There are currently ongoing strikes by Canada Post, causing inevitable disruption to the postal service in some major Canadian cities. If you sell on eBay, you may wish to temporarily set your preferences to prevent Canadian buyers from purchasing from you. I’ve already seen one eBay seller with an abusive message from someone in Canada who doesn’t think the strike is a good enough reason for not getting his item.
At the very least you should be managing buyer expectations by keeping them informed of possible delays.
Royal Mail have already announced the cut-off dates for posting items in time for Christmas 2010. The last day for UK 1st class is Tue 21 Dec 2010 and for 2nd class Sat 18 Dec 2010.
Read the the full announcement here.
Alibaba, the international trade directory have recently purchased Auctiva. Auctiva are well known amongst eBay sellers for their free listing templates and other eBay related tools. Auctiva have posted a Q&A on the buy-out on their website.
Sky News and BBC News are reporting that the planned mail strikes for tomorrow and Monday have been called off.
There hasn’t been any official announcement as yet, and it’s not yet clear whether their issues have been fully resolved.
Let’s hope so.
The planned postal strikes for this week are to go ahead, with both sides of the dispute once more failing to reach agreement.
The strikes affect various sections of Royal Mail from the 29th October to the 31st October.
Full story here
Since the TUC has stepped into the bitter row between Royal Mail and the CWU, talks have so far been lengthy and ‘encouraging’ but we are yet to see a resolution to the dispute.
Further strikes are planned for this week from Thursday 29th October to Saturday 31st October, with postal delivery workers already struggling to clear the backlog from last week.
Many small businesses continue to suffer, and no doubt many will continue to find alternatives, costing Royal Mail even more in lost revenue.
As expected, postal workers are to stage two 24 hour strikes on the 22nd and 23rd of October. Is that not a 48 hour strike? No because on one day it’s the mail centre staff and drivers, and the following day the delivery and collection staff.
Full story here
eBay UK MD Mark Lewis has published a letter that he has sent on behalf of eBay sellers;
“Dear Secretary of State,
I am writing on behalf of thousands of eBay sellers to express grave concern about the impact of the proposed national strike at Royal Mail.
Some 120,000 businesses are currently registered and making a living on eBay.co.uk. While they work with a variety of postal suppliers, many rely heavily on Royal Mail for their deliveries and are understandably concerned that any postal strike will cause huge disruption at a time when they can least afford it.
These sellers tell us that Christmas typically accounts for a fifth of their annual sales and despite the tough economic conditions, they’re successfully growing their businesses and investing for future growth. Any barrier to them delivering their goods could dent public confidence in a growing and increasingly important part of the economy.
While we have no wish to minimise the intractability of the issues at stake, it is not acceptable that many hard-working small businesses, are innocent victims of a dispute that is beyond their control.
I therefore urge you to consider these sellers as you encourage both the Royal Mail and the CWU to reach a negotiated settlement and to bring this dispute to a swift end.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Lewis
Managing Director for eBay in the UK”
Source – eBay Announcements
Later today, the results for the strike ballot by postal workers will be released, with a national strike expected to be announced.
Given that Royal Mail have just lost the Amazon contract, and that we are already in a recession with unemployment at the highest it’s been in decades in the UK, I would sack the ones that want to go on strike and give their jobs to people who actually want to work for a living instead of moaning about their workload all the time.
I don’t particularly care about the reasons they’re striking, I’m sure they have genuine grievances, but there are better ways of getting your point across without threatening the livelihoods of 1000s of small businesses who post their goods using Royal Mail.
As a full postal strike looms, Amazon have ended their contract with Royal Mail to deliver parcels over 500g.
Amazon will now use the Home Delivery Network instead, in a move that is thought to have cost Royal Mail £25M. Expect more companies to follow suit as businesses realise they can’t rely on Royal Mail workers, who seem to go on strike at the drop of a hat these days.
Full article in the Guardian here.
