Sellers warn Royal Mail delivery backlog threatens their future

SMALL businesses have warned they face collapse after a Royal Mail cyber attack almost two weeks ago continues to prevent parcels being sent overseas.

Sellers on online site Etsy have reported struggling with a growing number of orders which they have not been able to send off to customers abroad since Jan 10, when Royal Mail was hit by a ransomware attack.

Since then, Royal Mail has been advising people not to send parcels internationally. It only resumed “limited” exports of parcels and letters overseas last week, saying it was working to clear the backlog of items in its system.

One seller on Etsy said the issues stopping them from shipping abroad would ruin their shop. “I’m having so many customers complaining about the delays to their orders. Many are now wanting their money back,” one wrote on a seller forum. Etsy has responded to the issues by offering sellers a discount if they send parcels overseas using Evri.

However, some sellers have argued recent delivery woes at Evri mean they are not willing to use the service. Evri apologised to customers on Jan 11 for Christmas deliveries still not received.

Zoë Clewer, who co-founded Magister Militum, a retailer of wargaming figures, said she was “really over a barrel”. It typically takes around 50 online orders every month from overseas and sells a similar number in the UK.

“The things we do are thankfully quite small. I can imagine other businesses will be having terrible storage problems right now,” she said, adding that she was “completely staggered that there isn’t more of an outcry about the length of outage and security issues”. Tina Mckenzie, policy chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses said, it was critical that Royal Mail now finish processing parcels trapped in the system and start accepting new parcels.

He said: “Small firms are facing waves of uncertainty and some are dependent on the postal service to ease some of that stress, so it’s reassuring to see that Royal Mail has restarted post and the export of parcels in their backlog.”

Royal Mail said it was trialling several operational workarounds, and was asking customers to continue not sending parcels through its systems for export for now. A spokesman said: “Our initial focus will be to clear mail that has already been processed and is waiting to be dispatched. We continue to make good progress. We would like to apologise to impacted customers.”