Update 19th December
Please see operational delays for DPD due to unprecedented demand: https://www.dpdlocal.co.uk/pdf/DPD_Local_Service_Disruption.pdf
Last delivery dates:
Royal Mail Tracked 48 was Friday 23rd December.
DPD: Wednesday 21st December. However in some areas the last posting date is Monday 19th December - see affected postcodes https://www.dpdlocal.co.uk/pdf/lsd-pd-1.2.pdf
DELIVERY DELAYS – An update Monday 5th December 2022
This is a blog to help keep you informed on the current shipping delays.
We use two carriers – DPD and Royal Mail. As you may be aware Royal Mail have been striking on a regular basis now for a number of months. Their last 2-day strike coincided with the Black Friday weekend, the busiest shopping weekend of the year with Royal Mail on strike on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th November. So any orders placed after 4.15 on Wednesday 23rd didn’t leave us until Monday 28th December. Royal Mail were then on strike again on Wednesday 30th and Thursday 1st so orders placed over that time, didn’t leave us until Friday 2nd December.
As you can imagine there is now a severe backlog at Royal Mail depots and parcels sent by Royal Mail are subject to significant delays. Even tracked items that are normally prioritised are delayed in the network. There are unfortunately no updates for tracked orders even though we know they have left us. The tracking system simply says "Item Dispatched to Royal Mail" and "Sender Dispatching item". This is because Royal Mail are only updating the tracking information once delivery is complete. In some areas deliveries are seeing a 14+ day delay.
These strikes have also had an impact on DPD who we also use. They are also struggling with the significant increase in freight volume as a result of Royal Mail’s industrial action as well as coping with the busiest time of the year. DPD have posted the following update on where their service is disrupted: https://www.dpdlocal.co.uk/content/products_services/uk_issues.jsp#issue0
Unfortunately these conditions are unlikely to improve, so please order as early as possible. We have also made the decision to disable standard Royal 24 and 48 hour shipping options as we have no idea how long these will take to arrive. So all post will be sent on a Tracked 48 Service.
We can only apologise for the backlog in both the Royal Mail and DPD networks.
We are working hard our end and all orders (placed up to 4pm) are shipped out the same day, but sadly we are caught up in the backlogs and which is totally outside of our hands. I am really sorry about this. We are grateful for your understanding and patience in this matter. Please allow extra time when ordering.
Please bear with us, as we are receiving a high number of emails regarding this and our response time is taking longer than usual.
Healthful Pets
Monday 5th December 2022
