Postal Strikes Pose Threat To Small Businesses

Once upon a time, your humble author ordered a rather large television, and for the sake of free shipping, accepted a delivery target of about one month down the road.  But generally speaking, people want stuff they order to arrive promptly, and postal strikes in the UK are posing quite a problem for small businesses.

There are a lot of ways in which the strikes could cause things could go wrong.  Some folks, for example, may decide not to place an order in the first place, figuring that they should buy the product in person.  (And that means they’re more likely to visit a big, everything-under-one-roof type of store.)

Others might wind up returning goods that don’t arrive on time.  After all, if a Halloween costume shows up after October 31st, it’s a rare person who will just say "oh, well" and sit on it for a year.

Which brings us to the third problem: misplaced blame.  If a delivery goes badly, shoppers may associate the small business with the negative experience, regardless of whether or not it was actually Royal Mail’s fault.

Or small businesses could just incur large costs as a result of switching to a different service.

So here are some more tangible details.  The Federation of Small Businesses said in a statement, "In a survey of over 1,200 small businesses, nearly half (46 per cent) estimate the postal strikes could cost them between 500 and 5,000.  In the run up to Christmas, one of the most crucial times of year for a small business owner, four out of ten said that they could lose trade (42 per cent) and 40 per cent said that their business reputation could be damaged."

Let’s all hope the mail dispute is resolved soon.