Royal Mail loses Amazon contract

Amazon has ended its contract with Royal Mail to deliver parcels weighing more than 500 grams.
Royal Mail has lost a crucial contract with its second largest customer, the online retailer Amazon, as a wave of strikes threaten parcel deliveries in the busy pre-Christmas sales period.

The news comes on the eve of a national strike announcement by the Communication Workers Union that is likely to bring the simmering industrial dispute to the boil and further disrupt deliveries across the country.

But a backlog of undelivered mail has worried customers, particularly small businesses and internet retailers who argue that the unpredictable nature of the strikes has led to a collapse in reliability. The loss of this business will be a severe blow to Royal Mail, which was relying on the growth of online shopping to compensate for the decline of its letters business due to rising email use.

Customers of eBay have already been particularly vociferous, claiming the strikes are causing damage to small businesses that suffer negative feedback and lose their online reliability ratings.

Amazon.co.uk has cancelled its long-term contract to use the Royal Mail for parcels over 500 grams and will use a rival service, Home Delivery Network (HDN), which also delivers for Tesco and Argos.

Two years ago Royal Mail lost a smaller Amazon contract worth £8m to deliver second class parcels during the last national strike, but fought hard to win the business back, claiming improved industrial relations. Losing the new, bigger contract will exacerbate the operator’s financial woes, which lay behind its need to cut staff, but more worryingly sends a dangerous signal to other suppliers about Amazon’s faith in the network during the crisis.

Royal Mail declined to comment.

e-Bay users in limbo due to postal strikes!

The constant postal strikes are leaving eBay users in limbo, Online buyers and sellers are suffering as mailed goods fail to arrive on time.

Ebay sellers are worried they may suffer negative feedback from customers as buyers with goods caught up in the postal strike launch. But what can actually be done?

Many users of the online auction house have been left empty handed as the Royal Mail union snarl-up over job cuts and pay causes huge disruption at sorting offices across the country.

In some cases, delays of more than two weeks have prompted irate buyers to start payment disputes, sparking financial disruption and damaging personal selling “reputations”, known as detailed seller ratings.

The company’s online chat forum has been flooded with site users anxious to resolve their situations with disgruntled buying and selling counterparts.

The impact of delayed goods on ratings is also worrying users, should e-bay be considering this? taking it on board as an issue ?

There is nothing sellers can do except state the current state of the royal mail in their descriptions.

If only Post Man Pat was still around hey ?