Royal Mail have announce further strikes, which is likely to cause major issues with delayed deliveries for eCommerce owners and their customers. Black Friday deliveries also face delays, after it is announced that one of the proposed strike days is set, for the Monday after the Black Friday sale (28/11/22).
Strike action took place at the end of last month, strategically organised over the bank holiday weekend, causing prolonged disruption to the delivery infrastructure of many eCommerce store owners.
Further strikes were planned for September the 8th and 9th, but were postponed, due to the sad announcement of the death of HRH Queen Elizabeth II.
Royal mail have now released the dates of the next proposed strike plans and have said;
“The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called on its members who collect, sort and deliver parcels and letters to take further national strike action on the following dates:
- Friday 30 September 2022 and Saturday 1 October 2022
- Thursday 13 October 2022
- Thursday 20 October 2022
- Tuesday 25 October 2022
- Monday 28 November 2022 – DTF note – This may effect Black Friday Deliveries
Further dates have also been announced by the CWU for functional strike action which impacts parts of our operation on the following:
- Processing, Distribution, International, Collections, Admin: 3, 9, 15, 24 November and 1 December 2022
- Delivery: 4, 10, 16, 25 November and 2 December 2022
- Network: 2, 8, 14, 23, 30 November 2022
We’re sorry this strike action is likely to cause you some disruption. We will be working to get our services back to normal as quickly as possible. Royal Mail has well-developed contingency plans, but we cannot fully replace the daily efforts of our frontline workforce. We’ll be doing what we can to keep services running, but you should expect significant disruption on dates when strike action is taking place.” – Source: https://www.royalmail.com/latest-news
eCommerce deliveries – What can I do?
If you are relying solely on Royal Mail for your ecommerce website deliveries, it might be worthwhile considering the following options:
- Offer a click and collect service
- Add additional Royal Mail shipping options to you matrix such as Special Delivery and Tracked24 parcels (Royal Mail say they will deliver as many of these as possible during the strike – but can’t be guaranteed)
- Offer an alternative courier for deliveries
Update you eCommerce website
Keep your customers informed of any delays that they may experience due to the strike action. You can do this by:
- Updating your hero banner
- Adding a website alert bar
- Posting on social media
- Creating a blog article
- Updating order confirmation emails with a notification of delivery delays.
- Sending out an email campaign to your customers, using tools such as Klaviyo or MailChimp.
Need help updating your eCommerce website due to the strikes? Speak to us ASAP, you can contact us on 01484 506220. We specialise in Magento 2, WooCommerce and Shopify.
