County Down cake business owner's 'colossal' money loss over Royal Mail delivery issues

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2022-01-18 ... ery-issues

A small business owner has spoken of the "colossal" amount of money she's lost after problems with Royal Mail deliveries over Christmas.

Lynsey Bleakley runs Bumble and Goose cake shop in County Down.

The company regularly ships across the UK using Royal Mail's 24 service.

On December 20 around 150 orders were dispatched, mostly to England.

"Unfortunately approximately 80 of those orders failed to arrive at their destination," Ms Bleakey told UTV News.


"About 70 of them belonged to one corporate client that we were fulfilling a Christmas order for. They disappeared, they didn't arrive until about 18 or 19 days later.

"So we had spoiled goods, we make brownies and personalised biscuits, they only have a sell by date of two weeks, and we had to replace all of the orders."

Lynsey estimates her business has been left with a loss of £3,200.

"I'm a small business, that is a colossal amount of money for me and it's caused me many, many sleepless nights."

Royal Mail has been facing many pressures in recent weeks, with the demand for delivery of Covid home testing kits and staff absences.

In a statement, a Royal Mail spokesperson said: "We apologise to this customer if she did not receive the service she expected from Royal Mail. The customer used RM24. This aims to deliver next working day but is not guaranteed. There is also no tracking information or compensation for this particular service."

"Every item of mail is important to us and we continue to remind colleagues that the delivery, collection and processing of letters and parcels should be treated with equal importance."

Lynsey says using alternative delivery services hasn't proved cost effective for her business and that she's disappointed by Royal Mail's handling of her complaint.