New Sunday delivery services piloted by Royal Mail
Royal Mail will be testing out a new Sunday delivery service across the UK later this summer.
Royal Mail has announced it will be delivering parcels on Sunday as part of a trial service to take place later in the summer of 2014.
Delivery offices are open for six days a week at the moment, but under the pilot scheme, around 100 selected offices throughout the UK – those with the highest volume of parcels to distribute – will open seven days a week. Sunday parcel deliveries will also be trialled to addresses within the M25 motorway.
The changes address the growing demand placed on the postal service by online shopping growth, and have been made in agreement with the Communications Workers Union (CWU).
What do these changes mean?
Royal Mail has said that the “initiative is designed to make it easier for shoppers not at home during the day to get their parcels”. Currently, delivery offices open on Saturdays (opening hours vary), and around 1,400 offices remain open into the evenings on Wednesdays.
This should ease pressure on offices trying to cope with the number of people attempting to pick up their packages on a Sunday after missing the delivery attempts made during the week. Customers who are not at home when delivery is attempted can also arrange a free redelivery to their home or a neighbour via RoyalMail.com/redelivery.
Royal Mail Group’s express parcels business, Parcelforce Worldwide, will launch a Sunday delivery service in June for online shoppers through participating e-retailers. Parcelforce Worldwide will make the service available to contract customers across the UK.
The distribution network behind Royal Mail’s operations now also opens later on a Saturday, and on Sundays.
Royal Mail Group’s CEO Moya Greene said: “Through these new Sunday services we are exploring ways to improve our flexibility and provide more options for people to receive items they have ordered online. The support of the Communication Workers Union has enabled us to respond quickly to a changing market, underlining the importance of the ground-breaking Agenda for Growth agreement.”
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Who else offers Sunday delivery?
If you want your goods to arrive on a Sunday, you’re currently faced with a very limited set of options. As the Royal Mail Sunday services won’t be rolled out across the whole country to begin with, if you don’t live near one of the offices that’s set to work extra hours, you won’t yet benefit from the changes.
UPS doesn’t deliver on Sundays and neither does FedEx.
DPD will deliver on Sundays from 20th July onwards between 9am and 5pm, and 50 nationwide depots will also be open during this time.
If you really need something delivered to you on a Sunday, your best bet is hoping that Amazon stocks whatever you’re after, as it does operate a Sunday delivery service. Amazon Prime members who order eligible items from the site and select ‘One-Day Delivery’ (the default option) will receive their parcels on the following day and in most cases that guarantee includes Sundays and ‘some’ UK Bank Holidays.
If you’re not a Prime member, you can still get items delivered on Sunday, but it’ll cost a whopping £5.99 per ‘media’ item (books, CDs, games and the like), £3.95 for clothes, shoes and bags, or £7.99 for any other eligible item. Prime membership is priced at £79 a year.
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Will the changes to Royal Mail’s service make receiving and collecting parcels easier? Should more be done to ensure speedy delivery of packages? Let us know in the comments below.
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