffected, but options for sellers used to using Post Offices or Royal Mail Delivery Offices are facing rapidly reducing hours during which they can drop off mail.
Delivery Office Customer Service Point are where consumers generally collect parcels and this will now have to be first thing in the morning. Online sellers who have recently being doing a Royal Mail parcel drop off will also be unable to despatch same day and will now have to visit their local Customer Service Point early in the morning.
Impact for Sellers
- Opening hours from 7am to 9am or at larger locations 7am to 11am. You will need to drop off parcels early in the morning
- Closed every Wednesday (and Sunday).
- You will need to adjust your despatch times to take into account the changes
- Returns will now take over a month (from despatch) to be returned if they aren’t collected by the consumer
Post Offices
Royal Mail say that they are working closely with approximately 11,000 Post Offices that remain open to provide another avenue – where appropriate – for you to access essential mail services. However, here at Tamebay we are hearing from an increasing number of marketplace sellers who’s local Post Office have indicated that marketplace parcels are no longer welcome.
Restricted hours are in operation at standalone Post Office’s and WH Smiths branches which are now only open from 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 12:30pm Saturday. All other branches (generally in local shops) are open at hours decided upon by the franchised postmaster and so opening hours can vary enormously.
Another alternative is Royal Mail Parcel Postboxes, but due to them generally being located outside Delivery Offices and with the now much reduced opening hours we suspect these Royal Mail parcel drop off boxes will quickly become full and unavailable for accepting further parcels.
Due to the restricted opening hours, Royal Mail will also now retain items for up to 30 days before returning them to the sender in order to give consumers time to collect them.
Royal Mail Parcel Drop off changes
“Customer Service Points – Temporary Change in Opening Hours
To protect the health and safety of our people and the general public, from Monday 6 April, we are changing the opening times of our Customer Services Points in our local delivery offices. Our largest locations will be open between 07:00-11:00am. All other Customer Service Points will be open between 07:00-09:00am. All will be closed on Wednesday and Sunday.
To support the Government’s advice to stay at home and avoid non-essential journeys, we urge customers to only visit Customer Service Points where absolutely necessary. As a reminder, we can also redeliver your item(s) for free. Schedule your redelivery here.
Longer retention periods in Customer Service Points
To give you longer to collect or have your item redelivered, we are temporarily extending the retention period to 30 calendar days from Monday 6 April before items are returned to sender.
This applies to the following:
- Items we’ve left a ‘Something for You’ card
- Items that have a ‘Surcharge to Pay’
- Items that have a ‘Customs Charge to Pay’
- Local Collect items where the parcel is addressed to the Customer Service Point”
– Royal Mail
from Ecommerce – Tamebay https://ift.tt/3473mry via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment