The UK national mail services are being disrupted at the moment by industrial action by postal workers. Strike action has already taken place for several days over the last couple of weeks and is looking set to continue (sigh). There have been lots of doom and gloom headlines in the media about how this is the death toll for online businesses this Christmas, and so on…but so far I would say do not believe all the hype you may be hearing in the news.

I am surprisingly calm about the whole thing even though I have a couple of eBay seller accounts as well as several other websites selling cosmetics and fragrance items. The truth is that I can report that I am not seeing any significant downturn in business at present.

Actually, customers seem to be more understanding and patient than usual as they understand the reason for any delay. If anything, by managing expectations I have had some brilliant feedback on eBay about speedy delivery because some items are arriving with no delays at all. The worst hit area is definitely London, with a delivery time in some cases of up to two weeks for first class items.

Of course I hope as much as anyone that the dispute can be resolved sooner rather than later, as any backlog will continue to grow the longer this continues. However, I am still using Royal Mail and am not deserting to other carriers because they are not cost effective for the size and volume of the items I am sending. It is simply not feasible for me, or lots of other eBay businesses, to switch to a more expensive delivery service as
I will not be able to recover the extra cost from my customers.

Armchair shoppers are not deserting the web and running down to their local high street instead, as the doom merchants would have you believe. They are far too savvy to do anything of the sort. Online customers are simply being more pro-active and ordering earlier than usual to factor in the expected delivery delay.

Which is why I am expecting the usual Christmas rush to start even earlier this year for my online businesses, and yours too if you have one. So here’s to a prosperous holiday selling season for us all – ching ching!!

ps I almost forgot to mention you can potentially profit from the postal delays by claiming compensation for delayed items. I will report back with the relevant link so you know how to claim!

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