Business collection

[EBMP]

I wonder if someone can shed light on how business collections work. Should a collection attempt be made, regardless of whether we have submitted a mail manifest online? If we don't submit the manifest, does it somehow tell the driver not to come?

The reason I ask is that we ordered a collection for today. We received a confirmation email saying that the collection should be between 11am and 2pm (earlier than usual). However, we actually didn't submit a manifest until after 1pm, but it would have only taken a couple of minutes to do it. The driver never arrived and I am wondering if he never came because we didn't complete a manifest (OBA order).

I waited until 4:30 and then called business customer services. They said that he won't be coming, and that I should call back on Friday to make a complaint. But the driver is a nice chap and I don't want to get him into trouble, if it was all because we hadn't completed the OBA order in good time. But if he should have come regardless, then would it be his fault, or does someone else fill his handheld machine with the addresses he needs to visit?

We are disappointed that none of our customer orders have been dispatched today, and I'm sure that we'll have some complaints about it. I just want to know more about how the collection scheduling works, and who might be at fault here.

Thanks for any insight.

[IcanthelpthewayIam]

How where and when did you request the collection?

[EBMP]

Via the email that was sent to me in late November. There was a link within the email that sent me to the Royal Mail website, where I could select which collections I needed over the festive period. It was this link http://www.royalmail.com/collections2014" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I received a confirmation email after completing the form. That email does have 31st December in the list.
We had a collection on all other dates that we requested. We requested a collection everyday that was available.
We normally have collections every weekday.

[IcanthelpthewayIam]

That was the answer I thought you were not going to give and was then going to point it out to you, yep you have done everything correctly and should have had a collection . For what it's worth it may not be the posties fault, on Xmas and New years eve business collections are cancelled for all firms except if they have done what you did then a list of approved collections is emailed to the delivery office or distribution centre depending who does you collection and that list is supposed to be handed to the collection postie. I would bet that email was not printed and handed to him but there are several points in the chain that could have caused the failure

[EBMP]

Thanks. I'll have a chat with him tomorrow to see what happened.

[EBMP]

Collection driver said that they didn't give him ANY collections on NYE.
Complaints gone in, so I'll see what comes of it.