Royal Mail chiefs have vowed to keep Christmas chaos at bay after admitting that many areas in the country don’t receive a standard service.
Customer service was interrupted by disruptions due to Covid-related selfisolation, sick absence, resource shortages, or other local factors. The operator apologized to the customers.
An analysis reveals that delivery offices affected by the issues more than doubled within a week and reached a high of 32 offices for the year last Wednesday.
Writing on the wall: Royal Mail has apologised to customers and blamed disruption to services on ‘Covid-related self-isolation, sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors’
Some 21 offices still had difficulties last night including Warrington, Farnborough, Hampshire, and Bristol South. Customers complained about not receiving deliveries within weeks.
It is currently dealing with large volumes of parcels that are passing through the 1,200 offices. This was triggered by an increase in online Christmas shopping and the pandemic.
The Mail on Sunday last week revealed that Simon Thompson, the chief executive, had made an urgent appeal to managers for hundreds of additional vans to be hired to deliver parcels.
Thompson shared his concern about vans in a late-night video message to 137,000 of its employees. This is not what I think. Your shortening is a problem.
“And I’ve heard the feedback too many times now and it’s time to do something about it.” He asked his employees to find vehicles through local van-hire companies until Christmas Eve.
Royal Mail has already the biggest fleet of vans, with 40,000 distinctive red ones.
The MoS captured footage of one North delivery office and found that mail was piled up in a mess in the afternoon. This is when sorting offices are supposed to be clear.
Royal Mail strives to remove all mail from each office every day. Many employees blame revisions of routes for delays.
The company is attempting to revise hundreds of routes to make its operations more efficient and workloads fairer.
One source stated that revisions were causing delays in the posting. The computer says it’s not possible.
“The technology can make the routes possible, but does not account for traffic jams, roadworks or block of flats that have 30 addresses which the posties need to reach.
Sources close to the situation denied that revisions were the reason for the delay.
Thompson responded to an email from an employee, saying, “I don’t dispute the delays”, but insisting that revisions are not the issue.
He said, “Absence.” [and] recruitment and at times revisions are the issue – and our number 1 problem to solve – absence – almost double 2018 at this time – and much higher then [sic]This time last year, during the pandemic.
Royal Mail, Parcelforce Worldwide and a sister firm began to look for seasonal employees to manage Christmas parcels, letters and mail in October.
Thompson hopes to transform the 500 year-old operation and eliminate bullying problems within the organisation.
The MoS claims that Royal Mail employees are keeping track of fake hours in a series of locations around the country is being investigated.
Royal Mail has already been challenged by FedEx, DPD and others to provide parcel delivery services for online retailers.
The pandemic has seen a shift away from shopping on high streets to ecommerce, which has helped Royal Mail increase its profits and shares price.
The stock suffered a sell-off in autumn but has risen 12 per cent to £4.84 over the last month, since the company announced plans to hand shareholders a £400million reward through a £200million special dividend and a £200million share buyback.